Nina and Billie Cried Power... and So Do We

In class we listened to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and learned about the times they encountered. During the class we listened to “Mississippi Goddamn” by Simone and Strange Fruits by Holiday. After listening to both songs and I started to notice how they can relate to our generation and the times now.

Starting with Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn, the song was written after 4 young African American girls were killed when a bomb was thrown through the window of their church. After this Nina continued to sing the song for different occasions such as when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I took this song as a cry for help and as if Nina is embarrassed of and for Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and America. In the song she says how everyone knows theses states because of the horrible things that have happened in them.

This reminds me of what is going on today. Just like people from all over the country and world knew about the brutal racism and race attacks in America, the same is happening with the more than many mass shootings. If you google searched Connecticut, Florida, Las Vegas, Colorado, and many more, you will see that those states are not known for the wonderful things they have to offer, but the mass shootings that occurred there. Nina cries for help in this song for equality just like the kids in parkland Florida and all over the world who walked out of their schools on March 14^th ,2018 who cried “Never Again” for stricter gun laws and to help the mentally ill.  In the song she says how the people in power told then to wait or it will slowly happen; which is happening now.

We also listened to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. This song was about the many lynching’s that occurred during her time. After watching a trailer from a documentary called “Stranger Fruits” it came to my attention of how this song can also refer to the issue of police brutality and the killing of unarmed African Americans. She sings about a dead body hanging from a tree, out for everyone to see. The trailer that we watched, showed an unarmed African American young man laying in the street for everyone to look at. A song that was made years ago for a different time can go hand in hand with the current situations in our country.

Both songs bring attention to topics that everyone else was afraid to talk about. The were made for the ones who struggled before us and can still be used as anthems or cries for help. Music is very powerful and never changes or evolves. It’s something that is never going away. Music helped get messages out before, and it will help get ours across now.