Conversation with Benjamin J. Harbert

Dr. Nancy Groce and Jesse Hawkin of the American Folklife Center sit down with Benjamin J. Harbert, Professor of Music and Chair of the Performing Arts Department, Georgetown University. Benjamin J. Harbert is an ethnomusicologist and author of the book “Instrument of the State: A Century of Music in Louisiana's Angola Prison" (Oxford University Press, 2023). The book and his recent documentary on the same topic, “Follow Me Down,” were the subjects of his talk at the Library. 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 work 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. In particular, this lecture will highlight the musical, political, and intellectual role of jazz in the prison, from the 1950s through the 1960s, and reference historic fieldwork materials that are now housed the American Folklife Center Archive. The Botkin Lecture series is part of AFC's ongoing public programming activities highlighting the fields of folklife, ethnomusicology, oral history and related disciplines; foregrounding its archival holdings; and fulfilling its congressionally mandated mission.
For transcript and more information, visit www.loc.gov/item/webcast-11306