Only Time: Musical Means to the Personal, the Private, and the Polis at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women

Abstract

��� In Louisiana, women make up 6.7 percent of the total inmate population. Of the 2,680 women serving time in the state, 1,076 are housed at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW), fifteen miles south of Baton Rouge in the town of St. Gabriel. The remainder of the female prisoner population is scattered across the state in local parish jails. 1 LCIW is the only state facility for women, housing women of all custody levels including two on death row. To assume that the prisoners at LCIW are like the men at the other eleven state prisons would be to miss important aspects of how we incarcerate women. By extension, we would also miss important aspects about how music is practiced and valued there. S peaking only generally to these differences, there are fewer musical opportunities for imprisoned women. At Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, the men’s prison next door, inmates form bands, rehearse, perform yard shows, and teach each other to play instruments. At LCIW, there is only one sponsored church choir. There are a few guitars and a keyboard used for church services but the administration does not create opportunities for teaching instruments, citing a lack of funding, space, and available personnel needed for supervision. 2 One woman can play the guitar. Despite these obstacles, music is everywhere on the Benjamin J. Harbert is assistant professor of music at Georgetown University. He received his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Harbert coedited the volume The Arab Avant-Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). Harbert also directed and produced a film about music in three Louisiana prisons entitled Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians (2012; Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2013). Currently, he is writing a book entitled “Angola Bound: A Comprehensive History of Music at Louisiana State Penitentiary, 1933–2012.”