Interchange – The Sound of Resistance: Protest or Pose

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:37 — 50.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

“Protest or Pose” begins a series of programs under the heading The Sound of Resistance. Joining me in the studio is Rasul Mowatt, associate professor in The School of Public Health and the American Studies Department at Indiana University.

We’ll look at three songs: “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday (and recently sampled by Kanye West); “We Almost Lost Detroit” by Gill Scott Heron; and “Warzone” by T.I.

As our title suggests, we’ll discuss how we come to designate some songs as legitimate forms of protest, and how some songs might be better described as commercially opportunistic. So, songs as instruments of protest–or products of protest–or if they’re sometimes just products.

SEGMENT ONE: “Strange Fruit”
“Strange Fruit” is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans.

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

SEGMENT TWO: “We Almost Lost Detroit”
The song “We Almost Lost Detroit”, written by Gil Scott Heron and on the 1977 album Bridges, recounts the story of the nuclear meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station near Monroe, MI, in 1966. It was performed at the No Nukes concert in September 1979 at Madison Square Garden.

SEGMENT THREE: “Warzone” (2016)
T.I. has said the video is in response to the “All Lives Matter” slogan: “We wanted to give ‘the other side’ — and when I say the ‘other side’ I don’t mean police, I don’t mean white people, I mean people who think we’re just overreacting, the ‘All Lives Matter’ people — we wanted to give them the least amount of ammunition to oppose our message. (Rapper T.I. Presents Counterpoint to ‘All Lives Matter’ Crowd)

GUEST
Rasul Mowatt is Associate Professor of American Studies and Associate Chair and Associate Professor in Recreation, Park and Tourism Studies with the School of Public Health at Indiana University.

RELATED
DJ Rasul talks lynching in popular music
DJ Rasul
Lynchings on Loop (an Interchange interview with Courtney Baker)

MUSIC
“Rumble” by Link Wray
“Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday
“Blood On the Leaves” Kanye West
“Strange Fruit” by Rokia Traoré
“We Almost Lost Detroit” by Gil Scott Heron
“We Almost Lost Detroit” by Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr
“Warzone” by T. I.
“We Almost Lost Detroit” by Ron Holloway (featuring Gil Scott Heron)

NEXT TIME
The Capitalized Womb…We’re joined by Constance and Ned Sublette, authors of The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry. This is the brutal story of how the slavery industry made the reproductive labor of the people it referred to as “breeding women” essential to the young country’s expansion. The book’s narrative is driven by the power struggle between the elites of Virginia, the slave-raising “mother of slavery,” and South Carolina, the massive importer of Africans—a conflict that was central to American politics from the making of the Constitution through the debacle of the Confederacy.

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Assistant Producer: Rob Schoon
Board Engineer: Jennifer Brooks
Executive Producer: Joe Crawford