Music Column: Creating new opportunities for music-making in 2024
From 2009 to 2020, I facilitated the OCC inside Oakdale Prison, officially the Iowa Medical and Classification Center (IMCC).
The choir was abruptly stopped due to COVID and has been blocked from restarting by current prison leadership. Warden Mike Heinricy wrote me last March that they deemed the choir is not “sustainable, cannot be “properly supervised.” Beyond these barriers of insufficient resources, the warden cited ideological barriers, explaining that the choir does not serve the programming mission of IMCC or the IDOC.
Why should we care? As taxpayers, we should be concerned that a humanizing program that supports reentry and broadens the public’s perceptions of incarcerated individuals does not fit the IDOC’s mission of “Creating Opportunities for Safer Communities." These institutional changes are a great loss for those who are incarcerated, those of us on the outside who have been engaged in this volunteer work, and for our entire community.
According to Socrates, change only happens when we shift our energy from fighting the old to building the new. OCC’s goal is to build communities of caring. We are focusing our energy on new ways to create communities of caring through the Inside Outside Songwriting Collaboration Project, the International Music and Justice Inquiry Network: IMAJIN Caring Communities, a new University of Iowa partnership with the Juvenile Detention Center of Linn County, and a new singing circle, name TBD.
You are invited to join the third Inside Outside song-sharing on Zoom at 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 18. Write me (mary-cohen@uiowa.edu) for the link to join. This meeting will feature five new songs co-created by incarcerated Iowans and songwriters from across the US and the UK.
Guest Lori (“L”) LeDonne will describe her “In-Just-Us” arts initiative (https://ledonnemusic.com/). A formerly incarcerated musician based in Connecticut, LeDonne collaborates with formerly incarcerated individuals, using original songs to build solidarity and care, and to create a healthy space to process feelings arising from trauma and addiction. Eleven original songs from August and September 2023 are on the Oakdale Choir website under “Past IMAJIN Caring Community Events.” See https://oakdalechoir.lib.uiowa.edu/.
IMAJIN Caring Communities is a network of more than 160 people from 17 countries who research and lead music-making in prisons. We meet monthly on Zoom to share our work.
Our Nov. 30 meeting, for instance, included Alim Braxon from death row in North Carolina and UNC Professor Mark Katz, who are co-writing Rap and Redemption on Death Row: Seeking Justice and Finding Purpose Behind Bars, as well as Malal Almamy Talla from Senegal who leads a Hip Hop festival in a Dakar prison each December.
In October 2023, I attended the Community Choir Leadership Training to build my skills in facilitating singing circles in the aural tradition. Upon my return, Marie Garry and I began a new circle that meets monthly. All voices are welcome, including those who do not identify as singers. We traditionally meet the first Saturday of the month from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., but in January we will meet on the 14th. Contact me at mary-cohen@uiowa.edu for location and information.
Mary Cohen is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Iowa, mary-cohen@uiowa.edu.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Music Column: Creating new opportunities for music-making in 2024
