About this episode

Colin Asher discusses his book on the impact of the criminal justice system on American music and the lives of various artists.

Virtual Memories Show 681: Colin Asher “The creation of culture is what marks us as human beings, and the fact that everybody has that desire connects us to each other.” With his amazing new book, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music (WW Norton), author Colin Asher explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We talk about how Elmo Hope’s Sounds from Rikers Island album inspired the book, how he chose the five artists to focus on — Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White , and Tupac Shakur —, the history of the carceral state, criminality and the popular images of Black and white “outlaw” artists, and how many artists’ careers were shaped, derailed, inspired by prisons. We get into the tightrope act of using Johnny Cash as a counterpoint to the racial dynamics of the book (as well as the work Cash did for prison reform), why he had to close the book with the story of Tupac and his mother, Afeni Shakur , and how hip-hop developed in response to America’s mass incarceration movement, how the philosophy of incarceration shifted from…

People in this episode

Host: Gil Roth

Guest: Colin Asher

Topics covered

• American music
• criminal justice system
• prison history
• racial dynamics
• art and society
• hip-hop
• music education

Keywords

• Colin Asher
• American music
• criminal justice
• prison
• hip-hop
• art
• racial dynamics
• music education

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Musicambia

Books & works: THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music, Sounds from Rikers Island

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