Black Mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of Utopia

Black Mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of Utopia, by John Gray (Penguin, £18.99)
Despite a sensationalist title that makes it seem like a Dennis Wheatley horror, this is a stimulating enquiry into the religious roots of present-day conflict. It is rare to come upon a philosophical work which underpins its theses with examples from the real world, like the errors of the neocon agenda for the "New American Century" to the western origins of Islamic fundamentalism.
It's a total page-turner from start to finish, written in accessible language free from academic jargon, with a expanding assertion on virtually every page that will sharpen up your wits, even if you end up disagreeing with his fundamental thesis.
This is that most belief systems, including Christianity and Islam (but not, interestingly, Judaism), communism, fascism, western-style democracy, Darwinism, and atheism, are all inadequate responses to the complexities of reality because they are all rooted in a one-size-fits-all eschatological view of the world which sees history leading inexorably to a conclusion, which could be the Last Times Armageddon of the American Christian right, or the communist solution to the evils and inefficiencies of crisis-torn capitalism.
Though given to sweeping side-wipes which dismiss, for instance, historical materialism as "cod-science", and a tendency to take on board cod-history (to coin a phrase) like the various contradictory estimates of the millions who allegedly died in the Soviet gulags or during Mao's Great Leap Forward, these minor blemishes do not invalidate his basic argument, which is that utopia is not only unattainable, but leads to worse inhumanities than the inhumanities it seeks to redress.
That this has happened is demonstrably true, from the Catholic Inquisition to the Moscow trials, though I am doubtful that it is inevitable, which it is, only if you share his pessimistic view of the unchangeability of human nature.
His image of the human condition is basically of a Hobbesian war of all against all. He dismisses the idea of a "primitive communism" in pre-history, asserting that there are no known examples of such economic communities in human history. However good a philosopher Gray may be, he is obviously no anthropologist, for his assertion is totally untrue.
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Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell, by
Michael Gray (Bloomsbury, £25)
Blind Willie McTell was a blue singer different from the familiar
cliches of white bluesology.
As Michael Gray says in this exhaustively researched and (to be
honest) sometimes exhausting to read story, "McTell explodes every
archetype about the blues musician. He is no roaring primitive, no
Robert Johnson-esque devil-dealing womaniser. He didn't lose his
sight in a juke-joint brawl, or hopping a freight train. He didn't
escape into music from behind a mule plough in the Delta. He
didn't die violently or young."
But the fact remains, as Bob Dylan put it in a masterly musical
tribute, "I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie
McTell."
William Samuel McTell was born in 1901 and died after a stroke in
1958. He lived and played most of his life in his home state of
Georgia, though he travelled to New York city and Chicago to make
some of his early recordings. His most productive period was
between 1927 and 1936, though he also made some commercial
recordings in 1949 and 1950.
The folklorist, John A. Lomax (father of the now more famous Alan)
recorded McTell's speech and songs for the US Library of Congress
in 1940.
His repertoire was not large, and nor was it as innovative as,
say, Robert Johnson's. His greatest "hit", the magnificent
Statesboro Blues, covered notably by the Allman Brothers, and
rather less grandiloquently by Taj Mahal, borrowed a lot from
Sippie Wallace (whose version was also the source of Canned Heat's
Goin' Up the Country, familiar to millions as the opening music of
the Woodstock movie.)
In his day, he was a rare exponent of the 12-string guitar, and
his lighter, more delicate style is an interesting contrast with
the heavier ostinato of the more influential Huddie Ledbetter
(Leadbelly).
McTell's biography and discography would make a very thin book,
but in telling the bluesman's story, Gray has meticulously
researched and documented his genetic origins (descended from a
white slave-owner who fought on the Confederate side in the
American revolution), and set his life against the social
background of his times.
For instance, he lists in horrifying detail some of the lynchings
that took place in Georgia (491 between 1882 and 1962), many of
them close to McTell's home or that of his extended family.
He examines the sexual fear that generated such hatred among white
males who thought it OK to take their pleasure from black girls,
but saw no contradiction in their opposition to black-on-white
"miscegnation".
Along with this obsession with the African American "threat" (some
lynchings were justified by literally demonising their victims as
"devils") came a view of them as non-persons.
"When he sat out on the front porch of the Jaeckel Hotel in
Statesboro, resting between numbers played for the tobacco
salesmen," comments Gray, "they might talk unguardedly as they
never would among others. They forgot he was there - he didn't
count. He wasn't any kind of threat."
Gray also tells the story of his own researches, poring over dusty
and often illiterately written records of births, marriages and
deaths, navigating his way through the various spellings of the
names of McTell's ancestors (McTear, McTier, McTyeir, McTyre) at a
time when blacks weren't considered sufficiently important to be
recorded properly.
While establishing Gray's credentials (already, surely,
unbeatable, on the basis of his books on Bob Dylan) as an
assiduous researcher, and no doubt of great interest to
genealogists, at times, when several pages are devoted to tracking
down a single fact, I was sometimes tempted to throw down the
432-page tome in irritation, crying: "Tell us about the music,
Michael, for God's sake!" Surely the genealogical aspect could
have been covered by printing a family tree, from his white
forebear, Reddick McTyeir, up to the present day.
Of course Gray does not neglect what made McTell's style so
unique, but these references are scattered through the book.
Though well indexed, the fact that chapter titles are just numbers
doesn't make finding these brief analyses any easier.
There is an 11-page discography (including a sad and frustrating
listing of the "lost recordings").
All things considered, this is a wonderful book, fascinating in
its detail, wide-ranging in its vision, not only of an artist
better known by name than for his actual music, but also of an era
and geography that helps us to understand his strange, tortured
superpower homeland.
A shorter version of this review appeared in the Morning Star.
Buy the following products relating to this review:
CDs

• The Classic Years 1927-1940
• King of the Georgia Blues
• Atlanta Strut: Twenty Legendary Recordings
• Guitar of Blind Willie Mctell [2006]

DVD

• Guitar of Blind Willie Mctell [2006]

This Book (reviewed above)

• Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes - In Search of Blind Willie McTell