Alfred Roberts watched a mob storm the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 6, 2021, from a television in his New York state prison. Feeling hopeless about the state of American society, he wrote a song that day called “Victory,” lifting melodies and phrases from a hymnal, and adding new lyrics: “I wonder if there’s evidence for my hope.”
Now free from prison, Roberts performed “Victory” before a packed auditorium at Merkin Hall in New York City Wednesday night, onstage surrounded by formerly incarcerated musicians, in a concert featuring songs written in American prisons.
The show was produced by The Marshall Project and Musicambia, which provides music instruction and teaches composition in prisons. The concert is now streaming on YouTube. It is the latest effort by The Marshall Project to reach new audiences by embracing nontraditional forms of journalism, which have recently included an art installation and a prison film festival.
The evening opened with New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who hailed the journalism of The Marshall Project and the work of Musicambia for empowering incarcerated people to express themselves through making music.
“There are thousands of musicians behind bars, writing songs without a stage, without an audience, without even instruments,” said Mamdani, himself a former rapper. “Musicambia is changing that. Musicambia is giving people a chance to express and improve themselves.”
Drawing on Marshall Project journalist Maurice Chammah’s reporting, the concert featured live storytelling that traced the history of music made behind bars in the United States over the last century, from work songs passed down from slavery to a protest ballad written earlier this year in an ICE detention center.
“Journalism gives us the facts,” said Marshall Project CEO Katrice Hardy in her introduction. “Music lets us feel them.”
The Cambia Collective, a band formed of Musicambia’s alumni and teaching artists, performed songs from its debut album, “The Musicambia Songbook,” including “Decision to Love,” written by an incarcerated man upon the birth of his daughter, and “Hey There Serrano,” an ode to an incarcerated friend who loves disco.
One of the hosts, Lawrence Bartley, described how music programs were once common in American prisons, and how music can be a lifeline for those serving time.
“I remember my sister bumping Mary J. Blige’s ‘Love No Limit’ on the phone when I was at Rikers,” Bartley said. “Hearing ‘loving you is all I wanna do’ through the line transported me straight back home, to my room, my friends, my family.”
Bartley now oversees The Marshall Project Inside, including a print publication and video series made for an incarcerated audience, and worked to get the concert streamed live into the jails on New York City’s Rikers Island, among other facilities, so incarcerated people could watch the band perform. This rare access was aided by Stanley Richards, commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections, who is himself formerly incarcerated.
“I know what a night like this would have meant to me if I were still in there,” Bartley said. “It would have let me dream of better days. It would have pushed me to produce more, to hone my craft while I was inside.”
The night also featured a guest performance by G. Dep, the Harlem rapper best known for the 2001 hit “Special Delivery,” who later served time in New York prisons after confessing to murder.
An incarcerated mother in Kansas, Krystal Lowe, performed a lullaby written for her 2-year-old daughter, asking her in the lyrics to “Wait for me.” Lowe introduced the song via a video message, and the crowd sang along. “It’s super important to hear the love put behind the records, and to understand that I’m just like any other mother,” Lowe said.
Standing on the stage before a crowd of more than 400 people, Roberts’ performance underscored the power of Musicambia’s programs, in which he had participated while serving time at New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility. At the end of the event, Chammah noted that often when people talk about rehabilitation in prisons, they’re only talking about the incarcerated people and not the world outside.
“But I see this music — as well as the journalism we do at The Marshall Project — as part of a two-way street,” said Chammah, whose “Redemption Songs” newsletter series inspired the concert. “America needs to be rehabilitated too, so that our first impulse is not always to throw people away. And that becomes a little easier, I think, when [musicians who have been through the prison system] take the time to share their art with us. Music cuts past differences and literally floats over walls.”