Americans expect the right to be able to live life in the way they choose — but even in “the land of the free,” that is not always the case.

There are people, the majority being female, who are born or sold into captivity, sometimes by their own families. These human beings are not given the option of going to school or living normal lives —they are instead are used as servants or sex slaves.

“We have more slaves now than in human history,” said PW Gopal, a Sri Lankan musician and philanthropist, said. “There have been estimates as high as 27 million slaves in the world right now.”

The 38-year-old singer/songwriter will come to Iowa City to perform and spread the word about human trafficking at Mars Hill Church’s Creekside Sanctuary, 921 Third Ave., at 7 p.m. today. Admission to event is $8.

“PW is a storyteller as well as a songwriter, and his stories really help define his lyrics,” Luke Patterson, a UI graduate and the founder of the community organization {reclaiming roots}, wrote in an e-mail. “Musically, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a ‘voice’ that is as powerful as PW’s. You’ll feel the emotion of the story, not only in the lyrics, but in his vocals as well.”

Gopal became interested in learning more about human trafficking while working at an orphanage in Sri Lanka after 2005’s devastating tsunami. He often visited with the children and made friends with a young girl named Sohenya.

On a return visit to the orphanage, Gopal discovered that 15-year-old Sohenya’s mother had sold her to a man in India. Gopal tried to track down Sohenya, but government officials said it would be next to impossible to find her in a state containing 60 million people.

“That experience kind of got me thinking about [human trafficking]. I would meet people who were involved in freeing people from slavery, or were slaves themselves,” Gopal said.

Two summers ago, author David Batstone asked him to help promote Not For Sale, a nonprofit campaign that works to “re-abolish slavery” and reports information on the global slave trade.

Batstone’s book Not For Sale combines stories of activists fighting to end global slave trade and information serving as a call to action to readers. The author also runs the website notforsalecampaign.org .

Gopal’s visit to Iowa City isn’t an official Not For Sale event, but rather a chance for the artist to spread his message to some close friends and citizens of the area. Even though he has strong Christian beliefs, he is not aiming his message at the religious crowd.

“[Christianity] is definitely a huge part of who I am and why I do what I do,” Gopal said. “For some people, it means I only do what I do because I want to reach church folks, but that’s the least of my worries. My favorite place to play is in bars and to people. To me that’s where the real stories are.”

While no official government statistics exist for human trafficking, the U.S. government puts out a “Trafficking In Persons Report” each year. The document tries to pinpoint areas around the globe where trafficking is most widespread or unmonitored.

However, it is known that human trafficking is a major problem both in the United States as well as overseas. Gopal hopes that he will motivate people to learn more about the global slave trade.

“I will talk a lot about my experience and some of the issues I have encountered in the last two years,” he said. “I want to get the people in Iowa to get ticked a little bit and raise some unique and important questions.”