SONGS OF LOVE & FREEDOM
A TRIBUTE TO  

SONGS OF LOVE & FREEDOM​​​

The one song that will never end is the song of a human soul longing to be free. ​

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In the United States, the “Freedom Songs” refer to the songs of the civil rights movement. I learned them from my dad while singing at marches and rallies around the world from the time I was 8 years old.  Mostly derived from the tradition of church and gospel music, the original “freedom land” was on the other side, in heaven – but in the politically and morally charged movements of the 60s, people were calling a new freedom land into being here on this Earth.

 

The freedom songs were often call and response, sung in groups, repetitive like a mantra of prayer and determination.  Singing these simple but powerful melodies together soothed the fear and anger, bringing connection and community. “Without music, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings”, as Congressman and freedom fighter John Lewis famously said. People sang to lift their spirits, ground their courage and join their hearts and minds together as one.

 

We are still singing our songs of freedom, and we need them now more than ever. In this time of disconnection, denial and amnesia, these songs are like a moral and spiritual compass encoded in our collective DNA to remind us where we come from and where we are going. We are still singing for racial justice, environmental justice and social justice. We are still fighting for basic dignity and freedom from a system that has mercilessly destroyed the planet in the name of profit and “progress”. We are still singing our songs of freedom at Standing Rock, in front of corporate headquarters, blocking pipelines, at immigration detention centers. We sing standing on the shoulders of our ancestors as new songs rise up. We are singing in many languages, from different traditions, like one long, woven braid of musical memory.

 

The one song that will never end is the song of a human soul longing to be free. We sing for freedom from this system of extraction and exploitation. Freedom to breathe clear air and drink clean water. Freedom to love and to follow the path of our own spirit. The same forces that brought abject slavery and wholesale genocide to the Americas haven’t gone away.  Now, they are bringing genocide, ecocide and planetary destruction on an unimaginable scale.

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In this time of great change, challenge and transformation, we sing out to the Great Spirit of Love to guide us, hold us and help set us free. The path of love and freedom is the only way forward. We are all in this together now. Which side are you on?