Prisoners Find Rehabilitation & Redemption Through Music

Fresh Air

NPR

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4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Criminal justice reporter Maurice Chammah recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the power of music programs in prison. He says at a time when the criminal system is at an impasse, music, and art can cultivate hope and dignity for prisoners and possibly change how we think about the people who make it. "It allows you to really hold in your mind anger about a crime, and then separately an understanding that this is a human being and there's more to say about them than their crime." Chammah also talks with us about the rich history of prison music in the U.S., dating all the way back to the 1930s.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast comes from the New Bower Family Foundation,
0:04.0	supporting WHY Wise Fresh Air and its commitment to sharing ideas
0:08.7	and encouraging meaningful conversation.
0:11.4	This is Fresh Air, I'm Tonya Mosley.
0:14.1	In 1996, a man named Kenyatta Immanuel killed a cab driver during a robbery.
0:20.8	Immanuel was 21 years old and he'd later go on to serve 24 years in prison for his crime.
0:27.0	During his time behind bars, Immanuel studied music as part of a program
0:31.1	teaching inmates about instrumentation, arrangement, and vocals.
0:35.3	And on the day of his release in 2019,
0:37.9	Immanuel performed a song he wrote in prison before a crowd at Carnegie Hall.
0:42.6	The song is called Holding Out Hope.
0:57.0	Quite have to believe, made us to be better than we've been behaving lately.
1:03.9	I'm just reaching for a blessing, a question a little help and answers to questions
1:13.6	that maybe we should be asking ourselves like can we agree there's something wrong
1:21.0	if I feel for me to scream my life matters and why in the world do you
1:27.7	does that feel like an accusation how many guns does one man need
1:36.1	how many children have to bleed and die before we concede this man
1:43.3	he didn't have an override but I'm moving out of love
1:48.8	if this is also passing temporary insanity I'm moving out of deep inside who recognize our common
1:58.9	humanity that was former prisoner Kenyatta Immanuel singing a song he wrote in prison called
2:05.6	Holding Out Hope before a crowd at Carnegie Hall.
2:08.9	Journalist Marisha Ma writes about Immanuel and the history of prison music
	...

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