Folsom Inmates Revive Music Program 50 Years After Johnny Cash...Now Rappers Like Common Perform There

This is a truly inspiring story about how things can come full-circle. 

In 1968, renegade songwriter, singer, and sometimes jail-dweller Johnny Cash made music history when he did a free concert from within the walls of Folsom State Prison. It was the super-star's gift to the inmates.

Now, some 50 years later, there are music theory classes for fellow inmates looking to turn their lives around. Roy McNeese Jr., an inmate, is also the teacher of the session.

“When we’re playing, and everybody locks in together, I’m not in prison anymore,” McNeese, 55, told the Los Angeles Times. McNeese is serving a sentence of 33 years to life with possibility of parole on convictions for one count of second-degree murder and one count of attempted second-degree murder.

“McNeese was speaking during a loose band rehearsal in the same dining hall where Cash and his wife, singer June Carter Cash, and their musical entourage performed on January 13, 1968, a session recorded and subsequently released as Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. The album shot to No. 1 on the country charts and helped revitalize his career, which was at a low point at the time largely because of his spiraling substance abuse,” stated the L.A. Times report on this unprecedented turn of musical events.

Cash was a great believer in the power of positive rehabilitation. The Man in Black played his first performance for incarcerated men in 1957 at Huntsville State Prison in Texas, then did another at California’s San Quentin State Prison in 1958. And then his concert from Folsom Prison ten years later became a milestone in music history.

“Photos from 1968 show a prison population that was largely Anglo, with a smattering of Latinos among them. Today the inmates, who number about 2,500, are predominantly black, Latino and Asian—hardly a target demographic for vintage country music,” says the report. “Consequently, the musicians at Folsom have formed hip-hop, hard rock/heavy metal, Latin rock, alt-rock, smooth jazz and progressive rock ensembles within Folsom’s walls.”

And now, the entertainers who come into the prison to keep Cash’s tradition alive, have changed with the times as well—they better-reflect their so-called “captive audience.”

There was a performance in August by Chicago rapper, actor and film producer Common, who last year won the Academy Award for the song he wrote with John Legend, Glory, for the film Selma. He came to Folsom this year on his “Hope and Redemption” tour that visited four prisons in four days.

“Common was really good at connecting with people,” said David Sims, 38, an inmate who was there for the concert. “We wish there were more performances like that. It really brought everybody’s morale up for a while. Once we get back out there, if we can participate in society, we can be more positive.”

Common later said in an interview that "visiting these prisons and speaking with the men and women inside … had a profound impact on me. I believe it is my duty to lend my voice to the voiceless and stand with the men and women in prison who have been silenced for so long. We need a justice system that is a tool for rehabilitation rather than a weapon for punishment."

The value of programs like this was studied by the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. The report said that “Prison inmates who receive general education and vocational training are significantly less likely to return to prison after release and are more likely to find employment than peers who do not receive such opportunities.”

In other words, music can help set folks free…and put them on the right path moving forward. 

What better wish could we have for the new year? #2018