Wednesday, 17 March 2010

• Johnny Cash: Hope Was His Last Act of Defiance

  By Justin at Faith and Geekery
  

  Johnny Cash has a new CD in stores. (Yes, he died over six years ago. No, that has not stopped other musicians in the past.) The Onion’s AV Club has a review, and if you want to sample the album before picking it up, you can hear the whole thing thanks to lala.com.

  I took a listen, and here’s my take.

  In this set of songs we hear a man in his 70s, and with pain of losing his wife very fresh in his life, he sounds quite frail. There’s a lot of talk about death on this album; it’s a topic that had obviously been creeping into his thoughts for the years leading up to his own passing. Somehow, though, this is a peaceful, hopeful album that looks to the past and its memories, but also to the unknown future without fear.

  The Onion’s Keith Phipps writes:

  American VI: Ain’t No Grave arrives billed as the last fruit of that pairing [of Cash and producer Rick Rubin]. It’s drawn largely from the same sessions that produced American V: A Hundred Highways and recorded at least partly after the death of Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash, as his sight dimmed and his own body failed him for the last time. It’s no surprise that Ain’t No Grave is focused on death and loss. But as usual, Cash uses his Christian faith as the ultimate rebuttal to life’s disappointments. “Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down,” Cash sings, as the musical setting of the traditional title track sounds ominous tones. Hope was his last act of defiance.

  I can’t pretend to know what he was going through as this album was being made. I also can’t look on those who sing about heaven and the afterlife with too much judgment: I’m in my early 30s and have two parents alive and well. I have three grandparents living. I still see huge families at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and I’ve lost no one near to me in over 8 years. Most of life still feels new to me.

  Meanwhile, my workplace went through a period a while back where co-workers were losing parents on an uncomfortably consistent basis. We have young widows and new widowers. My neighbor is 90 and mentioned to me that she thinks about the time when she won’t wake up. I feel guilty about my weariness when musicians my age or younger write about “being homesick” or write about heaven as if the next 40-60 years of their life will be mere formality.

  Yet this album, and much of the final years of Johnny Cash’s output, is not one where you need to know what he is going through: his voice will tell you. He’s in poor health and is putting things in their place while he can. This is not an album of escapism; this is an album that demonstrates hope. Hope is not abstract wishing. It’s based on belief, and it’s clear where his beliefs originated as he sang “Ain’t No Grave.” For a man who made music about rebellion and sang for outlaws, singing like someone who knew death has been defeated seems in line with his persona.

  Christians are in a season of remembering Christ’s suffering and death. I nominate this album as a soundtrack. Yes, we return to the earth, but we will not stay there.

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