Free The People With Music
Get Free by Major Lazer — A wild call for liberation.
I woke up this morning in the back of my car. I looked out the window and saw silver all around. Palm tree leaves swayed in the breeze, birds sang their morning songs. It was a calm, overcast day in Southern California. As my mind came to, a song started playing.
I spent yesterday wondering what has been the most profound song in my life over the last few years. After a good night’s sleep in Gypsy the Sportwagen, Get Free by Major Lazer came to mind immediately. I have a hunch more will be revealed, in time, as to why this song is so important to me. This is just what I’ve come up with so far.
At 29 seconds, an image appears in Major Lazer’s music video for Get Free. As a man walks away, words painted on the wall behind him become clear:
We’ll Free The People With Music
At this point, Amber Coffman has already sounded her first Tarzan-like call to the wild. Immediately afterward, the first lyrics are sung:
“Never got love from a government man,
Headin’ downstream til the levee give in
What can I do to get the money
We ain’t got the money, we ain’t gettin’ out”
As with any art, there is room for interpretation. But to hear the rest of the lyrics is to wonder if this is a song about oppression. Or rather, liberation.
“Look at me
I just can’t believe
What they’ve done to me
We could never get free”
The words bring up images of poverty, marginalization, and being forgotten. And yet, the sound evokes a feeling of calm, hope, even joy. And in the end, there is solidarity.
“We’re all together in the same boat
I know you, you know me, baby”
Even the choice of imagery for the video, which is set in Kingston, Jamaica, brings a stark contrast to the seeming hopelessness of the lyrics. People are dancing, being silly, riding motorcycles, getting their hair done at the salon, playing games and sports, doing backflips at a waterfall — living regular life.
Based purely on sound, the song is euphoric. At least, it was for me when I first heard it. And it has been every single time I’ve listened since. Learning more about the meaning behind the words has only increased my appreciation of Get Free. What is life but pain and beauty?
In April 2016, I finally ran out of money. I had applied for several peacebuilding and development jobs in and out of the United States, including South Sudan, where I had just returned home from, the previous Fall. Jobs I should have been able to get, according to my experience. Alas, the universe had other plans for me.
Some old friends offered me a job, serving tables at a French cafe by the beach. After an eight month break, I returned to southern Orange County and started working again.
As the days passed, I kept looking at the menu and seeing the price for a small fruit plate. One day, a homeless man walked in and asked what the cheapest thing on the menu was. I scanned the menu and there it was again, staring me in the face. $6.95 for a tiny plate of berries. My face dropped as I apologized for the tragedy before us.
I offered to give it to him on the house. I would have rather paid for his fruit than make him spend all of those dollars on a few pieces of overpriced fucking berries. He refused. He asked if I could take his money and leave his dignity in tact. That was the moment I knew. This — this “re-entry” as it was called — was going to be more difficult than I could have ever imagined.
In the end, I got fired. A first for me. My face couldn’t hide my discomfort. It was a strange thing serving crépes for rich people while famine was unfolding in South Sudan. In hindsight, being fired was better than me burning the place down. And I’m glad I can look back on the experience and love myself for being angry. I couldn’t be any other way.
But there was one magic moment.
I stood in the café staring out at the ocean when a sound came through the speakers. The wild female calls, the soothing instrumentals, and the liberating beat started a work of catharsis in me. I was coming back to life.
I looked up the song and bought it immediately. I listened over and over and over again. I listened to it as I ran. I listened to it as I walked. I listened to it as I cooked. I listened to it as I lay on my bed contemplating why the world is the way it is. I listened to it and danced.
Every time I heard Get Free, my spirit was altered. It chipped away at the massive, burning chunk of trauma sitting in my brain, stuck. Every time I listened, all the painful scary parts of life went away, and I could feel hope rising.
Everything around me was still shit. Even though it all looked so pretty, it was misery. Everyone was trying to get more stuff and bigger everything, as they sunk deeper and deeper into the abyss of debt. “Normal” people spoke of homeless people in duhumanizing ways.
This wasn’t where I wanted to be. I had left this place, eight years earlier, for a reason. I couldn’t fully articulate it at the time, but something seemed to be eating away at me. This time around, I was beginning to understand. I could never be the type of person who fit into this structure.
I was relatively poor myself, but I had also witnessed real poverty. Once you experience what life is like for the poorest people in the world, it becomes difficult to fathom spending $1,500 per month on a tiny one bedroom apartment.
I hated money. Being exposed to greed and corruption in the belly of the beast had left a permanent mark on me. And now that I was back in the land of the free, I couldn’t move beyond marveling at how easy it was to come by a clean glass of water.
I was so deep down in the pits of depression, trying to figure out why my heart suddenly developed a malfunction, and whether or not I did, in fact, have PTSD.
And yet, every time I heard Get Free, my spirit shifted again. One more layer of darkness would lift, and light would fill that space instead. The magic sounds of the song would fill my mind and the massive trauma chunk would shift and break, and another piece would dissipate.
There are different forms of oppression. Just like there are different forms of poverty. Being a slave to a certain lifestyle, the “rat race” as we call it, is not freedom.
Being angry and judgmental at people who choose to engage, is not freedom either, though. I had to learn how to live with both of these truths without going completely insane.
Real freedom is within, no matter what our outer circumstances are.
To prove that to myself, and for other reasons that will surely continue to unfold over time, I have taken up voluntary homelessness for the past three months. Well, my Sportwagen — Gypsy — is my home, as are the driveways of loving friends. Which is why I woke up in my car this morning.
This experience, just like the song, is freeing me. They are freeing me in ways I have yet to understand.
All I know is, no matter what is happening in my life; no matter how my outer circumstances may appear; no matter what pain I may be dealing with or working through — this song, and this lifestyle, take me to a place of light.
