Wavin' Flag

I first heard K'naan's song "Wavin' Flag" from the album Troubadour during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa but did not until recently know the story behind the artist and the song.  K'naan was born in Somalia but moved to Canada in 1991.  He wrote the song "Wavin' Flag" for Somalia and the hopes of the people for freedom. The song is poetry because it shares an experience of a fight for freedom and uses language to emphasize the emotions and attitudes of people in that situation.

The speaker believes what he is saying and is trying to convince other people like him to feel the same way. The pronouns in the lines "But look how they treat us, make us believers/ We fight their battles then they deceive us," creates an "us against them" situation. The speaker is trying to convince the audience to rise up against their recognize their injustices and rise up against their oppressors.  

The song's title and over reaching idea of a fight for freedom is summed up perfectly in the refrain "When I get older, I will be stronger. They'll call me freedom/Just like a wavin' flag." The simile of the speaker's comparison of himself to the flag represents his aspirations for freedom. A flag is a symbol for a country and the speaker wants his countrymen to be free. It allows applies personally to him as well as he wants freedom from the hardships he faces in life.

The allusions made in the song help to broaden the expereience that is shared in the song.  The reference to Buffalo soldiers in the line "Try to control us, but they couldn't hold us/ 'Cause we just move forward like Buffalo Soldiers," shows how they are uniting, in this case on racial terms. This allusion allows for the song's meaning to apply not only to the situation in Somalia but to other situations where people are oppressed because of their race.

In the refrain, "When I get older, I will be stronger. They'll call me freedom/Just like a wavin' flag. And then it goes back, and then it goes back/And then it goes back", the words "And then it goes back" are an example of multidimensional language. "And then it goes back," can be seen as continuing the symbol and imagery of a waving flag. But these lyrics could also mean that the situation in which people are fighting to be as free as the waving flag, is not changing. Not matter how hard they are hoping and fighting for freedom things are not getting any better for them. At the end of the song it repeats "I will be stronger, just like a waving flag," which means despite the situation not improving the speaker still keeps hope for freedom in the future.

K'naan's song's meaning and the experience it shares through the language can apply to various situations and people around the world, and for this I think it is poetry.