Deep West Radio Documentaries
08/05/2011 NPR's All Things Considered
For most of its 110-year history, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola has been synonymous with brutality, suffering, and executions. Yet as prisons go, it stands out for an entirely different reason: its music.
Back in the 30s and 40s the famous folklorist, John A. Lomax and his son Alan were drawn to Angola (and other prisons) in their quest for folk music in its “purest” form. The elder Lomax believed prison walls were a filter against the “polluting” influences of popular music.
Listen or download Prison Songs: The Angola Blues
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| Inside Angola’s walls, prisoners found not only isolation, but the perpetuation of a plantation-like farming system that had the effect of preserving many of the work songs from the days of slavery. Prisoners worked the fields in large groups and sang together, and Lomax was able to capture their songs before they went extinct. One of the best known "discoveries" of John Lomax was Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. |
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Hal Cannon and Taki Telonidis of the Western Folklife Center, along with Steve Zeitlin of City Lore, visited Angola Prison in April 2010 as a part of their project following in the footsteps of John A. Lomax. Read our blog. At Angola, they discovered that while the penitentiary is a very different place than in Lomax's day, music remains an important part of life for many of the inmates. Here we feature videos of the group Voices in the Wilderness, and inmates Michael Palmer and Daniel Washington.
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Visit http://www.leadbelly.org/ to learn more about Huddie Ledbetter and the foundation created in his name.
This story was produced by Taki Telonidis in collaboration with City Lore, and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. We thank the Lousiana State Penitentiary for their courtesy.
