The Blues

If You're Not Fighting For Liberation, What Are You Doing?

I turn 30 in a few months.

Milestones have never meant much to me. Life has always been fun, and responsibility has always been present. Time feels arbitrary—years pass, but meaning lives in the moments, not the numbers.

Still, I’ve found myself aging in a delightful way.

I’ve earned the title of Unc.

Not because I have siblings or nieces or nephews. Unc is a lifestyle. A way of carrying yourself. I’ve begun to barbecue. I take notes on every cook, watch masterclasses, and practice smokes every Sunday. I’ve got an apron with a pocket for Modelos, tongs in hand, and Before I Let Go playing from the Bluetooth speaker. And friends are always invited. Because what’s a meal without community? That’s just food.

I think I’m corrupting my friends with my lifestyle.

One night, sitting on the patio—cigars lit, ribs on the table—I Can’t Write Left-Handed by Bill Withers came on. It was the John Legend & The Roots arrangement. We sat quietly, listening. During Kirk Douglas’s solo—one of the most expressive I’ve ever heard—my friend Ben turned to me and said:

“You know… they don’t make the blues the same anymore.”

I paused.

And then I laughed. Loud. Because here we were, freshly 30, already sounding like someone’s uncles. Talking about how music used to mean something. Romanticizing a past we didn’t live in.

Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

But Ben’s comment stuck with me. Because I think he was getting at something real. It wasn’t about guitar tone or vocal phrasing. It wasn’t about pentatonics. What we missed—what we were longing for—was music that carried something. Music that held the weight of the world.

The blues was never about perfection or theory.
It was survival.
It was resistance.
It was testimony.

And I was reminded of that again the night I saw my friend Elliott Skinner perform his farewell show in New York.

At the end of his set, he sang a song where the chorus repeated: Take it from me, we’ll all be free. But before the second verse, he paused. He told the audience plainly: This song is for Palestine. He went on to say “If we’re not fighting for collective liberation, then what are we doing?

He didn’t over-explain. He didn’t soften the truth. He just said it.

And in that moment, the song shifted. The room shifted. The choir behind him—The Healing Project by Samora Pinderhughes—lifted their voices, and the words became more than a lyric. They became a mantra.

Over the past nearly two years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, I’ve watched babies be amputated, families separated, entire communities reduced to rubble. Each family, each home, each individual—with a constellation of potential and experience—pleading barefoot to gravel that justice will one day granted to them.

I watch it from the comfort of my phone. Disgusted that such a grave injustice can take place. Disgusted in myself that I cannot do more to stop it.

Take it from me… we’ll all be free.

There we were, singing together. Naming oppression. Holding each other up through song. And that’s when it hit me:

We sang it over and over again—not because we already believed it, but because we had to sing it until we could.

Because some days, I don’t believe it.

When I sit with friends on the patio and talk about how music used to serve something greater—how it used to take you somewhere—I’m not just reminiscing. I’m yearning. I’m longing for music that knows its responsibility. That bears witness. That holds joy and grief in the same verse. That tells the truth.

The best art comes from your honesty and your integrity.

Take it from me… we’ll all be free.

And if music still has the power to set us free—to remind us we’re not alone, to bring us into communion with each other—maybe the blues hasn’t changed after all.