February is Black History Month.
This month, The Night Owl stays up a little later with the artists whose music did more than fill the room. These are voices that challenged, protested, organized, and helped push the country forward, sometimes at real personal cost.
Each night, one artist. Five songs. A little history.
Low lights. Needle down. We listen.
Tonight, we begin at the beginning.
Billie Holiday
Before the marches and speeches, before the movement had a name, there was a song that made rooms go quiet.
Strange Fruit didn’t start as a song at all. It began as a poem by Abel Meeropol, written after seeing a photograph of a lynching. He later set the words to music, and it found its way into New York nightclubs.
Holiday didn’t write it.
She chose to sing it.
And then she did something riskier. She recorded it.
At a time when most labels wanted nothing to do with an explicit anti-lynching song, putting it on vinyl made it permanent. Not just a performance that faded at closing time, but a record that could travel anywhere, played in any room, forcing listeners to sit with what it described.
It’s now widely regarded as one of the earliest modern civil rights protest songs recorded by a popular artist.
Holiday never called herself an activist. She didn’t give speeches. She just stood under a spotlight and refused to soften the truth.
Lover Man:
Good Morning Heartache:
God Bless the Child:
I’ll Be Seeing You:
Strange Fruit:
This is an open thread
