Blood on the trees .Blood on the roots.This song is so poetic and haunting..You can imagine at that time the shock the smell the actual pain of living in this era.and surviving...
Billie Holiday. Nina Simone. Aretha Franklin. These three American ladies awed and haunted me with their songs, their voices, the way they sing. Love them all.
Growing up I didn’t understand the meaning of this song. Now that I’m an adult the meaning holds such a deeper meaning the sad truth of what our ancestors had to go through I give my deepest respect to them. Happy African American History Day !
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In my school I am studying International relations and in one subject called USA and Canada: History and Polítics, we had a lecture about the KKK and the Jim Crow Laws and I told the teacher about this song while watching an image of a lynching in the Deep South and I read the lyrics of this song in front of the class (which nobody but me knew about the song) and they were quite shocked specially the teacher
You can learn very well from music
I am a light skin Mexican and I love African American music, it’s very beautiful!!!
For those who need to read along:
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
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
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop