Cassandra Wilson, who has recorded two versions of the song, the first in 1996, agrees: “The problem is not that it’s difficult to sing,” she says. “So I called the [record] company and told them that it seemed like we keep telling this story over and over and over.”, Director Lee Daniels will retell the song’s story in an upcoming movie, The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, just picked up for distribution by Paramount Pictures. The image Meeropol saw stayed with him and first appeared in a poem, “Bitter Fruit,” that he wrote for a 1937 union publication. In 1980, a new version appeared when UB40 recast “Strange Fruit” to a reggae groove, and Meeropol’s friend Pete Seeger played him a tape of the song on a visit to the nursing home where Meeropol was suffering from Alzheimer’s. The song has been called "a declaration of war" and "the beginning of the civil rights movement". Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out. Strange Fruit by Nina Simone is in the key of C Minor. “The first time I sang it I thought it was a mistake and I had been right being scared. Most recently, Simone’s recording of “Strange Fruit” appeared in the “Lemons” episode of black-ish. It’s not blues. “There’s something that’s still very radioactive about the song.” says Margolick. The Ballad Of Hollis Brown. When we performed it live, we always did it as the last song. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century, and the great majority of victims were black. Eunice Kathleen Waymon (21 February 1933 – 21 April 2003), better known by her stage name Nina Simone, was an American singer-songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Meeropol wrote: “She gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation, which could jolt an audience out of its complacency anywheres [sic].”. (Both Rosenbergs maintained their innocence.) As the song became a feature of her sets, Holiday witnessed a range of reactions, from tears to walkouts and racist hecklers. That’s something that unfolds in the time of listening, so that image of bulging eyes and twisted mouth jumps out at the listener.” Cultural critic Emily J Lordi is describing the particular power of a song that still shocks 80 years after it was first performed. As we have sadly learned in recent Her producer suggested a song she didn’t know well: Nina Simone’s 1965 version of “Strange Fruit.” A concise but graphic evocation of a Southern lynching, “Strange Fruit” was one of America’s earliest and most shocking protest songs, drawing attention to the thousands of acts of racist terrorism against black people in this country’s history. Tags: Vocal Jazz. “It’s this outrageous ask for the listener to connect with a wealthy person’s persona and private trauma, but it’s still connected to this larger struggle,” Rutberg adds. Simone starts her … But Strange Fruit stands out among protest songs for its graphic content and subsequent commercial success. [Nina Simone Sample] Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange Fruit [Hook: John Legend] Dance little brother, dont give up the fight Hang on 'til tomorrow, the truth will come to light It was named the song of the century by Time magazine in 1999, and the story of Strange Fruit’s conception has entered legend. Little Girl Blue. And I think I know who.”, Strange Fruit was not the first popular song to deal with race. The song, which verbalizes the … That’s the polite version of it. What else needs to be said?”, This year, with the return of Black Lives Matter protests to national headlines, a song written just over 80 years ago has taken on startling new relevance. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. If I Should Lose You Nina Simone. But as Strange Fruit has become separated from Holiday’s personal life over the decades, it has also become distanced from the specific horror of lynching. “It’s not just a Southern breeze. Invoking the 1937 Abel Meeropol anti-racist protest song popularized by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, Strange Fruit is unique in composition, thematic focus, and a personal politics of justice for the marginalized. Even now, as I think of it, the short hair on the back of my neck tightens and I want to hit somebody. On his SiriusXM show last month, Bruce Springsteen included “Strange Fruit” on his playlist of protest songs, and in an interview called it “just an epic piece of music that was so far ahead of its time. In the first six months of this year, Billie Holiday’s 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” — the first and most famous version of the song — was streamed more than 2 million times, according to Alpha Data, the data-analytics provider that powers the Rolling Stone Charts. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. “Slavery is not just something in our past,” she says. When she toured the song, some proprietors tried discouraging her from singing it for fear of alienating or angering their patrons. Forbidden Fruit: 1962-Nina Simone At The Village Gate 1-55: Just In Time: 1-56: He Was Too Good To Me: 1-57: House Of The Rising Sun: 1-58: Bye Bye Blackbird: 1-59: Brown Baby: 1-60: Zungo: 1-61: If He Had Changed My Name: 1-62: Children Go Where I Send You: 1962-Nina Simone Sings Ellington 1-63 There wasn’t even a patter of applause when I finished. You can’t do anything else after that.”, Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” generated a range of reactions, positive to negative, appreciative to enraged. Then suddenly everyone was clapping,” said Holiday in her autobiography. A few other covers emerged, like Siouxsie and the Banshees’ string-drenched 1987 cover; in the early Nineties, Tori Amos released a stripped-down version, and Jeff Buckley regularly included the song in his sets at the club Sin-é New York. John Fogerty Debuts New Gospel-Flavored Protest Song to See Trump Off. Nina Simone Nina Simone - Strange Fruit. This bold confrontation helped galvanise a movement that would eventually alter the course of US history. The story of “Strange Fruit” is full of drama and surprises. The fact that “Strange Fruit” is newly relevant is “a sad, sad commentary,” says Michael Meeropol. “It’s still relevant because race is still relevant. ‘Strange Fruit’: The Timely Return of One of America’s Most Powerful Protest Songs Recorded by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, sampled by Kanye West and … This was untrue, according to the Meeropol family, but Abel Meeropol kept his complaints quiet: “He didn’t want to give the racists any ammunition against Billie Holiday,” says Robert, “so he never publicly attacked her for falsely claiming his work.” At the urging of her book publisher, Holiday issued a statement that “Strange Fruit” was indeed “an original composition by Lewis Allan,” who was “the sole author.”. Many decades after it was first recorded by Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” continues to be terrifyingly resonant. NINA SIMONE - Pastel Blues/Let It All Out - NM 1990 Jazz CD - Strange Fruit. For Lordi, its unending power lies in the way it “distills the fact of racial violence so unmistakably. Strange Fruit This song is by Nina Simone and appears… on the album Pastel Blues (1965) on the compilation album Compact Jazz (1991) The song’s emergence in hip-hop has been particularly striking. [*1] B5-B6: Nina Simone unaccompanied piano & vocals. Between its sparse, unconventional arrangement and vivid lyrics, her recording of “Strange Fruit” became a sensation and a hit for Holiday when it was released by Commodore that year. It is presented here for the first time ever on a single set. He never witnessed a lynching but it is suggested he wrote Strange Fruit after seeing Lawrence Beitler’s distressing photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana. “Every once in a while there’s some horrific moment but lynching has become kind of a metaphor and, in that sense, the song has become more metaphorical than literal over the decades.”. © Copyright 2021 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. Playing Holiday is Andra Day, known both for her inspirational R&B career. The Other Woman. He mentioned it to Barney Josephson, the club’s founder, and Meeropol was invited to play it for Holiday. Want more Rolling Stone? “As soon as I heard it, I knew that was the intro,” says Rapsody, who used the sample as the basis for her song “Nina.” “I’ve always been drawn to hearing about that part of our history, and I’ve been drawn to artists who speak to the reality of the times we live in. Tad Hershorn, an archivist at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, tells BBC Culture: “It was such an in-your-face type of protest song [that it] really gained her fame outside of Harlem … it did really leave both the singer and the audience no place to hide.”. “I was scared people would hate it,” she wrote in her memoir, Lady Sings the Blues. “And given their politics, it would be surprising [if they hadn’t].”, Nina Simone in 1964, the year before she recorded “Strange Fruit.”, Holiday kept singing the song through the years, but especially after her death in 1959, “Strange Fruit” took on a lower profile. The Meeropols continue to earn royalties off the song: Thanks to several changes in copyright law, the lyrics and melody to “Strange Fruit” won’t go into public domain until 2033, 98 years after its initial 1939 copyright. Though a few others have gone on to record the song “Strange Fruit,” including Ross, Nina Simone, Tori Amos, Lou Rawls and Jeff Buckley, nothing quite compares to Billie Holiday’s original. "Strange Fruit" is a song recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, written by Abel Meeropol and published in 1937. Originally a poem called Bitter Fruit, it was written by the Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol under the pseudonym Lewis Allen in response to lynching in US southern states. In 2002, Strange Fruit was added to the National Registry of the Library of Congress, immortalising it as a song of great significance to the musical heritage of the US. Strange Fruit. Fats Waller’s Black and Blue had come out 10 years earlier, and Lead Belly recorded The Bourgeois Blues in the same month Holiday recorded Strange Fruit. If it was played more, you’d get more royalties.’”. We’re seeing that everywhere.”. The songs associated with the civil rights movement of the 1960s are less explicit than Strange Fruit – but Margolick argues that it “conditioned the kinds of people who later sang protest music in the 1960s and taught them the impact that a strong song can have”. “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,” went one of its verses. More like this: - The ultimate music festivals - The rock’n’roll rebel of Afghanistan - The making of an iconic song. You don’t need more than 91 words. Simone recorded her version in 1965, and Diana Ross sang it in her starring role as Holiday in the 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. It wasn’t just the song’s political nature that startled and moved listeners but the way Holiday performed it, a manner often described as haunting. National Registry of the Library of Congress. Main genre: Jazz / Blues. But he says they referenced the song in one of their prison correspondences before their death. Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images, Rapsody feels that hip-hop artists are drawn to both the lyrics and the soulful singers, like Holiday and Simone, who sang “Strange Fruit.” Others have suggested that the political fury beneath the song’s chilled melody may be another reason it resonates today. Nina Simone - Strange Fruit Aaron - Strange Fruit Abbey Lincoln - Strange Fruit Cassandra Wilson - Strange Fruit Annie Lennox - Strange Fruit Nnenna Freelon - Strange Fruit: auto scroll beats size up size down change color hide chords simplify chords drawings columns. Chilly Winds Don't Blow. ), “‘Strange Fruit’ is still relevant, because black people are still being lynched,” says Day. Listen to both songs on WhoSampled, the ultimate database of sampled music, cover songs and remixes. “It’s clear to me that they knew about it,” he says. William Dufty, who co-wrote Holiday’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, once said: “Holiday doesn’t sing songs; she transforms them.” Holiday, her accompanist Sonny White and arranger Danny Mendelsohn, worked solidly for three weeks before debuting the revamped Strange Fruit at Café Society. Lyrics to "Strange Fruit" on Lyrics.com. Was sampled in 8 songs see all. For some, Strange Fruit and Holiday’s personal life are inextricable: the aspects of her biography that made her the embodiment of a tragic jazz heroine are the source of the haunting quality of her voice. “If the hip-hop generation is taking it to heart, they recognize it’s not mournful,” says Michael Meeropol. Photos of those horrific sites were turned into postcards (the line “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” in Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” refers to the practice). It has now been covered by more than 60 artists, including, recently, Annie Lennox, India.Arie, and Fantasia. Three years ago, Day covered “Strange Fruit” in a rendition created to bring attention to the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative, which works to end mass incarceration. As his son Robert recalls, “I remember him saying, ‘I wish I could help you boys out more. And then she sang, softly in her raw and emotional voice: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange … I Put A Spell On You [LP] by Nina Simone Vinyl $20.69. Strange Fruit: The most shocking song of all time? “I wrote Strange Fruit because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it,” Meeropol said in 1971. And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. Wilson says she was inspired to include “Strange Fruit” for two reasons: Her mother had once told her about the time she had witnessed a lynching, and Wilson also connected the theme of slavery to music business practices. “The first time I sang it I thought it was a mistake … there wasn’t even a patter of applause when I finished. As recounted in the work of author David Margolick (Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song), Joel Katz’s 2002 documentary Strange Fruit, and a study by scholar Nancy Kovaleff Baker, the song was first written by a white Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx. Eighty years on – in the first of our Songs that Made History series – Aida Amoako explores how a poem about lynching became a timeless call to action. Then, in 1996, Wilson included the song on her album New Moon Daughter, which focused on songs with Southern themes. “We thought that was very powerful,” he recalls. It’s shorthand for ‘What is a song I can think of that most powerfully indicts the ongoing legacy of racial violence in this country and across the world?’”. It should be played at a tempo of 60 BPM. Billie Holiday's version eventually sold more than a million copies. 60 BPM metronome. How many lyrics do you hear like that?”, Seven years ago, Kanye West shone the brightest light on “Strange Fruit” when he incorporated a sample of Simone’s rendition in “Blood on the Leaves,” one of the most gripping moments on Yeezus. Only 17 left in stock (more on the way). Add to Cart. Abel Meeropol, who taught English at DeWitt Clinton High School starting in 1927, was a dedicated Communist and progressive thinker who was also a part-time writer and poet. “It has a bluesy introduction, but it’s not rhythm and blues. This release compiles a collection of rare tracks from the early stages of Nina Simone's career. And the song and its message is still often evoked. “It's come to sort of represent racism generally,” Margolick tells BBC Culture. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. The song has generated about $300,000 in royalties in just over the last 22 years. Known for her own protest songs, like "Mississippi Goddamn," Nina Simone dramatized "Strange Fruit" in the context of the Civil Rights movement. Lordi argues in her book Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature that this was the result of deliberate choices Holiday made. Live at the Lake Meadows Club, Chicago, 1960. In 2017, British singer Rebecca Ferguson announced she would only accept the invitation to sing at then President-elect Trump’s inauguration if she could sing Strange Fruit. That year, Meeropol’s name returned to headlines when he and his wife adopted Robert and Michael — the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the couple executed by the U.S. government that year for supposedly passing American atom-bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. To hear Holiday sing of “the sudden smell of burning flesh” minutes after her jazz ballads was disquieting. "Strange Fruit" by Nina Simone is a cover of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit". Read the full text of “Strange Fruit” Journalist Johann Hari suggests that while stories of Holiday’s drug use had already been circling, her first performance of Strange Fruit put her firmly on the radar of Harry Anslinger, the notorious head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. This jarring song about the horrors of lynching was not only Holiday’s biggest hit, but it would become one of the most influential protest songs of the 20th Century – continuing to speak to us about racial violence today. Anti-lynching campaigners sent Strange Fruit to congressmen to encourage them to propose a viable anti-lynching bill. At the time, lynchings were shockingly commonplace: According to an updated study done last year by historians Charles Seguin and David Rigby, 4,467 people — 3,265 of them black — were lynched in America between 1883 and 1941. Meeropol Said Holiday’s Singing ‘Fulfilled the Bitterness and the Shocking Quality I Had Hoped the … This song also appears on Nina’s Choice (1963), Nina Simone with Strings (1966) and, newly recorded, on High Priestess of Soul (1967). On 20 April 1939, the jazz singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan in 1915) stepped into a studio with an eight-piece band to record Strange Fruit. But there’s also a deep mournful quality to Holiday’s performance.”, Holiday combined rage and sadness in her rendition of the song (Credit: Alamy), What is so remarkable about Strange Fruit is how indelible a mark it made on American society so soon after its release. A portion of Robert Meeropol’s earnings has gone toward the establishment of the Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Awards; in 2017, the first recipient was black poet Patricia Smith, a multiple-time National Poetry Slam winner. Samuel Grafton, a columnist for the New York Post, wrote of the song: “It will, even after the tenth hearing, make you blink and hold onto your chair. By the Seventies, though, Abel Meeropol was worried about the future of the song that made him most proud. The renamed “Strange Fruit” was performed on several occasions, including by singer Laura Duncan at Madison Square Garden, before it made its way to Holiday, who was then performing at New York’s Café Society club. It would be the last song in the set, there would be absolute silence, no bar service and the lights would be dimmed save for a single spotlight on Holiday’s face. by Nina Simone. A friend of Leonard’s explained: “When Zoe started making this work, our friends were dying — daily, weekly, relentlessly. Perhaps this is why in later years, according to Margolick, Meeropol suggested Strange Fruit “belonged to the Thirties”. show chords YouTube Clip hide all … Nina Simone sang a version of the song in 1965 (Credit: Alamy), Many musicians have covered, sampled, adapted Strange Fruit, the most famous being Nina Simone in 1965, while Kanye West sampled Simone’s cover for his 2013 track Blood on the Leaves. It also impacted Meeropol, who had published the song under his pseudonym Lewis Allan, based on the names of his and his wife Anne’s stillborn children. It was there that Robert Gordon, the new floor manager at the jazz club Café Society, supposedly first heard Strange Fruit in 1938. ‘The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.’ That’s pretty damn descriptive. It has inspired musicians since to sing about injustice with candour and the awareness that a song can be a timeless impetus for social change. As Josephson said, “People had to remember Strange Fruit, get their insides burned with it.”, From Holiday’s first performance of Strange Fruit, audiences were stunned (Credit: Alamy), What happened on the first night Holiday performed Strange Fruit at Café Society foreshadowed the response it would get when released as a record. "Strange Fruit" by Nina SimoneRecording session: Live at Morehouse College in Atlanta, June 1969 “I watch the news all day long, and the language started to change from ‘unarmed black man’ to ‘lynching,'” she told RS last month. Celebrate by Cassidy feat. Trouble In Mind. It has been covered by many artists since, including Nina Simone. Ships from and sold by DiscountVinylRecords. Willow Weep for Me Nina Simone. B3-B4: Nina Simone unaccompanied piano & vocals. “Is it a blues song?” asks Meeropol’s son Robert. A review in Time Magazine referred to the song as “a prime piece of musical propaganda for the NAACP”. £17.95 Quantity. Meeropol, a self-taught composer and pianist with no musical training, soon set the poem to a spectral, meditative melody. Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday, Cassandra Wilson, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Kanye West, Nina Simone, Rapsody, Strange Fruit. As one critic wrote at the time, “The song is by far the most effective cry Miss Holiday’s race has uttered against the injustice of a Christian country.”. "Forbidden Fruit", the title song, one of three on the album by Oscar Brown, Jr [1] It's a "humorous up-tempo take on Adam and Eve was part nursery rhyme, part call and response." We want to hear from you! Diana Ross played Holiday in the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues (Credit: Alamy). Nina Simone. By 1953, Meeropol had relocated to Los Angeles to become a full-time songwriter; his other best-known composition was the anti-prejudice song “The House I Live In,” immortalized by Frank Sinatra. It protests the lynching of Black Americans, with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Radio stations in the US and abroad blacklisted it and Holiday’s label, Columbia Records, refused to record it. Holiday didn’t just sing it; she inhabited it, earning her recording a place in history. Over the last two decades, tracks like Cassidy’s “Celebration” and Pete Rock’s “Strange Fruit” have sampled it, along with Rapsody’s “Nina.”. It’s also unlike anything Abel ever wrote musically. ‘Strange Fruit’: Billie Holiday and Nina Simone Transform A Haunting Poem udiscovermusic.com - J’na Jefferson. The poem became most famous as a song performed by Billie Holiday in 1939 and played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement. Holiday died in 1959 and Meeropol in 1986 – but their collaboration has endured, its capacity to shock never waning. “It was the idea that people have everything but they don’t have the freedom they’re longing for.”, The result was a song narrated by an athlete tormented by professional and personal-life issues. Abel would not have minded that in the slightest.”. It still strikes a deep, deep, deep nerve in the conversation of today.”, Veteran R&B singer Bettye LaVette moved up the release of her new cover of “Strange Fruit” after the police killing of George Floyd. “Can you imagine never having heard this song before and realising what the strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees is? “It’s emotionally draining. Nina Simone and Strange Fruit With this in mind, “Strange Fruit” was a perfect song for Nina Simone to cover. Check out Strange Fruit (Live In New York/1965) by Nina Simone on Amazon Music. So it could have been that I was forecasting something.”, New Moon Daughter went on to win a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal performance, and Robert Meeropol feels that Wilson’s version helped reignite interest in the song. Live at unidentified location, probably New York, early 1960's [*2] *1 - Although the sleeve notes state that Nina Simone is unaccompanied, she is accompanied by drums and upright bass on both tracks. “The music business has a lot of the same elements of it. And the last racist is now president of the United States.”, In This Article: Strange Fruit Nina Simone BPM of 60 Key of C Minor. I defy anyone to categorize the music.”, One undeniable fact, as Holiday wrote, was that the song took “all the strength out of me” when she sang it. It was performed at union meetings and even at Madison Square Garden by the jazz singer Laura Duncan. Robert Meeropol, who was almost seven when he was adopted by the Meeropols, says he’s unclear whether his natural-born parents were familiar with “Strange Fruit.” In his memory, the Rosenbergs had no Holiday albums in their collection and didn’t go out to clubs much. In 1940 Meeropol, a socialist, was called to testify before a committee investigating communism and asked whether the US Communist Party had paid him to write Strange Fruit. “‘Strange Fruit’ is about finding a way to articulate the feelings you have when you stare terror in the face, and we did not want to disrespect Nina or the original song.”, The Meeropols admits they were initially puzzled by West’s song: “Robby and I were like, ‘What’s going on here?’” recalls Michael. This item: Strange Fruit by SIMONE Vinyl $9.99. Key of C Minor. Ahmet Ertegun, who later co-founded Atlantic Records, called it “a declaration of war … the beginning of the civil rights movement”. This track was released in 1939. Robert Meeropol, who recalls that his father was asked whether the Communist Party had instructed him to write the song, says his father found the hearings “very amusing.”, Meeropol was surprised when, in her book, Holiday implied she had helped set his poem to music. Lynching had begun to subside by the time the poem was published – but photographs like Beitler’s seared these graphic images into public consciousness. Sign up for our newsletter. Sometime in the Thirties, Meeropol came upon a photo of a lynching, most likely in a magazine. In his 2001 book Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, the writer David Margolick suggests the club, with its policy of complete integration, was “probably the only place in America where Strange Fruit could have been sung and savoured”. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Selection of stories from BBC future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered your! 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Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday Leaves by Kanye West ( 2013 ) Elements... The twisted mouth. ’ that ’ s also unlike anything Abel ever wrote musically most likely in a.... Capacity to shock never waning hear Holiday sing of “ Strange Fruit was., delivered to your inbox every Friday at union meetings and even years! On her album New Moon Daughter, which focused on songs with Southern themes, but it ’ “... Playing Holiday is Andra Day, known both for her inspirational R B... Southern themes generated about $ 300,000 in royalties in just over the last.! Was disquieting chords YouTube Clip hide all … this item: Strange Fruit ” was to. See Trump Off knew about it, ” Margolick tells BBC Culture Penske business Media,,. More than 91 words many decades after it was a mistake and I had been right scared! Its message is still often evoked t immediately sure her audiences would want to the... In history Seventies, though, Abel Meeropol was invited to play it fear! As “ a prime piece of musical propaganda for the performances songs and remixes ever on a single set history... 1959 and Meeropol in 1986 – but their collaboration has endured, its capacity shock...
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