Instrument of the State (Paperback)

Benjamin J. Harbert

ISBN 10: 019751751X / ISBN 13: 9780197517512

Published by Oxford University Press Inc, New York, 2023

About this Item

Paperback. Louisiana State Penitentiary is one of the largest and most brutal maximum-security prisons in the United States. Built on the grounds of a former plantation, the prison is commonly referred to as "Angola" apropos of the country of origin for many of the enslaved people who inhabited the land. Despite notoriously inhumane conditions within the prison, people incarcerated at Angola have sustained a rich and dynamic musical legacy since the late nineteenth century,attracting folklorists such as John and Alan Lomax and Harry Oster. Well-known musicians including Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, Charles Neville, and James Booker played a part in this history,in addition to a litany of others who proved vital to the prison's musical culture but for various reasons were unable to establish their careers upon release. In Instrument of the State, author Benjamin J. Harbert interweaves oral history and archival research to show how incarcerated musicians find small but essential freedoms by performing jazz, R&B, country, gospel, rock, and fusion throughout the Twentieth Century. In doing so, he expands folkloricdefinitions of "prison music." considering the ways in which music manifests among the incarcerated and the prison's administration as a lens to better understand state power and the fragments of hope and joy that remainin its wake. Instrument of the State acts as an indictment of the carceral state, highlighting the many ways in which the US penal system disproportionately affects African American people through desperate profiteering of a deliberately underfunded state agency. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780197517512

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Instrument of the State (Paperback)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, New York
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019751751X
• ISBN 13: 9780197517512
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Louisiana State Penitentiary is one of the largest and most brutal maximum-security prisons in the United States. Built on the grounds of a former plantation, the prison is commonly referred to as "Angola" apropos of the country of origin for many of the enslaved people who inhabited the land. Despite notoriously inhumane conditions within the prison, people incarcerated at Angola have sustained a rich and dynamic musical legacy since the late nineteenth century, attracting folklorists such as John and Alan Lomax and Harry Oster. Well-known musicians including Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, Charles Neville, and James Booker played a part in this history, in addition to a litany of others who proved vital to the prison's musical culture but for various reasons were unable to establish their careers upon release.

In Instrument of the State, author Benjamin J. Harbert interweaves oral history and archival research to show how incarcerated musicians find small but essential freedoms by performing jazz, R&B, country, gospel, rock, and fusion throughout the Twentieth Century. In doing so, he expands folkloric definitions of "prison music." considering the ways in which music manifests among the incarcerated and the prison's administration as a lens to better understand state power and the fragments of hope and joy that remain in its wake. Instrument of the State acts as an indictment of the carceral state, highlighting the many ways in which the US penal system disproportionately affects African American people through desperate profiteering of a deliberately underfunded state agency.

About the Author

Benjamin J. Harbert is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Georgetown University. He is the author of American Music Documentary: Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology, director of the documentary Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians, and a co-editor of The Arab Avant Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity.