The Marshall Project and Musicambia have announced their first-ever joint concert, Redemption Songs Live, to be held at the Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall in New York City on Oct. 28.
Redemption Songs Live will bring together The Marshall Project’s award-winning journalism on American prison music and Musicambia’s pioneering efforts to foster songwriting and composition in prisons across the country. Inspired by journalist Maurice Chammah’s reporting on music in prison, Redemption Songs Live will feature an 18-piece band, storytelling, archival photography, and film to tell the story of how music offers paths to rehabilitation, resistance, and hope amid mass incarceration.
“Redemption Songs Live is another example of The Marshall Project’s commitment to ambitious journalism and innovative storytelling — work that brings transparency to how the justice system operates and how it affects communities and people across the country,” said Katrice Hardy, CEO of The Marshall Project. “This concert, the first ever produced by The Marshall Project, highlights the humanity and creativity of those inside the system: the music captures the emotions and lived experience behind each song. I’m grateful to Maurice Chammah for telling these stories, and to The Cambia Collective for performing these songs on a New York stage.”
The show will feature a rare performance by The Cambia Collective, a diverse group of men and women who served time in New York state prisons and participated in Musicambia programs, backed by the organization’s teaching artists from Musicambia, which provides music education in prisons across the country.
“Musicambia is proud to partner with The Marshall Project to share some of the creativity we witness each week in our programs behind bars,” said Shawn Jager, executive director of Musicambia. “Our band, The Cambia Collective, is a testament to the bonds music builds, and its power to reshape identity.”
Narrated by Chammah and Lawrence Bartley, publisher of The Marshall Project Inside, Redemption Songs Live will take the audience on a journey through the history and present of prison music, telling stories from the Jim Crow South to the golden ages of funk and hip-hop, while touching on themes from family separation to police brutality. Members of The Cambia Collective will talk about their musical journeys behind bars and play their own songs — ranging from blues to soul to hip-hop to Afrobeat — along with songs by friends still inside.
The concert will also highlight the work of FREER Records, the country’s first label focused on musicians impacted by prison. A woman currently incarcerated in Kansas will share a lullaby she wrote for her daughter as part of The Lullaby Project, an initiative of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. And the audience will hear a protest ballad written by a man currently in ICE detention.
Redemption Songs Live is brought to the stage through the kind support of the Heising-Simons Foundation and MS NOW.