“The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music…” And So Are the Prisons

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I absolutely love music. My favorite genres are pop, (old time), classical, old country, blue grass, and folk. I admit to not liking hard rock or heavy metal and I have to continue my attempts to appreciate hip-hop. Actually, with hip-hop, I get the culture aspect of it and that seems to ingratiate itself more into my musical repertoire. I mentioned before that I even sing in my car to my companion, Lily, the dog. When she howls along, I like to think she is happily singing but she could be suffering from the sensitivity of her sharp, canine hearing in distress. We both like belting out, “I Love You a Bushel and a Peck.”

Liturgical music is beautiful, too, when properly done and especially with trained musicians and singers. But when it is not carefully directed, it can send me checking for the exits or, like Lily, painfully suppressing the urge to howl in protest.

Maurice Chamma is a staff writer for the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. In a recent article he wrote of the creative efforts of prisoners to write and perform music from prison. His argument is that citizens should assist the penal system or an individual prison as much as possible to elevate prisoners in their quest to create music. They become more aware of beauty; they are softened by poetry and music and better prepared to be released to society if they are fortunate enough. One prison official said, “If we experience the art being created in those spaces, we will know these are human beings and we need to rethink whether we should be throwing them away.” And, according to Chammah, “American prisons are full of earnest attempts at redemption.” 

As long ago as the 1930s, a Texas prison broadcast a weekly radio show playing country songs, hymns, blue grass and got as many as five million listeners. The then Texas governor, Wilbert Lee O’Daniel said, “…you hear them talk, you hear them sing; you find out they are sons and daughters of good mothers. You find out they made mistakes, thus proving that they are human.” In the 1950s a group called, The Prisonaires, arrived at a Tennessee studio shackled and under armed guards to cut a record. Elvis Presley was one of their greatest fans.

Reading this article took me back to an experience I had as director of the Jesuit Retreat Center in Cleveland, Ohio. I had received a phone call from a man who was a resident in a western state—I have forgotten which one—and wondered if I could give him Father Clem Metzger’s address. Clem had been my predecessor and had died some months before this call. I could detect a sorrow in the man’s voice as he took in this news, a deep mist of grief molting his words. “I wanted to update him on my life,” said the man. “I wanted to tell him how much he helped me to get where I am today.” He told the story of being a prisoner in one of Ohio’s most notorious prisons known for abuse and cruel punishment. Father Clem made twice monthly visits to the prison and got to know the man talking to me now. Clem learned that the man liked music of all kinds but needed discs and equipment to play them on. He must have had privileges because he said Clem would bring the discs and discuss with him the music on the disc like the name of the composer, the period it was composed, etc. He would leave the discs with the man to play and study; they would discuss the works on the next visit. Clem was tutoring the man in music history and appreciation.

When he was released from prison, the man went to college majoring in music and finally securing a master’s degree in music education. Today, he is a successful teacher of music. “I wanted to tell him all of this,” said the man. “I was redeemed by his generosity and our mutual love for music.” I still get chills when I recall this phone call of many years ago. Chammah’s article brought it all back with a fierce poignancy of our responsibility to somehow get involved with the prison system to encourage humanness with justice. Meanwhile, “Die Jim Crow Records are collecting instruments to distribute to prisons and are building studios in sections of gyms and janitorial closets out of PVC pipes and blankets,” reported Chammah. From these jerry-built constructions new music is emerging and creative activities such as writing and visual arts are being developed. What a lesson of redemption!

Reflection

Like you, I am sometimes at a bedside as a harpist or flutist is playing serene music for all present, mostly for the person on the bed who is leaving this world and is wrapped securely in bed sheets as if we are trying to keep her or him from going. We are told the sense of hearing is the last sense to leave us. So, we make it profound and sadly joyful, whispering words of comfort and letting the music play on, letting its healing salve anoint the person with as much power as the sacramental oils or prayers for the dying. Fortunately, the hospice system has recognized this, and most places of hospice rely on a cadre of musicians who are on call to spend time offering music in that space between semi-consciousness and eternal consciousness. “Where words fail, music speaks.” (Hans Christian Anderson)

What are your experiences with music that have lifted you or someone else to sublime joy?  

Do you allow yourself to dwell on music and revel in the good it does for your soul?

Do you see music as a gift God has given us, through nature, to make the trip on this earth as heavenly as possible?

Do you think you can do something for incarcerated people who long to hear music that could change their lives? A little research will lead you to this.

I continue to pray for all of you, my very special readers, and my Anonymous Angels. Have a song in your heart this week!!

Quotes are from “The Sound of Redemption,” by Maurice Chammah, The New York Times, August 6, 2023, p. 7.