Prison Radio Co-Director Jennifer Beach and I showed up at SCI Huntingdon on July 14th 1992 with microphones, maxed out credit cards and organizing skills.
The Shure SM58 microphone was well worn, and sticky. Resin left over from being taped in place. Heavy and solid it picks up the gravel crunching under our feet. Twenty foot high steel massive doors, boom and echo, as they close. Keys, jangling in rhythm on the belt of a burly guard who walks past. Jennifer Beach and I walk through the massive gates onto death row at SCI Huntingdon.
As I sat down and began to plug it all in, Mumia said, “What have you got, there”. He huffed with slight indignation, “Sony is better, you know. I swore by mine.”
I retorted, “Get yourself out here and try this, you will be begging me to borrow my Marantz. See this 3rd head recording button and the super cardio wireless headset mic. You will love the sound”.
Mumia pulls on the headset mic, up over dreadlocks. A task made far more difficult by the metal handcuffs that are tightly notched so his palms are immobile locked facing each other. His fingers can move, and thank god there was enough chain, loose chain to his waist that his hands were free to go up and over. “Watch the beard” I say.
Between us a thick Plexiglas wall framed on the bottom by an open space like a transom. 12 inches covered in a very fine mesh. Only the air and a few syllables escape. The wireless gear had to be walked around by a guard. For over an hour the grating regular cycle and hum coming out of the air conditioning unit, makes the tape unusable. After a bit I got more comfortable at the table, listening intently, doing pickups, Jennifer got the guard to turn off the air conditioning, which thankfully, got rid of the grating hum. The sound of room tone fills the space, and his booming beautiful voice has more room to shape the metal oxide cassette tapes. Metal cassette tapes because it was July 14th 1992. It was not 1994 when we brought in a Sony digital tape DAT machine to record, and a portable Nagra reel to reel machine. NPR brought the Nagra because all of NPR’s digital DATs were in South Africa covering the election campaign of Nelson Mandela. Then and now, we keep working to get great sound.
Together, after 35 years of survival, work towards freedom, recording thousands of radio essays, and publishing his trilogy Murder Inc, and being the midwife to Beneath the Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader: Mumia and Prison Radio are still looking for the sweet spot in sound. |