Event

Body & Soul: An American Bridge / Strange Fruit

Body & Soul: An American Bridge
Documentary - 58 minutes
Directed by Robert Philipson
Perfomance by Teaneck Community Chorus
Talkback with Robert Philipson, director/writer/producer; Loren Schoenberg,National Jazz Museum in Harlem; moderated by Calvin Hill, famed bass player
Sponsored by The Teaneck Community Chorus

Out of all the cross-cultural encounters that have resulted in the richness of American popular music, none has been so prominent or so fraught with fraternity and conflict as the relationships between African Americans and American Jews. The film aims to tease out the strands of this cultural knot by focusing on the early performance history of the jazz standard, Body and Soul, one of the most recorded songs in the jazz repertoire. Composed by Jewish composer Johnny Green in 1929, the song was introduced on Broadway by Jewish torch singer Libby Holman and ushered into the jazz canon by Louis Armstrong the following year.

Strange Fruit (2002)
Documentary - 57 minutes
Directed by Joel Katz
Talkback with Joel Katz, director/writer/producer; moderated by Calvin Hill, famed bass player
Sponsored by The Teaneck Community Chorus

In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billie Holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic.