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S03 Episode 06: Music and Prisons, Part 1
118 Plays3 years ago
S03 Episode 06: Music and Prisons, Part 1 by Indre Viskontas
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Transcript
First Experience in Prison
00:00:02
Speaker
The very first time I went inside the walls, I was a little terrified.
00:00:07
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I remember walking past this sort of outdoor lunch area where visitation happens and you're already inside the walls. And I swore that I had seen that place on Law and Order in an episode. You know, so sort of all these cliches are happening in your head that you're living them out. But the moment that we walked into the room, just all of my fears melted away. And I just felt very comfortable because of the way that I was treated by the men there.
Music's Influence in Prisons
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome back to Cadence, the podcast where we explore what music can tell us about the mind.
00:00:51
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In this third season, we're discovering how music influences us, how it nudges our behavior in one direction or another, and how it might be used strategically for different reasons. Over the next two episodes, we're going to find out how music is used in prisons, what it means to the individuals who are incarcerated and to the guards who watch them, and to those of us on the outside. We'll start in one of the most miserable places on earth, the largest prison in one of the poorest countries in Africa.
00:01:21
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Can music be found even in the darkest corners of the earth? We weren't going there because we'd heard that there was good music there. We went there with the belief and faith that there would be because I really, really firmly believe that there's music in everyone.
00:01:36
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And oftentimes it's untapped and it's such a beautiful thing to hear people express themselves in intimate ways that have not been given that opportunity before. And it doesn't always result in an end product. That's not the goal. The process is really what matters. But sometimes the end product far exceeds virtuosos and professionals and
00:01:59
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All those things have their merits, but we found that at the prison beyond our wildest expectations.
Producing Music in Zomba Prison
00:02:07
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That's Ian Brennan. He's a Grammy-winning music producer with three other Grammy-nominated records. He's also the author of six books. He has produced 28 international records in the past decade from four continents, including the countries of Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Cambodia, Romania, Pakistan, Ghana. Here he's talking about his experiences producing an album with inmates in the Zomba prison in Malawi.
00:02:31
Speaker
The prison itself is extremely grim. It's an older prison from the 19th century and it's quite run down and it's heavily overpopulated and food is scarce. So they go sometimes days without food, up to three days without food. And they sleep usually 60 men to a room and the room is probably about, it's hard for me to estimate, but I'd say like 20 by
00:02:57
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30, so that means that they have to sleep on top of each other. They sleep like sardines on top of each other.
00:03:17
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There's individuals again that are there for years and there's individuals that are there for life and there are some young men that are there for relatively minor crimes that I would think it's going to affect them in very dramatic ways. I would think it would be traumatic and yet many of them seem to remain quite strong spiritually and I think music is something that helps many of them with that.
Discovering Talent Among Inmates
00:03:43
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Ian didn't intend to record Malawi's first Grammy-nominated album in the prison. It just so happened that the music he found there was exceptional.
00:03:52
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I mean, we didn't go there planning to make a record. We go there always planning to not make a record, meaning, you know, that we have a lot of projects we don't release because we feel that it would be counterproductive. It wouldn't really be doing anyone a service to do it out of charity, so to speak. So the songs have to speak for themselves. And in the case of Zamba, they did. And almost all the songs came from people that were not part of the official male band. There's only one band there, and it's all males.
00:04:21
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Many of the songs came from the people that were secondary members of the band or not songwriters or not lead singers. And then over 50% of the first album came from the women who were not participating in music at all. None of them had sung publicly in a solo way ever and were very reluctant to do so. But once they agreed to and once they began to, it was just an incredible sharing and experience to see the creativity that they had.
00:04:50
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Moo-ling-ga-dee-ahm-be-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee
00:05:22
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So how do you extract music under these difficult conditions? We're simply providing a platform and literally a microphone for people to share their experiences and our attention and our faith and belief in what they have to say being important and also being nonjudgmental, wanting really to hear as much as they can.
00:05:46
Speaker
you know, in the prison environment is a pretty extreme example of, you know, probably their concerns about being censored or their concerns about what they could and could not share. But ultimately, I found that people tend to be very, very honest and revealing. I mean, reveal staggering things sometimes.
00:06:05
Speaker
In agumakala masaloonigumangana masisi mamoona hari kone In agumakala missi gagugulisa añezi mamoona hari kone In agumakala missi gagugulisa añezi mamoona hari kone In agumakala missi gagugulisa añezi mamoona hari kone In agumakala missi gagugulisa añezi mamoona hari kone In agumakala missi gagugulisa añezi mamoona hari kone
00:06:30
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A large portion of the album from the Zamba Prison Project features female performers and vocalists. But talking to Ian, it's clear that this was no easy task, as there were a lot of restrictions in the prison, and the women were largely shut out. So it seemed that the recording with the women was not going to happen, and there was this resistance also from the guards and from the prison officials to even attempting it.
00:06:53
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But ultimately, you know, the last day we were we were ready to give up. But, you know, I really believed, hey, we need to at least set up and show them that we're serious about this and give them that opportunity. But even with setting up microphones and trying to encourage people, people still would not would not do it. And then finally, Rhoda came forward.
00:07:16
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in the
00:07:30
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As soon as she did, you know, when I looked up, there was a line behind her. And the line basically didn't stop for two hours almost. And it was just person after person. And many of them were getting back in line a second time because then they'd come up with something else that they wanted to share and something else that they wanted to sing. And the majority of those songs are the songs that make up the first album. And the majority of those songs are songs that they came up with on the spot.
00:07:55
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You know, and so they're short, you know, a lot of them are one minute long and they're singing about their loneliness and they're singing about, you know, their pain and their experiences.
00:08:22
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A lot of the individuals on the record were serving life sentences, and one individual, Elias, is still there. We've tried to appeal his case. He's in his 40s now, and he's been there since he was a very young man. But his case is still pending. But some of the others, fortunately, have been released since. I smoke with the jamba, I smoke with them no more. I kill the people, I kill them no more.
00:09:00
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One thing that's common between Ian's experience and Malawi
00:09:05
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and that of some people that we've talked to in the US, was the difficulty with which many incarcerated people come to feel about expressing themselves as individuals rather than as part of a collective. In many ways, prison strips the individual of dignity, of humanity, of even understanding how they themselves feel.
00:09:25
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The collective expression seems to come pretty easily for them. It was the individual expression that was a hurdle, but once that hurdle was crossed for many of them, it was just beautiful what many of them were able to accomplish. The very first time I said to a group of 22 men, okay, everybody sing this pitch,
00:09:54
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It was such cacophony. It was so crazy. I couldn't even understand how, oh my goodness, they cannot even, they can't hear each other. They can't even hear themselves.
Theater and Performance in Prisons
00:10:07
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But that made perfect sense when I thought about when you are in prison, you are not allowed to have your voice. It is not encouraged. That's Kim Braden. She's a musical theater instructor who works with a program called RTA or rehabilitation through the arts.
00:10:23
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I first heard about these programs in which theater artists come into prisons and help the incarcerated individuals put on their own shows. When I listened to episode 218 of This American Life back in August of 2002,
00:10:38
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But essentially the entire episode is devoted to reporter Jack Hitt, who for six months followed a group of inmates at a high security prison as they rehearsed and staged a production of the last act of Hamlet. One of the things that I loved about that episode is thinking about
00:10:58
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what kind of training these individuals had that really equipped them to go on stage and present Shakespeare in a way that most other actors never would be able to. I mean if you think about method acting and then you think about the story in Hamlet, what happens when a person has to decide whether or not they want to commit a murder?
00:11:20
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I mean, how many people who have played Hamlet can actually get into character by remembering the times when they wanted to hurt someone, or even when they actually did commit a murder. So in that way, there are some characters for which inmates are uniquely suited. When it comes to understanding the complexities of rival gangs, I would argue that people who are incarcerated probably are better equipped than most of the other actors that play the Jets or the Sharks in West Side Story.
00:11:48
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But it's more than just their ability to present a compelling performance that interests me here. In order to sing together as a group, especially some of the pretty difficult lines in West Side Story, you also have to listen. And that's a skill that many of us can stand to develop a little bit more. Just to get them to sing in unison was the better part of a month of rehearsals and practices and exercises. And then we added harmony.
00:12:18
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And the beautiful thing about Harmony is that it is the perfect example and opportunity for a person to honor their own voice, their own message, as well as respect and hear, listen to another person's voice and message and line.
00:12:45
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And oftentimes they are very different from one another. This important listening skill, this important community effort, cooperation, collaboration, this sense of discipline was essential, not just to put on musical, but it is essential in solving problems. Here we were doing the Jets and the Sharks. What better way to have an opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes?
00:13:12
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and to musically hear someone else's message and lifestyle or life. So learning about harmony, trying to sing the quintet in West Side Story was quite an accomplishment.
00:13:26
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Kim Braden presented West Side Story at the prison through a program run by Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and Catherine Watkins is the executive director and founder of RTA. When asked what got her into it, she often tells the line that is often associated with women in prison, that most women go to prison for a man. And she says the same occurred to her, but it was her husband that she was following and he was not an inmate.
00:13:52
Speaker
To make a long story short, they were both business people and they were both interested in giving back to their communities. And after a number of projects, her husband decided to go back and get an advanced degree, a doctorate in ministry from a seminary based in New York. The seminary sent him to Sing Sing Correctional Facility because that was the only master's program in the country behind bars.
00:14:13
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As she tells it, he was a volunteer teacher in that program and he would come back home and tell her about the extraordinary people that he was meeting inside the walls and how they were so different from everything that they expected them to be. So one day she followed him into the prison. During the Clinton administration, they passed a bill that took away all the Pell and TAP grants, which were funding college in prisons across the country and basically wiped off post-secondary education throughout the
Arts as Rehabilitation Tools
00:14:41
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country.
00:14:41
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and impacted many of the facilities in New York State in a major way. And somehow that part, along with recognizing the humanity that I had never recognized before, I touched all in the back of my brain, not planning to do anything specifically, walked into the graduation program for my husband's
00:15:03
Speaker
project, sat down after the graduation with his teaching assistant, who was a man of color who had been incarcerated for many years and who eventually died in prison. And out of my mouth, for reasons I to this day will never understand came the statement, Talib, is there any theater going on here at Singsing? And he said, not for the last decade. And I said, do you think there'd be any interested? And he said, hell yes. When can you come back?
00:15:29
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And that was the beginning of what is known today as rehabilitation through the arts. We started with the belief in the ability that we had to change the way people looked at each other inside prison, that people who worked within our program would expect to be held as a model for how to behave.
00:15:48
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that we would break down racial stereotypes, that we would raise awareness about the humanity behind the walls, and that we would support and engender creativity among the people who were in the program. After this initial experience, Catherine wondered whether there was more they could do. Maybe it wasn't just about putting theater into the walls of the prison. Maybe there was something more. Maybe there was a real opportunity for rehabilitation. The men came to me in year four, 1999, 2000, and said,
00:16:18
Speaker
This is not about theater. We should not be called theater workshop. They said, let's change. This is rehabilitation. Let's change the name to rehabilitation through the arts. And that was really the beginning of the realization for me, because I don't come out of the arts. How important the arts can be in giving people voice, giving people a sense of community, respect for self and others.
00:16:40
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listening skills, all the things that became very aware that I knew as an employer and as a businesswoman were part of what need to be instilled in people in order for them to get a job. Listening skills, being able to present yourself, you know, being patient and having conflict resolution skills that come out of group orientation, etc.
00:17:02
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And that began to slant the organization towards using the arts as vehicles to build life skills, because that's really been the focus of what RTA has done over these almost 25 years, is to use the arts as transformational tools for building critical life skills.
00:17:21
Speaker
Like with the Zamba Prison Project, incarcerated individuals already knew what they wanted or needed to express. And it became the role of RTA not to prescribe the work, but to provide the platform or the microphone. The men in the very first meeting that I had with them said, we want to write a play about what we know the most. We want to write about the hood. At that time, it was 1996, 97, we want to write about HIV and AIDS, about denial.
00:17:50
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about violence, about drug running. But we also want to write about hope and the power of the human spirit to change. And so it was their way of saying we want what we know
00:18:03
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that transformation and who we are to be heard here in this facility. Outside the prisons, we think we understand the relationship between people who are incarcerated and the corrections officers. In the US, at least, it tends to be depicted as tense, defensive, sometimes violent. So how do the guards react when music is made within their walls? We were very fortunate to get a
00:18:29
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a story in Esquire magazine back in the middle of 2000 and in the centerfold.
00:18:34
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was the corrections officer who sat at the theater inside Sing Sing, and he was a big man and lots of muscles. And he is quoted as saying, you know, these folks who are in this program make my job easier. They want to stay safe. They don't want to do anything wrong because then they're not going to be allowed back in the program. He was one of a small percentage of people who recognized it. Others thought it was ridiculous, the corrections officers, that men would be getting up on stage and, you know,
00:19:05
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speaking Shakespeare or contemporary play or even an original play that we did and that they were stupid. But after having seen our members perform on stage,
00:19:17
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they would often actually get a corrections officer asking them for an autograph, or at least saying, hey, good job you did up there, so and so. So it's been, it's always been a balancing game about how do you, how do you bring into a maximum security, medium security facility, any kind of a security, where there were always the administration slash corrections officers against the inmate, quote, incarcerated individual.
00:19:49
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There over the rainbow, birds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow, flying in the quiet time. This happy little blue bird's fly beyond the rainbow.
00:20:32
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One of the things that I found remarkable is the courage that people who are part of these programs have to show in order to participate in them to begin with. I mean, at least in my high school, it wasn't the jocks that signed up for musical theater. It was usually the misfits, the kids that didn't find their place anywhere else, that gravitated to the stage. When you're living in a place where tension and hostilities can escalate to the point that you yourself can lose your life, how do you find the courage?
00:20:41
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Oh, I, it's a...
00:21:02
Speaker
to take on an activity that might not be respected by your peers. I think where it gets a little more dicey is around dance. RTA has had a modern dance program in New York State for many, many years. And our members who were in that lived in fear of what it would be like to perform for the first time in front of their peers. And many of the people who came down for the first performance at the medium security facility that we're in up in the Catskills
00:21:31
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in relation to that, came down prepared to really make fun. And in the beginning, there was cheering and cat calls. But the performance started off with the warmup, and the warmup included incredible exercises, pushups, sit-ups, stomach crunches, that the people who were sitting in the bleachers couldn't do themselves.
00:21:53
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So after that, they sort of quieted down after they watched that. And then the dance and then the standing ovation at the end. And what our members said was, if I can get beyond my fear of being called a pussy or something else, I know I will be a better person for that because I know that I am good at what I do. And if they're going to make fun of me, that's fine. But if I can live through that making fun, I'm going to be better on the other side.
00:22:22
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And to some degree, the fact that performance requires you to overcome incredible fears of standing in front of a crowd. You know, am I going to be good enough? All of that instills the kind of skills that we talk about being absolutely invaluable to the people we serve. So many of them coming out of such tough backgrounds and with such a tough chance to excel at anything. And now we give them something to excel at, which is why they
00:22:50
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often end up going on to college where it's offered in prison and doing better because they've had a chance to figure out their own self-worth through our program.
00:22:58
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Anyone who listens to the words of the incarcerated individuals can understand the impact that these programs have on their lives, but that usually doesn't lead to funding. What leads to funding is statistics, results, financial reasoning. Catherine had a background in business, so she knew how to find support for what she and her colleagues were finding about what the arts can do to rehabilitate and improve the lives of people within the prison walls.
00:23:24
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invested in what's called evidence-based research and the first one proved by John Jay College that people who participate in our program have much better disciplinary records, better coping skills than a control group.
00:23:37
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And they get what they call lockdown less often for less serious crimes. So people learn how to be a better citizen inside the walls. The second study done by Purchase College, just a SUNY college here in New York State, proved that RTA is a catalyst for learning and that people would finish their high school equivalency diploma faster.
00:23:58
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and earlier in their incarceration and also get into and stay in college better where it's offered in prison than the control group. So we know sort of from a clinical point of view that our program makes a difference in their lives. Each of us contributed lyrics to this song in our own true voices.
00:24:23
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Unlocking dreams Bringing happiness to others Leading them into the light Unlocking dreams Bringing happiness to others Leading them into the light Contagious love
00:24:48
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Can we all just get along, contagious love? Can we all just get along without love?
00:25:04
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The world can survive Pairs who continue dreaming When hope is gone And darkness surrounds We fly in our dreams
00:25:28
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One of our biggest concerns is that people in our program learn how to be better human beings by understanding themselves and then understanding how they interact with their families and with corrections officers and with civilians. And when they go home, those same skills are going to be useful when they are looking for employment, managing authority,
00:25:50
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working back in their community and most importantly when they walk through that door and have to then interact with their family members that they have left behind for decades.
00:26:05
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The power of music to bring humanity back to individuals after being incarcerated is undeniable, and it's been put to good use by more than just the folks at RTA.
Benefits of Music for Reintegration
00:26:14
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The reality is that people who are incarcerated, I think it's 79% are going to be coming back.
00:26:22
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So what kind of person do we want coming back? Do we want someone who has just been sitting there and rotting away in prison and getting more pent up and upset? Or do we want someone who has actually been through a rehabilitative process, who has had some opportunity to grow and to work on themselves?
00:26:46
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Music is the ultimate outlet for all of us, but I think especially for a person who is incarcerated, it is necessary. That's Claire Bryant, founder of Dakota. Dakota is a collective of musicians, largely chamber musicians, who are both committed to virtuosic performance and audience engagement.
00:27:08
Speaker
They craft unique concert experiences in many different settings, schools, hospitals, prisons, office buildings, and concert halls. Dakota's mission is to engage, inspire, and create a more compassionate and connected world through music. Dakota, we are a chamber music collective based in New York City, but we all share the same training through a two-year fellowship program
00:27:32
Speaker
based at Carnegie Hall called Ensemble Connect. And we were all trained there not only to try to be the best chamber musicians we can be, but also to be an artist in society. How can artists really engage with the world in which we live in? And so through Carnegie's program, Musical Connections, we got our start in corrections at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
00:27:57
Speaker
And after that, we wanted to expand this work independently. And I am originally from South Carolina, a small town called Camden. We do a lot of work down there. The largest maximum security prison in South Carolina is about 20 minutes down the road in Bishopville, and it's called Lee Correctional Institution.
00:28:17
Speaker
And we started a program there five years ago. This will be our sixth season going to Lee. And it's a comprehensive songwriting program where together with 50 residents, we spend a week exploring a theme and writing new music that is then performed for the larger incarcerated community at Lee.
00:28:40
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Every single note, every single lyric, every single hook was written in a collaborative process. We got in the room, we met each other, we started making music, we started sharing. I think for me, the music was sort of, it took the backseat in a way because it was really about this human interaction with people that I had been taught to fear.
00:29:09
Speaker
So I think that that through the musical collaboration and through that creation together, it was really just a human experience, which I kind of think is the point of music. So that hooked me and I think my colleagues as well, because we realized that, you know, music was helping us to forge something much greater than the notes on the page.
00:29:36
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Projects like this do more than just help the prisoners. They provide new and often much-needed perspective to those of us outside of the prison system so that we can understand and appreciate the continuum of human experience that exists behind the walls that we have built. We are taught that we're very different, someone who's incarcerated, someone a free citizen, that we're not the same, that we don't have anything in common.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I think that's a complete misconception based on my own experience. I have found through my work and corrections in working with incarcerated people that we are the same. And, you know, yes, circumstances in our lives may have been different and a bad day for me might be
00:30:20
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a different, you know, a bad day for someone else could be a lot worse, vice versa. The act of making music I think strips away those labels and actually frees everybody up to just kind of listen to each other.
00:30:37
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Some people argue that nothing in prison should be enjoyable, that it's a punishment. And if music is akin to play, it has no role inside the walls of a prison. But music plays a central role in human expression. It's been part of our history as long as we've been able to track human history. It's not just entertainment. It can serve a number of different purposes.
00:30:56
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Prison is a terrible place. And I know that sounds like obvious, but it's a really hard place. And the reality of our departments of corrections is that we're mass incarcerating our people and there is really little programming happening. It really is kind of dependent upon that particular facility, that particular state, the funding.
00:31:21
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So, having positive programming during incarceration is truly vital. Unfortunately, there was a mass riot at Lee about two weeks after our most recent visit in April 2018. Seven inmates were killed.
00:31:40
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and 17 were critically wounded. When there is not the opportunity to positively work with your emotions, share your emotions, even understand your emotions,
00:32:00
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things like that can happen and it is inhumane. So I think music, the power of music is that everyone is an expert. Everyone has their favorite song and it's going to be different from yours. It's going to be different from mine.
00:32:19
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And you can back it up and say, why? Even if you're not a musician and you can't say, oh, I love the, you know, rhythmic motifs, you know, I mean, it's not about that. It's really about the personal, what gets you at your gut. And every single person that we meet can be an expert in that way.
00:32:38
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If we're going to be accepting individuals who have been incarcerated back into our society, we need to see them as human beings, and they themselves need to see themselves as human.
Music as a Humanizing Force
00:32:48
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Music is one method of adding humanity back into the inhumane conditions of incarceration. In the words of the prisoners themselves, more than one of them expressed this same basic sentiment. When they sing, they're not in prison. And when they stop singing, they're back in prison.
00:33:05
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So it's freeing for them. It's not just something to do. And it is a privilege to be allowed to do it. One of the things I've heard often from our RTA members is that the opportunity to create music or to sing brings about a sense of joy that is not very common in a prison situation.
00:33:30
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It is one of the only places in the prison, one of the only times that a man or a woman can shut their eyes and feel safe is in a concert.
00:33:43
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And that is deep, because if you think about it, I go to yoga every day, I get that hour to shut my eyes, and I can sit on the train and shut my eyes on the subway. In prison, you can't shut your eyes. You've got to almost sleep with one eye open. So I think music is that solace, it is that place of safety.
00:34:07
Speaker
Next time we're going to take a deep dive into the story of one incarcerated individual in particular. Starting with the circumstances that eventually led her into prison, how music helped her find herself and her voice, and how now she has turned around and helps other people who remain incarcerated or those who have been incarcerated share their voices.
00:34:29
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We'll also talk to some researchers about what we can measure in terms of music's effect on prisoners and their guards and those of us on the outside.
00:34:43
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Thank you for listening to this episode of Cadence. You can find us online at the ensembleproject.com slash cadence at Facebook slash cadence podcast and on Twitter at cadence podcast. You can also get in touch with us at cadencemind at gmail.com and you can support us at patreon.com slash cadence podcast.
00:35:02
Speaker
I'm Andrey Viscontis, the host, creator, and writer of the show. This episode was edited by Noel Nichols with Uptown Works. Additional production help came from Adam Isaac, Katie Linhart, and Scott Lowry. Additional music in this episode was provided for us by acclaimed New Zealand composer Rian Sheehan. You can find me on Twitter at Andrey Viss. Cadence is generously supported by the Germanicos Foundation.