MATHEMATICAL:

In 1940, the Mississippi singer Bukka White released the song Parchman Farm Blues as a testament of the two years he spent in the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a notorious prison-labour work farm also known as Parchman Farm - and the site of some of the most remarkable music in American history.

While serving a sentence for shooting a man in the leg, the singer recorded a few songs for the white musicologist John Lomax, but it wasn't until he was out that he wrote and recorded Parchman Farm Blues: a warning to stay off the farm, a lament of the long work day and a cry for deliverance. The song still resonates, demonstrating the chilling, natural power of delta blues, the profound isolation experienced by inmates, the harshness of prison labour camps, and the deep, almost visceral need to let song sustain you; to let the voice carry you out into the open, to freedom. [...]

Nowhere is this truer than Parchman Farm, which today has beds for nearly 5,000 inmate workers, many of whom are continuing its remarkable musical legacy. The producer Ian Brennan wanted to give them the opportunity to be heard. "It's mathematical. It's not philosophical. It shouldn't be politicised," Brennan says. "Mississippi has the highest poverty, the second highest rate of incarceration in the US, and African Americans are incarcerated at least five times the rate of white people. That inequity has no place in even a semblance of a democracy. That's my motivation." In February, he travelled to Parchman Farm to record a Sunday gospel service with the blessing of the prison chaplains, which was released last week as Some Mississippi Sunday Morning.

Brennan has been recording for nearly 40 years, with much of his work documenting underrepresented people and places. In 2011, he won a Grammy for his work in the Sahara on Tinariwen's album Tassili, and he was nominated for another for 2015's Zomba Prison Project in Malawi. After three and a half years (a wait exacerbated by the pandemic), Brennan was finally granted access to the Mississippi State Penitentiary with a week's notice - in part, because of pressure applied by lawsuits filed by the rapper Yo Gotti and Team Roc, the philanthropic arm of Jay-Z's Roc Nation label, on behalf of the inmates, citing inhumane living conditions. [...]

The music of Some Mississippi Sunday Morning is as tragic as it is striking; raw and naked in the baldness of singing and its emotional honesty. The singer and pianist who performs on Give Myself Away, So You Can Use Me, who asked to remain anonymous, submits himself to the song, the concession in the lyrics giving his feelings a form. On Solve My Need, a man identified as M Palmer delivers a booming baritone that hits like a foghorn.

Gospel is a foundation of American music, especially in the south, and its melodies and messages have always lent themselves to times of unrest, as a balm for those seeking hope. But you can hear the way Sunday services are particularly restorative for someone incarcerated - not simply because of the promise of redemption, but the solace of not being alone. The closer, Lay My Burden Down, a communal performance that was the last thing recorded during Brennan's visit, brought a group of divided men together as a unified body, and inmates initially separated along various ideological lines began high-fiving, hugging, smiling, and laughing. [...]

Very early on, Brennan provided me a sort of mission statement for his work: "Ethically and morally, we are obligated to listen to those least listened to or even silenced or censored." For him, questions about encroachment have to take a backseat to what must be heard. "It's very important that the music stands on its own," Brennan says. "Anybody that focuses on the politics of it is doing the artists a disservice. Because the focus should be on their voices." Imbued with a deep longing to be defined by more than the worst moment in their lives, those voices ring out and stir the soul

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