Scattered Thoughts on Prison Chants and Exploitation

I’m listening to prison chants and I’m shocked at how much they resemble American Indian rain songs and dance songs.

Below is an beautiful and heartbreaking chain gang chant, "It Makes A Long-Time Man Feel Bad," recorded by Alan Lomax in 1947 at the Mississippi Parchman Penitentiary. And then, a little bit further, is a video of an American Indian drum circle chant (tribe unknown) filmed at the San Diego Earth Day Festival in 2008.

Listen to the two performances for a bit.

Play Song

I love how there are shared musical elements between the two-- the rhythmic thumping, the almost anguished yelling and moaning. And I know they were performed for two entirely different purposes, and I know that the authenticity of both could be questioned. (Namely because the act of recording something imposes the own reality of that something upon it, a debate we see a lot in discussions of reality television. By imposing a reality, it alters the original state of performance perhaps irreparably. To rephrase, as the prisoners and the Indians knew that they were being watched, they subconsciously altered their performance, maybe even changing the original intent. This is especially a concern for the American Indian video, as it was filmed at a San Diego festival, far removed from the original tribal settings of the chant. But I digress. ) I have all of these potential objections to both of these pieces of music, but in the end, I can toss them out the window. Mainly this reminds me of the gloriously transmittable power of music. Both of these are strong, powerful songs, full of emotion and fury and sadness and possibly even guilt. Did one influence the other? Does that question even matter? 

The necessity that caused both of these things' existence, which is to say the corrupt legal system that led to the chain gang chant and the brutal exploitation of native culture that led to the drum circle chant being performed at a widely-attended festival, is horrible thing. But the fact that so much beauty and similarity was able to arise from this suffering speaks miles about the redemptive power of art and music, and the terrible beauty that such things can contain.