PREMIERE: Light Bird Questions the "Land of the Free"
PREMIERE: Light Bird questions the "Land of the Free" in this powerful blues rocker tying her family's history in Japanese-American concentration camps with modern-day government repression of trans people
Brooklyn's Light Bird brings one of our most shameful chapters to light in "Land of the Free," recounting her relatives' experience in Japanese-American concentration camps in World War II.
“I began writing ‘Land of the Free’ while reflecting on my family’s experiences—and the experiences of other issei [first-generation] and nisei [second-generation] Japanese Americans—of their forced relocation and imprisonment in the Japanese American concentration camps during World War II."
Light Bird's story is all-too-common: when FDR signed Executive Order 9066, her grandparents' life and livelihood were turned upside-down when they were "evacuated" to Topaz, Utah after living in a converted horse stall at the Tanforan racetrack.
"My great uncle (for whom my middle name, Sachio, is after) was also imprisoned after he was taken out of military service, where he had been training as a medic. Later, in addition to being required to sign a loyalty pledge to the United States (despite being a natural-born citizen), he was drafted into the 442nd Infantry Regiment. He would later die fighting for the US in Italy."
The song "Land of the Free" is a heavy blues rocker that transmits the deep grief her loved ones have carried for three generations – and how that trauma has informed her coming out experience.
"My relationship and connection to this generational trauma has rapidly changed since coming out as transgender. The existential attacks continuously directed at the trans community (and of course, so many other marginalized peoples in the US) have made the immediacy of my family’s experience with governmental oppression so much more visceral."
The song reaches its climax as Light Bird belts "‘Cause the greatest transgression/Is to live without repression/So don’t look up towards the heavens/Look around you and learn the lesson"
"Land of the Free" is a powerful song, with Light Bird's moving performance driving it all home.
"I hope this song can serve as a reminder of the pervasive racism, hatred, and bigotry that have always accompanied our country’s colonialist history, and how the threat of oppression is ever-present for those who are not part of the most mainstream privileged demographics of our society.”
