Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Noam Brown.
Bending the Bars artists Kashdatt, Chuckie Lee and ZQ recording in the studio. 

Given that the US leads the world in numbers of people incarcerated (1,808,100), more than even China, that’s a lot of human beings we can’t just forget about. We need to find ways for them to be engaged in the world and not give up hope, for our own sakes as well as theirs.

Monica Uszerowicz writes at the Guardian about an experiment in Florida that was organized by inmate advocates and received no help from the system.

“In ‘Locked Down,’ a song by the San Diego-based poet and rapper, Chance, she sings with both foreboding and care: ‘Every day that you wake up you’re blessed / love every breath, ’cause you don’t know what’s next.’

“Chance wrote the song – originally a poem, its title a callback to Akon’s ‘Locked Up’ – while imprisoned in Phoenix, Arizona, during the beginning of the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdown (‘six feet apart in a five-by-five,’ she raps in the same song, alluding to the virtual impossibility of social distancing in the American prison system). … She shared with me in a recent phone call, ‘It’s crazy how they maintained control and instilled fear within us. When you’re locked up, you ask yourself … are you going to be angry, or are you going to find what your calling and purpose is?’

” ‘Locked Down’ is also one of 16 tracks on Bending the Bars, a hip-hop album featuring original songs by artists formerly or currently incarcerated in Florida’s Broward county jails (with the exception of Chance, a Florida native). Bending the Bars was organized by the south Florida abolitionist organization Chip – the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People – which was initially founded to support inmates during the early days of Covid.

“Nicole Morse, a Chip co-founder and associate professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, says the organization began fielding calls in April 2020, primarily from Broward, the county just north of Miami-Dade; the calls were primarily about medical neglect, abuse and an atmosphere of abject fear. …

“In 2021, the data Chip had gathered was used to support a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Disability Rights Florida on behalf of individuals suffering from Covid in the Broward county jail.

“Something more hopeful was emerging from those hotline calls, too: creativity. ‘People wanted to share their latest poetry or a song they were developing,’ Morse said. ‘Art was helping people survive an incredibly desperate time.’

“Noam Brown, a children’s musician and Chip committee member, began dreaming up the idea of an album. … Chip hoped to create a platform for the wealth of talent they continually encountered. The organization began fundraising, applying for grants and putting the word out that they were producing an album; Gary Field, an incarcerated organizer, writer and scholar, became the executive producer, helping to connect the artists with Chip.

“Musicians on the inside used two phones to record their songs – one as the microphone to record their vocals, the other to listen to the beat. ‘The challenges were phenomenal,’ Field shared in a phone call. ‘People couldn’t even talk to their families, never mind collaborate on something as complicated as producing a studio album. We were in the middle of a pandemic. There were four phones and 40 inmates trying to use them.’

“Spaces with two easily accessible phones were limited; the duration of any prison phone call is restricted. But Chip covered the costs of the calls, while Brown’s brother, Eitan, worked as the sound engineer, and the Grammy-winning children’s artists Alphabet Rockers helped create beats. Artists who were already out were able to spend time in the studio, including Chance, who returned to south Florida after her release.

“After reconnecting with a former classmate, the two attended a meeting for Chainless Change, a Lauderhill-based non-profit advocating for those affected by the criminal legal system. ‘It was divine – I don’t believe in accidents; I knew I was being called to go back to Florida’ Chance said. She began working with the group and helped organize a poetry event, where she met Field, Brown and Morse. She asked if they had room on the album for one more.

“The result is nearly an hour of uniquely south Floridian hip-hop and R&B, both of which are constellations of so many genres – Caribbean beats, southern bass, Deep City soul, Miami drill – poetic musings on love, loneliness and hope, and demands for systemic change to the draconian and brutal conditions of the Florida prison system. While Morse noted that the album’s sound quality was impaired by technical limitations, Bending the Bars is polished and clear, an accomplishment owed partly to its production and mostly to the ingenuity of its artists: singers, rappers and collaborators like J4, Corvette Cal and Chuckie Lee, all of whom alchemized the tracklist into a textural tapestry: playful, mournful, educational and intentionally dotted with prerecorded interjections from the prison phone line (‘you have one minute remaining’). 

“Field, whose song ‘Tearing Down Walls and Building Bridges’ closes the album, studied political science at Columbia University and received his master’s from Gulf Coast Bible College, and has contributed 2,000 pages of writing to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology civic media project Between the Bars. He knows, intimately, the significance of the writing process.

” ‘I remember, as an inmate back in 2010, what a profound sense of gratitude the opportunity to write gave me,’ he shared. …

“The system often censored mail or blocked phone calls during the recording process. … ‘We had to develop a set of strategies to overcome those barriers,’ they said. ‘The project was made without the cooperation of any prison or jail. Every strategy we came up with for how to get through to people … we can now share those strategies with loved ones of incarcerated folks who don’t have any additional privileged access.’ “

More at the Guardian, here.