This historical account explores the rich tradition of music behind bars and shows how policing and prisons have shaped our musical culture from blues to hip-hop.
Asher’s book is a Midnight Special of its own. It’s a fog-piercing down-bound train of a book, better than it had to be ... If these profiles had been straightforward, that might’ve been enough. But Asher is a calm and sophisticated storyteller who picks you up and sets you back down in places you didn’t anticipate. Like a good film director, he knows how to stagger his material ... Taken together, the profiles in The Midnight Special amount to a multilayered indictment of America’s prison system, the largest in the world. None of these men were blameless, but the injustice on display will frequently make you sick to your stomach. The book also underlines sheer human resiliency.
Written with a touch of grace and a recognition of shared humanity. This chronicle is full of little epiphanies: for example, Lead Belly 'dreamt in song . . . and woke singing what he’d heard in his sleep,' and Don McLean’s 'Vincent' inspired Shakur to write music. A well-written and mesmerizing group portrait of five musical outlaws.
A complete history of music in American prisons might be impossible ... Instead, Asher (Never a Lovely So Real, 2019) chose five albums that capture how prison has influenced musicians ... The book is most compelling when he connects these albums to a wider history, as when he links the characters in Tupac Shakur’s raps to the similar downtrodden characters in Lead Belly’s blues. At times, however, the author’s analysis of both music and prisons takes a backseat to the life stories of these musicians ... A rich history of prisons and music, though light on analysis.
