Nick Cave, Dolly Parton, and Sojourner Truth Walk into a Bar…

tended by Immanuel Kant.They ask him: "So, tell us, Kant, according to your philosophy, what the hell are we and life all about?"To understand Kant's answer, as I believe it could have been, we must first know a little more about each of Kant's patrons and his philosophy.Nick Cave recently explained that it was not until he experienced the worst of losses-the death of his two children-that he understood love of humanity, kindness, and deep joy in the fact of life. 1 He also said that music has an amazing capacity to bring us-humanity-together, and that because of this immense power, we need to learn to use it well.Cave is not the first musician to realize their best self both in the face of the world's cruelties and in the power of music for experiencing and creating good, deep love of humanity, and profound joy in the world.Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee's Dolly Parton's America recounts two stories in particular that speak not only to Parton's musical genius but also to how she became herself. 2 In the first, Parton recalls a woman in her town whom adult men whistled at when she walked down the street; they both desired and denigrated her for her perceived promiscuity.Parton remembers her child self simply finding this woman utterly gorgeous and deciding that she wanted to be just like this woman when she grew up.Parton was raised in a strict evangelical Christian community she did not experience as deeply committed to anything recognizable as good.Instead, in the name of goodness and God, the community was prejudicial, life-denying, and hypocritical.Parton, according to the second story, found refuge singing in an old, abandoned church with a partially functioning piano and walls scrawled with sexual graffiti, some of which she authored.One day, after singing in the dilapidated church for hours, Parton felt the presence of deep goodness, of bottomless, all-encompassing love, which for her is spirituality.And as she walked out of the church that day, she had found herself, Dolly Parton: a life-affirming (including sexuality-affirming) musician whose creative work is aimed at a better world; whose embodied, social appearance is deeply inspired by the woman who was loved and hated in her town; and who experiences herself as grounded in a good, loving spirituality.When Parton feels she is losing her way a little, she returns, emotionally, to that spiritual room where she first found herself to let herself be filled with deep love of life.For me, Cave and Parton call to mind Sojourner Truth, who found herself-including her name-in 1843 when she experienced God as having called on her to go into the world to give hope.Truth became famous for, among other things, being able to move people toward goodness through song.For many, she was able to create spiritual spaces in the way that not only Black churches but also many Black women musicians and singers after her, such as Mahaila Jackson and Aretha Franklin, are so well known for. 3 It is near impossible, in my view, to imagine the best of America and the world without bringing to heart and mind these incredible musicians-and others like them.Through their music and songs, they move people across political, religious, and cultural boundaries anywhere on the planet.For example, as we also learn in Dolly Parton's America, toward the end of Nelson Mandela's imprisonment at Robben Island, the prisoners were permitted to occasionally play music over the speakers.A favorite of Mandela's was Parton's "Jolene."And on the other side of the world, one of my best musical childhood memories, also set on an island-Ostery, in Norway-is of listening to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers sing "Islands in the Stream" on our TV in 1 https://youtu.be/G8qmV6MYCF4?si=niJzYZdHr3vsa3qs 2 https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america3 Sojourner Truth also had an incredible academic mind; in my philosophy circles she is famous for giving one of the most powerful political speeches of all time, namely "Aren't I a Woman."For more on this speech, see: https://www.thesojournertruthproject.