1972
THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE * KING HANNIBAL * AWARE 027 * USA
This is a dynamic recording by King Hannibal, a. k. a. James T. Shaw (biography) with a musical force hits home from the very beginning. The song, written by Shaw, is autobiographical; about his faith, Christianity (the Truth in his song), and his recovery from a heroin addiction, which he compares to slavery (hence freedom from it). Leaving aside King Hannibal's singing, the music and arrangements, the song certainly derives some of its power from the two ideals expressed in the title 'Truth' and 'Free(dom)'. The Truth Shall Set You Free is a piece of Christian propaganda from the Bible attributed to St John 8:32 "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free". Today both the concepts of 'truth' and 'freedom' are not a little problematic, but set in this Christian sound bite they lock the two powerful ideals into a simple message that binds the faithful to the moral ideology with a promise of liberation. This is precisely the message of the current neo liberal propaganda, only instead of truth we have choice. When the word truth was used in the context of the Bible it meant simply the teachings of Christianity, and freedom meant liberation from slavery; now choice = democracy, which is the possession of the corporate and financial institutions and it is within and by the free market that we shall attain our liberation. In the Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Anthony (Lord) Quinton, former president of Trinity College, University of Oxford, asserts that 'truth' is: "The property implicitly ascribed to a proposition by belief or assertion of it"; this would sit well with King Hannibal's, and St. John's use of the word, but as Lord Quinton points out, there are many theories of the nature of 'truth' the most common being ""A correspondence between a proposition and the fact, situation or state of affairs that verifies it." Now this more common understanding does not sit so well with the assertion made in the song, or in Christianity. It is another definition of truth from Lord Quinton that fits well with our shift, that is that, truth has been taken to be a quality rather than a relation. Historically, through goods and services, Capitalism has offered freedom from poverty and subjection, now it offers liberation from ideology and the state.