Drum: INSIGHT
“Real prison life
is not romantic. It
is not a backdrop.
Prison life is routine
and methodical...”
31
Around half an hour in, as the players tuned up between songs, a
small black man in a too-big t-shirt, with a baseball cap pulled down
low over his eyes discreetly made his way to the front of the stage.
He shifted bashfully behind the microphone as an acoustic guitar
strummed, and then he began to sing.
“Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit…”
Here is where the professional cynic begins to lose his way. A
moment of intense emotional clarity; the players, the prisoners,
engrossed in their music, in this hymn to freedom, this Redemption
Song; the audience captivated – taken captive – by the simply
strummed guitar, the beautiful, keening melody that floats above us,
and transforms us; a sense of being somewhere else, certainly not in
a prison, not in any place of incarceration; not in any place at all, in
fact.
“But my hand was made strong
By the ‘and of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly”
Soon we are clapping. Soon some people are on their feet. Soon,
some people have tears in their eyes and the room is bathed in a
sense of escape. We, the audience, give ourselves up to the music; »