Department of Music Lecture: "Instrument of the State: A Century of Music in Louisiana's Angola Prison"

Ben Harbert, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Performing Arts, Georgetown University

 Title
"Instrument of the State: A Century of Music in Louisiana's Angola Prison"

Abstract
Angola Prison is the largest and one of the most notorious prisons in the United States, built into a slave plantation that Louisiana bought in 1901. It has also been the most musically significant. Harbert’s wor chronicles dozens of musicians and bands over 120 years, showing how music is a vital resource for prisoners. That resource, however, is conditional, as the administration uses music in many ways. The history of this musical dialogue offers a unique perspective on incarceration, politics, and the development of music in the twentieth-century American South. The lecture will highlight the musical, political, and intellectual role of jazz in the prison, from the 1950s through the 1960s. 

Biography
Benjamin J. Harbert is a Professor of Music and Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Georgetown University. He is also the author of American Music Documentary: Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) and director of Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians (Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2013). He is the Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Audiovisual Ethnomusicology.