Music, Philosophy & why A.C. Grayling could play bass in Frank Turner's band...

Hi all, I'm up in Byron Bay for Bluesfest. It's made me a little tardy in writing and truthfully I wondered if I'd find the time to research and get anything done...

But it's after one in the morning, I've just come back from some amazing bands and started thinking. It's funny how the music can do that to you. Even if you're dancing or drinking with a friend some songs will always draw you in to their reality and have you musing even as you sing along.

A band called Frank Turner & the Sleeping Souls started all this, but first let's rewind a day for some context...

Driving up the coast yesterday we were gifted with extraordinarily heavy traffic and plenty of time for some radio. We tuned in to Radio National (basically the BBC with Aussie accents) and came across an interview with English philosopher A.C. Grayling. He discussed atheism, agnosticism, humanism, rationality and generally how we might all be a little better if we focussed on the common thread of our humanity. Important, heavy stuff.

Then tonight I saw Frank Turner rocking out at Bluesfest. In my head I compare Turner's music with Billy Bragg so I knew he had substance but then he threw into a song called 'Glory Hallelujah'. As he sang "there is no god, so clap your hands together" I thought of A.C. Grayling. Turner continued by singing about our shared responsibility to each other, about an end to religious violence, about shared understanding and peace all while people clapped and sang!

Later on I was listening as Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite did a song about war and the violence of masculinity. Earlier Rodriguez sang bittersweetly about drug use and it's effects. These guys are singing about our world; politics, religion, social and foreign policy. They're singing our philosophy and helping us make sense of it.

There's really no good reason why the stereotype of a philosopher is an old, white guy with a snowy beard. Philosophy is all of us, in our everyday lives and philosophers should look like everyone. For these ideas to be relevant they must be accessible to all people. Music does this, and for the most part it does it without preaching. This isn't anything new but I wanted to point it out because I don't hear guys like Frank Turner on the radio too much.

Between them, Grayling and Turner have Humanist philosophy well covered. But only Turner has a crowd of people clapping and singing along to it and that's what keeps it relevant...