Tash Siddiqui, Strange and Forbidden Fruits: Report on the Conference at Leeds University

March 2014, Volume 8, Number 1, 53–9.

A report on the international conference, Richard Wagner’s Impact on His World and Ours, held at the School of Music, University of Leeds, 30 May–2 June 2013.

‘Strange Fruit’, the song which achieved worldwide fame through Billie Holiday’s performance, was in fact written in the 1930s, as a protest against the lynching of black people in the American South, by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish school teacher from the New York Bronx who was a member of the Communist Party. I mention this by way of introduction not only because Richard Wagner’s impact on his world and ours includes some strange fruits indeed, but also because it neatly incorporates some themes of the Leeds conference which will be discussed below: the astonishingly global nature of Wagner’s reach; divides of North and South; the popular perception of Wagner; the performance of Wagner’s works; the position of Wagner’s songs in his output; the role of politics, both left-wing and right-wing, in Wagner production and reception; and the ever-looming shadow of racism and anti-Semitism.