emotion and meaning in music~ a story about the leogane track club

When I think of the musical-emotional connections I’ve experienced throughout my life and sift through them to the most powerful, there is one piece of music that is so strong an index that it stands out to me unequivocally. This song is by K’naan, and every time I listen to it, my current emotional state is immediately transformed. I’ve told this story many times, but I’ll tell it again.

It was in Léogâne, Haiti. There was red dirt in the air and salt on my skin as I ran together with the Léogâne track club through sugar cane fields and over rural roads still covered with earthquake rubble. I was surrounded by a group of young boys ages 10 to 12 (who lived in the tent city near my residence), and we were running through the Caribbean sunset to the sea. We were singing. 

It was the summer of 2010, and Spain had just won the World Cup in South Africa. In Haiti, another country full of soccer enthusiasts, it was a time of great excitement; friends and neighbors would watch the games crowded around a small TV under someone’s tarp, everyone pitching in a few gourdes for the generator. K’naan, the Somali rapper, recorded an unofficial anthem for the competition, and it was this song that we sang together that evening on our run, at the top of our lungs, shouting to the rosy sky.

“When I get older, I will be stronger. They’ll call me freedom, just like a wavin’ flag.”
It was the words specifically, carried by the exuberant voices of the boys around me, where I first found meaning. I saw their singing as a promise to “be stronger” for their country, to find freedom for a broken Haiti. I felt a part of it. 

Now I realize it was more than that. It was the communitas of this joyful experience—the stripping away of all cross-cultural differences to the basic similarities of being human, running and pushing our bodies, rejoicing in being alive, and loving that beautiful country—that really affected me. It filled me with such optimism to know that these boys were the future of Haiti. They were brimming with hope and contagious happiness, and I was swept up by their energy. The oneness of that moment I will never forget.  

Whenever I hear this song now, it brings to mind that run, that moment, those tangible emotions around us in the humid Haitian air. I now recognize ‘Wavin’ Flag’ as a sign, and the emotions of that moment as the object it indexes. Whatever mood I’m in before I listen to it is immediately replaced by the exuberant and utterly joyful state that we shared together during that evening. To me, this song’s interpretant is a sense of joy and above all, hope. This song has the power to utterly transform my mental state from sadness or defeat or frustration to one of optimism. It sometimes leads to a semiotic chain of motivation and inspiration and sparks new chains of thought about Haiti that have begun to shape the direction in which my life is going. 

(I just found this video tonight, after I finished writing. This version is a tribute to 3rd world children-- I didn't even know it existed.)