As this site has posted previously, the Protestant Work Ethic generally manifests low tolerance for any and all populations that are not constantly and incessantly engaged in streamlining efficiencies and maximizing production; and by definition, no population is less productive than the dead themselves. Hence all of our ghost stories tend to be horror stories, in order to justify why the living dead must perforce be exorcised, ghost-busted, or otherwise exterminated.

It has taken non-Protestant sources to push back against this eradication of the dead. It is significant that Halloween and Day of the Dead come to us from Ireland and Mexico respectively–that is, from predominantly Catholic sources, with no prior commitment to the Protestant Ethic. For these populations, ghosts are not inherently evil nor frightening, but are a natural part of life. Indeed, given how many the Irish and Latin Americans have been actively exterminated by Anglo-Protestants throughout modern history, one can see why both populations might form an alliance of convenience with the dead they have so often (and so violently) been consigned to join.

African-Americans, too, have been a population either viciously exploited or actively exterminated by Anglo-Protestant work interests (whether through slavery, lynchings, or worse), and so it might be worth examining how certain of their artists have also interacted with the dead. Consider for example “Ghosts” by Free Jazz pioneer Albert Ayler–especially the two versions that appear on his landmark, John Coltrane-influencing 1964 album Spiritual Unity.

Note how his trio keeps the arrangement minimal, ethereal, unbound, floating and flitting about like a Spirit. Yet also note that his soloing is in a major key–upbeat, ecstatic, happy, elated. Here be no dark or brooding ghosts, no wailings of damned, no weeping nor gnashing of teeth, no. On the contrary, the spirits in this song–like his saxophone soloing–do not linger in darkness, but fly about free, open and wild, exploring all available possibilities of existence. The ghosts in this album are no more to be feared than life itself is.

That is, the Afterlife for Albert Ayler is neither a realm of damnation nor even of static choirs singing in unchanging hymns of praise for “ten thousand years” at a time (like in the third verse of “Amazing Grace”), but rather, a place of eternal progression. Indeed, Ayler’s approach towards the spirits of the next life is more in line with the redemptive work performed in our Temples, wherein (despite the Anglo-Protestant heritage that still infects so many of our Intermountain Saints) we also approach the dead not as sinister spirits to be exorcised, but old friends and family to be joined with, in excited anticipation of the eternal progressions that await us.