Buch, Englisch, 362 Seiten, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 156 mm
Reihe: AMERICAN MUSICSPHERES SERIES
Buch, Englisch, 362 Seiten, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 156 mm
Reihe: AMERICAN MUSICSPHERES SERIES
ISBN: 978-0-19-751750-5
Verlag: Sydney University Press
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.