Drum: INSIGHT
33
“Is it a mental slavery
that continues to
condemn so many
young men to a life on
the margins of society
– a life that leads so
many inexorably
towards prison?”
Before long the concert itself was over, and we
went back to our lives, the clarity of that moment –
pregnant with all the possibilities of the human
spirit – forgotten in our surge back toward the
comforting certainties of life. For us, train times; for
them, bang-up. Looking back, the weird energy of
that moment seems more and more like a flaw in
the design – being allowed to peer through a
window that wasn’t meant to be open. Or maybe a
clue, but we just haven’t worked out how to fit the
pieces together as yet.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery”
It was just a moment – it existed in our heads for
only a little more than three minutes. There was no
handy Morgan Freeman-voiced summary because
the truth of the moment could not possibly be
distilled in that way. I dare say it was different for all
of us – gloriously universal and intensely personal all
at once. All I know is what it meant to me. All I can
say is how incredibly poignant and powerful it
was to witness a group of life-sentenced prisoners
making fantastic music together on a grey afternoon,
in a grey building that eats lives, in the South of
England. And it seems especially fitting that it
should be a young black man who made us dance
and cry and sing along: “Emancipate yourselves
from mental slavery”.
Perhaps the cynicism I have worn so long and so
proudly at times was my ‘mental slavery’. Perhaps
the whole thing was in my head. But that afternoon
will stay with me for a long time. And, in the year
when Bob Marley would have celebrated his 60th
birthday, I will remember his words, sung by a small
black man in a too-big t-shirt, with a baseball cap
pulled low down over his eyes, and be thankful for
them.
“‘Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.”