Instrument of the State : A Century of Music in Louisiana's Angola Prison

Louisiana State Penitentiary is one of the largest and most brutal maximum-security prisons in the United States. Built on the grounds of a former plantation, the prison is commonly referred to as "Angola" apropos of the country of origin for many of the enslaved people who inhabited the land. Despite notoriously inhumane conditions within the prison, people incarcerated at Angola have sustained a rich and dynamic musical legacy since the late nineteenth century, attracting folklorists such as John and Alan Lomax and Harry Oster. Well-known musicians including Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, Charles Neville, and James Booker played a part in this history, in addition to a litany of others who proved vital to the prison's musical culture but for various reasons were unable to establish their careers upon release. In Instrument of the State, author Benjamin J. Harbert interweaves oral history and archival research to show how incarcerated musicians find small but essential freedoms by performing jazz, R&B, country, gospel, rock, and fusion throughout the Twentieth Century. In doing so, he expands folkloric definitions of "prison music." considering the ways in which music manifests among the incarcerated and the prison's administration as a lens to better understand state power and the fragments of hope and joy that remain in its wake. Instrument of the State acts as an indictment of the carceral state, highlighting the many ways in which the US penal system disproportionately affects African American people through desperate profiteering of a deliberately underfunded state agency. "Angola Prison is the largest and one of the most notorious state prisons in the United States, built into a slave plantation that Louisiana bought in 1901. It has also been the most musically significant. Following a documentary film project, author Benjamin J. Harbert visited Angola, gathered oral histories, and conducted archival research to piece together an account of how prisoners and the administration have used music for over 120 years. The book brings together well-known musicians who served time there, including Lead Belly, Charles Neville, and James Booker, as well as a litany of musicians who made significant contributions to the prison's music scene only to die there or unable to establish careers upon release. Instrument of the State: A Century of Music in Louisiana State Penitentiary traces how musicians find small but essential freedoms by playing jazz, R&B, country, gospel, rock, and fusion. In doing so, Harbert expands folkloric definitions of "prison music." The book considers the broader musicality of the prison as a way of understanding state power and the fragments of hope and joy that remain in its wake. Music connects to the prison's shifting and often conflicting missions: rehabilitation, slavery, and abandonment. The perspectives of incarcerated musicians will reveal how music responds to violence, reform, prisoner rights, sensationalism, and power through the twentieth century. Instrument of the State is an indictment of the brutality of prison, its disproportionate effects on African-Americans, and the desperate profiteering of a deliberately underfunded state agency"-- Provided by publisher