geoLibro.org

(backdated to 2008.June.23)

Shit. I remember as a child being legimately horrified and scared at this image:

(context for this copy)

Imagine my terrific additional horror, years later (three weeks ago, in fact), when I learned that the event took place in Marion, Indiana, a scant hour’s drive from where I live now. Oh, by the way, this occurred in fucking 1930, which is most certainly not long enough ago to be dismissive about it in that kind of oh-well-we-all-did-crazy-things-in-historic-times kind of way (aside: why don’t we apply that same logic to the spooky science fiction of religion?). I learned this when I picked up a copy of IU professor James H. Madison’s A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America, which isn’t a great book I don’t think but a decent social history.

Anyway, Madison references the connection between that event in Indiana (which is in the north, by the way) and the song “Strange Fruit” made famous by Billie Holiday. Please see Madison’s book for more about the connection (or discussions of this important song at PBS or BBC or LOC’s National Recording Registry or AllMusic.com or David Margolic’s book). All I’ll say here is that the live version I’m posting (attached to Marion, Indiana) is particularly gripping and dark and overwhelmed by the hopelessness of Holiday’s knowing that such things had happened (and would continue).

So it’s Billie Holiday performing the legendary “Strange Fruit” in 1946 (from Jazz at the Philharmonic Vol. I released in 1994). Are you listening, current and future Indiana racists? Your gross wrongness will be born out by history.

And the kml for all mp3s of the week.