Full Description
From Johnny Cash to Jay-Z, musicians have long used their voices to challenge the injustices of the prison system. Prison Song: Music and Incarceration in the United States reveals how musicians have confronted the prison system by telling the life stories of imprisoned individuals, creating empathetic bonds between listeners and those individuals, and critiquing the racial and social inequalities that incarceration preys upon. Prison Song takes a broad, interdisciplinary approach to explore how artists across genres—hip hop, country, blues, folk, rock, jazz, and classical—have protested the prison system. David Metzer examines the works of incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and nonincarcerated musicians from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including prison records, government reports, legislation, court decisions, and scholarship from carceral studies, each chapter reveals how musicians responded to developments in the prison system at particular historical moments and how their works have shaped public understanding of the prison system in the United States.
Contents
List of Images and Music Examples
Acknowledgments
Introduction
"The Prisoner's Song": Sentimentality in Early Country Songs about Incarceration
A Community of Song: Recordings of Women at Parchman Farm (1933-39)
Death Row in Country Music
Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison
The Attica Uprising: Musicians Respond
Life Stories of the Incarcerated: Joan Baez, "Prison Trilogy"
Life Stories of the Incarcerated: Early Hip Hop
Prison Letters and Calls in Hip Hop
Mass Incarceration: Life Stories, Rage, and Healing
From Collecting to Collaboration: Cheryl L'Hirondelle's Why the Caged Bird Sings
Select Sources
