Prison Song
Music and Incarceration in the United States
How musicians across genres have confronted the prison system over the last hundred years
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.
David Metzer is Professor of Musicology at the University of British Columbia.
Reviews
“Prison Song is an extraordinary gift. Its pages remind us all that despite our nation's perpetual attempt to lock people away and to silence them behind bars, music is powerful and it has always allowed them still to be heard.”
- Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
“Prison Song offers a truly compelling insight into the integral, varied, and complex role that so-called prison songs have played and continue to play in American society and beyond. Written with impeccable attention to detail and marrying music history with moments of rich musical analysis and sociocultural critique, Metzer takes the reader on a sonic journey through a century of American songs. Spanning not only a vast time period, but also an incredibly wide array of musical genres, there is likely something of interest to all music researchers, whatever their preferred genre persuasion may be.”
- Áine Mangaoang, author of Dangerous Mediations: Pop Music in a Philippine Prison Video
“Prison Song showcases Metzer’s extensive knowledge of musical repertoire in exceptional detail. Metzer’s command of the material enables a seamless representation of complex issues that the reader can revisit and reread for depth while individual chapters stand alone as exceptionally written pieces of scholarship and can be assigned in groupings. This book offers significant contributions to interdisciplinary prison studies.”
- Adriana Helbig, author of ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid
“His book makes the case that studying the music made by and about incarcerated people can bring about change by promoting empathy and understanding. Each chapter in Metzer's challenging, reflective, substantive, multilayered book is strong enough to stand on its own.”
- Frederick Augustyn, Library Journal
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