Music Presentation, Jail Guitar Doors, Wayne Kramer.
What is music? Music is the hawk’s call. Music is the silence [inaudible]. Music is the wave of motion at night. Music is the bellows of a wolf, the cry of a lion longing for a mate. Music is the moment between light and thunder. Music is the sad, hopeful, healing, and transformative. Music is beauty and beauty is love.
Music must be cultivated at every level in schools because it does detour some youth from the pipeline to prison. Music connects us to the universe. Goddess, God’s, muses, or whatever force that moves you. Music is the post of Mother Earth and a blessing. The act of creating art must set you free and Jail Guitar Doors music program, does just that. We create and flow in the moment. We write down and craft the lyrics and music the first hour and a half. We perform the work at the end of the second hour.
Music opens a moment and hugs the heart. I learned through experience that all of the arts are connected, and to be authentic, and real, art must belong to everyone and no one. It must be shared and nurtured in all levels of society. I first found out I was a poet at San Quintin at [inaudible] an arts and corrections poetry class. It opened the doors to acting, and acting opened the case to writing, and writing opened the windows to being a teaching artist. Made a flute player into drawing. I had no idea I could do any of those things.
I started playing the flute at New Folsom Arts and Corrections when Grammy award winning flutist, Mary Youngblood, came into the art room with her bags of flutes and offered a lesson. I took to it like birds to a wing. And she said I had a natural talent, and that’s all I needed to hear. I sat outside Arts and Corrections with my flute as the blues, rock, and R&B bands played on the inside of the room. I played along with them. People often stopped by and said, I should be in the room jamming too.
I played my flute on the small yard for my wild Canadian geese families, that homesteaded the yard. I serenaded them to sleep with my songs. I set where no humans dare to go. Surrounded by four large goslings and two adults, I became a part of three geese families. But my geese adventures is a story for another time.
(Sound of a cell door closing.) These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
