A new book by UBC School of Music professor David Metzer, Prison Song: Music and Incarceration in the United States, is now available to order.
The book examines how musicians across genres–hip hop, country, blues, folk, rock, jazz, and classical–have confronted the prison system.
Published by the University of Michigan Press, it is the first book ever to take a broad view of prison songs, tracing how the songs and their critiques of incarceration have changed and grown across the 20th and 21st centuries.
Be it Johnny Cash singing heartbreaking songs about incarcerated men to such men on the album At Folsom Prison or Nas pledging his devotion to imprisoned friends in the hip hop classic “One Love,” prison songs have created bonds of empathy between listeners and incarcerated people, ties that affirm the humanity of those held in the prison system.
Having spent years writing Prison Song, Prof. Metzer has been constantly surprised by all the things prison songs can be and do. “I expected songs of protest, and I heard lots of them. Musicians have long taken stands against the cruelties of incarceration and have found different ways of doing so.”
“Be it Johnny Cash singing heartbreaking songs about incarcerated men to such men on the album At Folsom Prison or Nas pledging his devotion to imprisoned friends in the hip hop classic “One Love,” prison songs have created bonds of empathy between listeners and incarcerated people, ties that affirm the humanity of those held in the prison system.”
From blues songs by Black women in the Mississippi Penitentiary during the 1930s to recordings made by Indigenous artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle and First Nations women in a Saskatchewan prison in the 2010s, the book delivers a hard-hitting look at how song has long defied the silence and cruelties of incarceration.
A review at The Library Journal has strong praise for Prof. Metzer and Prison Song: “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.”
The book is available to purchase now. Use code UMWEB30 to get a 30% discount when ordering directly from University of Michigan Press.
