Songs in the Key of Free
May 11, 20201 min
“I did a bad thing, but I’m not a bad man.” — Bizzy Blackwell
In our Pilot episode of the Prison Prophets podcast, “I Still Cry,” you’ll hear Blackwell speak these words, and tell his powerful story. You’ll also hear the debut of his song, “I Still Cry,” recorded inside SCI-Graterford, a maximum-security prison. We’ll be releasing the song as a single next month. Blackwell’s story and his song are powerful testament to the humanity and goodness of people who are imprisoned.
Prison Prophets presents stories that weigh on us, stories that lift us—through the healing power of music. We have a treasure trove of songs recorded inside, and we’re going to be presenting them to you on this podcast, along with interviews with the 25 men who wrote and recorded the songs for Songs in the Key of Free’s concept album on mass incarceration.
Our mission is to challenge our culture’s impulse to morally scrutinize prisoners, to do a kind of moral audit on the lives of those who have committed a crime, and especially those who have taken a life. We aim to counter the idea that some people possess a kind of inherent criminality. We’re going to show you through music that all of us can counter these assumptions and we’re going to float the radical notion that each of us has the right to love and be loved, no matter what we’ve done or what’s been done to us.
Coming up—Episodes on Friendship, Protest Songs, Romance, the Prison Generation Gap, and Life Without Parole.