Walter Trout asks “Am I my Brother’s Keeper?”

Rampant individualism and obsession with national and personal interests have robbed us of the gift of community, of looking out for each other. Walter Trout in his new album Blues for the Modern Daze asks “Am I my brother’s keeper”?

Walter Trout’s new album, Blues for the Modern Daze, is just terrific, combining as it does contemporary blues-rock with plenty of traditional blues elements. Just in case you’re not familiar with Walter Trout – BBC Radio One named him as number six on their list of the top 20 guitarists of all time and Bob Harris, legendary radio DJ, called Trout “the world’s greatest rock guitarist” in his book The Whispering Years.

Blues for the Modern Daze has got all the virtuoso fast licks you’d expect from Trout, but it’s not just the dazzling technique that seizes you – it’s the intensity and emotion that he never fails to get across in the album. The subject matter is gripping throughout, with songs dealing with addiction, loneliness, powerlessness in the face of big business, the contrast between rich and poor, and the insidious and life-denying effects of television and the advertising industry. Then in the album’s title track, Trout bemoans the loss of neighbourliness – “These times in which we live, it’s dog eat dog in the modern daze…You’ll get yours and I’ll get mine”.

This disappointment with the rampant individualism of the modern era continues in the brilliant “Brother’s Keepers”. The song starts off by asking,

“Are we supposed to be our brother’s keeper,
Are we supposed to hear him when he calls?

Are we supposed to catch him,
Catch him when he calls?”

The song recalls, of course, the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. In a fit of jealousy, Cain rises up against his brother and commits the first murder. When God comes looking for Abel and asks Cain where he is, Cain gets short with the Almighty and says, “Well I don’t know – am I my brother’s keeper?” Here the problems of the first family go from bad to worse. The parents got thrown out of the God’s garden for that business over the apple, but at least Adam, Eve and the boys had each other. Now that relationship, that precious brotherliness, is fractured by Cain’s terrible act of violence.

Cain’s question echoes over the ages – am I my brother’s keeper? Am I supposed to catch him when he falls? Perhaps it’s particularly important to hear that question right now. In an age when technology pushes us more and more into our own individual worlds. Technology enables us to do so much, and to do so much on our own. We can survive without others in a way that previous generations couldn’t or peoples living in less sophisticated environments in the world can’t. On top of that, we’re bombarded by the advertising industry telling us all we need is this or that product to make our lives complete. Result? A fracturing of society, a loss of neighbourliness – with the resultant loneliness and isolation that many people feel – the “modern daze”, as Walter puts it. Individualism and selfishness have become the defining characteristics of our age. Rich nations like the US and those in Europe put their national interest above all else, pursing trade agreements that break developing nations and oppress the poor, and implementing military strategies that have little or no concern for the victims of military action – most often women and childen.

Walter Bruggemann says that our societies suffer from “predatory violence that precludes neighborliness”. He suggests we live in a “global market economy supported by an undisciplined militarism in the service of limitless consumer entitlement”. So stressed and overburdened are we by our technological tools and toys that we end up with “no time left for critical reflection or the nurture of an intentional life of freedom and imagination”. The market greed of our time distracts us and catches us up in its wake leaving us feeling that we no longer have a choice about where are lives are going.

But of course we do. Walter Trout’s song goes on to say:

Jesus said the feed the hungry,
Jesus said to help the poor

We can choose to imagine a different sort of world and can begin to live in ways that actualize that. We can refuse the rat race of anxiety and self-absorption. We can begin to live as true neighbours and, as Bruggemann says, “witness against the predatory values of our society”.

Whatever else we might want to say about Jesus – Walter’s right – he did talk an awful lot about the poor, those in prison, those with no clothes on their backs, the hungry and the sick. Am I my brother’s keeper? Dead right, says Jesus. What was lost by that first family, represented by Cain’s cynical, rhetorical question, was precisely what Jesus came to restore. To give us back our humanity and with it a sense of responsibility for each other. And in the end, that’s what he said we’d be judged on – Jesus’s story about the great heavenly assize in Matthew 25 leaves us in no doubt that God’s favourable judgement is only for those who served the hungry, the sick and the poor.

Brother’s Keeper finishes with a searing criticism of modern “so-called Christians” who “don’t believe in that no more” – i.e. Jesus’s teaching about serving the poor and feeding the hungry. People that are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly use, to coin an old phrase. People who purport to follow Jesus but allow themselves to be swept along by the tide of selfish acquisitiveness of our present age. How’d we ever get to think that the gospel is just about thoughts and beliefs and what goes on inside us instead of following Jesus into the company of the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized?

The good news is, of course, there are lots of Christians living out their faith doing just that – check out Christian Aid, Tearfund, the Salvation Army, and World Vision for examples. In fact much of the alleviation of suffering in the world is actually done by or funded by Christians. We just need a whole lot more of it. We need to listen to the call of “Brother’s Keeper”:

We’re supposed to be our brother’s keeper,
Supposed to hear him when he calls?

I believe we’re supposed to be help him,
I believe we’re supposed to catch him when he calls?

Walter Trout in Cologne, Germany plays “Brother’s Keeper” in a sold out show in a beautiful, medieval Church .

Titanic and the Blues

What have boxer Jack Johnson, blues singers Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson and the Titanic to do with each other? And why did Leadbelly sound so cheerful in singing about the disaster?

State-of-the-art Titanic Centre, Belfast

At the moment here in Belfast we’re celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the Titanic. Titanic fever is everywhere  and we’ve just opened a brand new Titanic Centre filled with the latest technology  so you can experience the ship and the history and it’s attracting visitors from all around the world.

The RMS Titanic was a passenger liner and in 1912 was the largest ship ever built and it was built in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the time the world’s foremost shipbuilding yard. Operated by the White Star line, she sailed on her maiden voyage  from Southampton in England on 10 April 1912. She carried 2,224 people.

Five days into her voyage to New York, the ship that was said to be unsinkable collided with an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, south of Newfoundland, with the loss of 1,514 people. It was one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history. There were only 710 survivors.

Most of the world knows about Titanic today because of James Cameron’s 1997 film, starring Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet. And of course, there’s the Celine Dion chart hit from the film My Heart Will Go On. What most people don’t know is the fact that the Titanic was the subject of a blues song, by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly.

Leadbelly

The song, entitled “Titanic” was recorded in New York in 1948, but Leadbelly said that he started singing it with Blind Lemon Jefferson on Dallas street corners soon after the disaster in 1912. The song is upbeat, almost cheery, which seems strange, given the disasterous loss of human life in Titanic’s sinking. The song is very much about the exclusion of African-Americans from large parts of American society. It tells the fictional story of how Jack Johnson, the African American heavyweight boxing champion at the time, was refused boarding onto the ship by Captain Edward John Smith:

“When Jack Johnson wanted to get on boa’d Captain Smith hollered,
“I ain’ haulin’ no coal.”
Cryin’, “Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well!”

Jack Johnson had won the world champion heavyweight title as the first black boxer in 1908. Jim Jeffries was touted as the “great white hope” to regain the title, but in July 1910, Johnson successfully defended his title and battered Jeffries to his knees. Black people throughout America hailed Johnson as a hero and saw him as taking revenge on their behalf for all the indignities they had suffered and continued to suffer at the hands of white people.

In Leadbelly’s song, Jack Johnson’ life is saved, having been refused passage due to the Captain’s racism, in the event of the great ship sinking.

“When he heard about that mighty shock,
Might o’ seen the man doin’ the Eagle Rock.
Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well.”

The “Eagle Rock” mentioned in this verse was a dance, so Johnson’s response to the disaster was to dance for joy. Leadbelly follows up with:

“Black man oughta shout for joy,
Never lost a girl or either a boy.
Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well.”

Champion boxer, Jack Johnson

So not only is the black hero of the song celebrating about his own near escape from death, but he seems to be exulting more generally at the idea that no African-Americans perished in the disaster and, perhaps, the last line sounds gleeful about the disaster itself. Before we pass judgement, perhaps we should consider another fictional story of the time.

This story was told in the New York Sun and other newspapers, and in Logan Marshall’s The Sinking of the Titanic, one of the first books written about the disaster, and concerns Titanic’s two wireless operators. After the ship struck the iceberg, one of the wireless operators went on deck to see what was happening. When he came back,  “he found a Negro stoker creeping up behind” his colleague “and saw him raise a knife over his head.” Without giving any warning, the wireless man pulled out a gun and “shot the Negro dead.”

Black Americans in the southern States were only a generation away from slavery and their lives were still blighted by poverty, discrimination and harsh treatement by many whites. It would have been no surprise to them to find themselves portrayed as taking advantage of a terrible situation on board the Titanic. Or that summary judgement was carried out by the white stoker – it was a kind of lynching really. This portrayal of blacks as criminals by whites and newspapers was commonplace. Rarely, if ever, did heroism by blacks get reported. Just another element in the ingrained racism in the US at the time.

Which was why there came to be a great deal of interest in whether there, in fact, might have been black people on board the ship. One African American newpaper said, “It is rather remarkable that there could be so great a tragedy without a Negro somewhere concealed or exposed in it.” As it happened, there were no African Americans on board Titanic.

Titanic's opulance

As we know, Titanic’s passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as emigrants from various European countries seeking a new life in America. The ship was a wonder of the world of the time and a last word in comfort and luxury – it had a swimming pool, gym, libraries, opulent cabins and top-notch restaurants. For Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson and the people who enjoyed their song about the Titanic, the ship must have represented everything they perceived to be wrong about the world – a world of white privilege and comfort from which black people were excluded. The sinking of the ship, then, to people so badly scarred by the lives they endured, represented some sort of justice, a come-uppance to the white masters. From a strictly neutral point of view, to rejoice in any sort of human disaster seems terrible, but if we consider things from the standpoint of impoverished, racially-abused African Americans, then perhaps it is understandable.

And, of course, we find the same attitude of rejoicing in the oppressor’s suffering in the Bible. A few verses from the Psalms will suffice to give us other examples of people under oppression, who not only cry out to God for deliverance, but also for their oppressors to suffer:

• The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked. (Psalm 58:10)
• May the days of the wicked be few; may another take his office! May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow! May his children wander about and beg, seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit! (Psalm 109:10)
• Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!  (Psalm 139:19)

Those of us living in freedom and relative prosperity – and indeed, because of globalization, who might be said to be part of cultures that are oppressive to others in the world – are really in no place to judge oppressed peoples who rejoice in the downfall of those they perceive to be part of the injustice which they suffer.

The way of Jesus, of course,  is to “bless those who persecute you”. That is, in reality, pretty easy for well-off, free Europeans and Americans to do. If gets more difficult if you live in Syria, Sudan, China, the Congo or many other parts of the world where people suffer human rights abuses. The onus on us is to try and understand the sense of oppression and outrage that others feel and to do what we can to change the injustice that assails them – whether it be from their own governments, or because of conflict or because of the unjust trading relationships between our own countries and theirs. Just because we don’t personally experience it, or do so in trivial ways – injustice exists. Our world is based on it. If we say we follow Jesus, then it’s up to us to find some ways in which we try to change things. We’re all part of the problem. We need to be part of the solution as well.

Leadbelly talks and sings about Titanic