Smuggling in Humanity: Musicking through Prison Walls

Abstract

In this article, the two authors talk about their vastly different trajectories that span international geographies and contrasting circumstances. By chance, their lives intersected in a music education program in an American prison. They trace their lifeworlds and how their musical engagement was a reciprocal learning experience for both of them. The article describes the “Empowering Song” music education approach that had its genesis in American prisons. The authors also share the experiential learning that has marked their collaboration, a relationship that has benefited them socially, emotionally, and politically. As a liberation pedagogy, the Empowering Song approach has wider implications, from general music and professional settings to community music in peace-building and forced migration circumstances.