I doubted this day would happen, until it did. Nearly three years earlier, a fortunate few of us were ushered into a cramped and humid room by Scott Budnick to meet with Calvin Williams, Marcel Woodruff, and Supa Syrup to explore the prospect of our prison hosting Rebirth of Sound, a healing-centered music studio program developed by prison reform activist and Grammy/Oscar/Emmy-winning artist Common.
As I sat in the Valley State Prison (VSP) gymnasium last week awaiting the arrival of Common and his crew, I chewed silently on Dwayne Betts’ refrain about how prison taught him to wait.
Muting the nervous human cacophony around me, I stared quietly at my name listed in the official program launch guide among the two dozen heads selected to participate in this most coveted and rare programming opportunity. Because three decades of confinement has a way of seeding a creeping paranoia under even the best laid plans, I couldn’t help but run my fingers across the font as if to convince myself that the document was real – it was. I felt like Willie Wonka with a golden ticket – that somebody was going to steal from me at any moment.
Scanning the room I quickly did the math, noting that less than half the cats from that first encounter in 2022 were left standing in this circle with me now. After submitting our applications to Community Resource Manager Ford earlier this year, the interview process weeded some people out, while disciplinary infraction screenings disqualified others. The many surreptitious Squid Games-style trappings of prison have a way of swallowing dreams like spice worms on Arrakis. Its not enough to be talented, eager, or even first on the list; staying “program eligible” over an extended period of time by ducking “yard drama” is the secret society jujitsu of it all.
Bob and weave baby – bob and weave.
My connections to Common approximate several degrees of Kevin Bacon-like separation braided together over time and space. Roughly the same age, we’d crossed paths twice before prison, first when I booked him for a Spring Break performance when he still performed as Common Sense, and later while working for Industry Insider Magazine when he performed at the second annual Cypress Hill Smokeout Music Festival. In 2019, after multiple decades of confinement, I finally got to revisit my earliest Coachella memories by standing on the VSP big yard and letting the festival-style stacks of outdoor speakers supporting his booming set pulverize me with familiar force.
The energy of that day six years ago, beginning with the nostalgically distant reverb of the sound check that teasingly echoed through the distant yards, and extending throughout the raucous ebbs and flows of his thunderous set, was the most viscerally satisfying experience of community, connection, and e s c a p i s m I have ever had in prison – nothing will ever come close.
Though he shook many of our hands that day, less than half a dozen of us who were there then, were in that room last week to thank him. I wanted him to know how profound the medicine was that he gave us that day, how it sustained me through the unforeseen Covid quarantines lurking just around the corner, how d o p e it was for him to pop up with Scott on Prison Fellowship podcasts to tap in with us via Edovo, and how that fueled my motivation to create the Barz Behind Bars poetry community that would, without me planning it, eventually feed the journalism machine this article depends upon.
We can never predict how people and circumstances might impact the arc of our life before it happens; but when it does, apprehending and honoring that blessing is a form of reverence that demands our supplication. Common’s performance sent our community into huddles, cyphers, and gatherings that forged even tighter bonds during Covid – it primed us.
Over the course of those intervening three years, there were subsequent roundtables convened by Calvin, Marcel, and Syrup, including a visit from Antony Ablan, who ran the Rebirth studio at Statesville. Our program then found a home within VSP’s education area fortified by concrete, air conditioning, WiFi, and proper acoustics. Rebirth mentors then invited us to propose capstone creative projects and outcome ambitions that our cohort could decide upon and curate during the learning process. We felt included in the ideation of how things might unfold in a way not typically permitted in colonial carceral settings.
When Syrup and Marcel entered the gym, they stepped immediately to the circle – bro hugs and daps ensued – those humanizing “I know you” greetings grown men in prison crave but don’t often get to indulge with free world visitors. Never let anybody tell you normalization isn’t a thing – it is. Solidarity affirms life the way dinner satiates hunger. Creative spaces thrive when artists share common ground. Humans need communion, and these folks have proven to be more than mere facilitators – we’ve shared rooms with them for three years – we are on a journey together.
Louis Baca told me “not many people reverberate more through a prison than Scott – even with Kim and Khloe Kardashian in tow here to film their Hulu series, dude is the Mayor of CDCR in every room – but him moving with Common is a different energy.”
Common traveled, sat with legislators, and rocked shows up and down California with Scott and the departed Michael Latt in service of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition’s youth offender sentencing reform initiatives long before any laws had been passed. He has paid real dues in this space and given of himself, consistently, in a way few artists have. When they walked in together, the room stopped.
This is part 1 of 3
Listen to Ghostwrite Mike’s BLM protest anthem Dirty Cop, published by Columbia University’s MFA society literary magazine Exchange, here. [ link ]
ead Ghostwrite Mike’s Barz Behind Bars: Healing Through Verse curriculum and his Journal of Prison Education Research practitioner paper, here. [ link ]
Watch the Barz Behind Bars Freedom Salute PSA, here. [ link ]
I never thought I’d see Black Sabbath referenced in a Davis Vanguard article. And indeed I still haven’t, as the band name is in the headline, but nowhere in the headline. R.I.P. Ozzie.
It’s in part three I believe
I’ll be there