inTUNE: Stories of Connection through Music

Remember, Be Love: Dr. Mary Cohen on Music, Prison Choirs, and Forgiveness

• Melissa Martiros • Season 1 • Episode 6

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In this episode of inTUNE: Stories of Connection Through Music, Dr. Melissa Martiros sits down with Dr. Mary Cohen, Professor of Music Education at the University of Iowa and co-leader of IMAJIN, for a wide-ranging conversation about what music makes possible when it's built on genuine relationship.

Mary's signature project was the Oakdale Community Choir, which she led from 2009 to 2020,  bringing together nearly 100 incarcerated and non-incarcerated singers who collectively wrote 150 original songs. When COVID halted the choir and the Iowa Department of Corrections chose not to restart it, Mary created the Inside/Outside Collaborative Songwriting Project, pairing incarcerated and non-incarcerated musicians to build relationships through original songwriting entirely outside the prison system's permission structure.

Key Themes

  • Music as a tool for building common humanity across the inside/outside divide
  • What it means to grieve a program and keep going anyway
  • Collaborative songwriting when physical access is denied
  • Generative justice as a framework for responding to harm with care

The Pulse: Practical Strategies for Building Engagement Programs Rooted in Care, Reciprocity, and Community

  1. Design for relationship, not just participation
  2. Center reciprocity from the start
  3. Know the system you're working inside
  4. Make creative authorship central
  5. Grieve what ends — then build what's next
  6. Find your Jim

Music Featured

  • "May the Stars Remember Your Name" — written by Kenneth Bailey
  • "Remember Be Love" — written by Michael Blackwell and Rebecca Swanson
  • "Four Times Bonita" — written by Efrain Umaña
  • "10 Years (In Memory of Mike)" — written by JD Mack and Matt Kearney
  • "How Shall We Come Together" — written by Maggie Wheeler, performed with the Oakdale Community Choir

Intro and outro music written and produced by opporTUNEity students.

Find Dr. Mary Cohen & Her Work

Maggie Wheeler:

  • Maggie's Bandcamp: https://maggiewheeler.bandcamp.com/
  • Maggie's Choir: https://maggiewheeler.bandcamp.com/

Correction: Correction: Over its 11 years, the Oakdale Community Choir included a total of 300 members—164 inside (incarcerated) singers and 136 outside (non-incarcerated) singers. At its peak, approximately 80 singers performed together at one time.

Get in Touch https://opporTUNEitymusic.org/intune

Episode produced and edited by Angela Senicz. https://opporTUNEitymusic.org

Learn more about our programs, stories, and community at https://opporTUNEitymusic.org

SPEAKER_00

Alright team, remember the message. Sing it from your soul.

SPEAKER_01

And for two hours on a Tuesday night, nobody thinks you're in prison. I knew that I had a life since I knew that this was my life. I could either do the rest of my life in Maka as an animal. Or I could attempt to you know try to keep my mind right. I came with an open mind and I wrote maybe 13 songs. It allowed me to be part of something good that was connected with the outside, but also something good that was connected with the inside.

SPEAKER_05

You have life, but the gang life, that's not who you are. And when you come to a camp like this, see the choir and see how open it is. You start to feel huge. This is the first prison I've ever been in where there's more positive point on the negative. And that's a heck of a thing for prison.

SPEAKER_07

Welcome to Intune, Stories of Connection Through Music. This is the podcast where we explore stories from educators, artists, and community leaders who are using music to break down barriers and build community. We'll look at how inclusion shows up in private studios, classrooms, in community programs, and even inside correctional facilities. And I'll share a few stories and strategies that might just shift the way you think about teaching and connection through music. Whether you're a teacher, a musician, a parent, or someone who simply believes in the power of music to bring people together, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Dr. Melissa Martiros, a music educator, consultant, and the founder of Opportunity, an organization that uses music to connect people across backgrounds, bridge divides, and open doors. Today I'm joined by Dr. Mary Cohen, Professor of Music Education at the University of Iowa, lead author of Music Making in U.S. Prisons, Listening to Incarcerated Voices, and co-leader of the International Music and Justice Inquiry Network, Imagine Caring Communities, a collaboratively run organization with members from over 25 countries working at the intersection of music making and the criminal legal system. Dr. Cohen's signature project was the Oakdale Community Choir, which she led from 2009 to 2020, bringing together nearly 100 incarcerated and non-incarcerated singers who collectively wrote 150 original songs and performed together for the public. More recently, she created the Inside Outside Songwriting Collaboration Project, preparing incarcerated and non-incarcerated partners to build relationships through original songwriting. For over two decades, she has been doing something quietly radical. Using music to build the kind of human connection that walls were designed to prevent. Dr. Cohen, welcome to Into.

SPEAKER_00

Mary, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Mary Cohen. I am a music education professor at the University of Iowa, where I've been facilitating music education classes for undergraduate and graduate students since 2007. Previous to that, I taught elementary children in the Kansas City region. While I was still teaching elementary children, I learned about a choir called the East Hill Singers. It's a program that Elvira Vaux started at age 70 when Elvira went to the Lansing Correctional Facility, leading men in the minimum security unit, and then taking those men to a public concert where lots of outside volunteers came and joined them. And I went to a concert in January of 2002 and blown away at the idea of people who are incarcerated singing in unison and harmony from the society where they have been accused of committing a crime. So it planted a seed for me to explore this topic in more detail, which I have been doing my whole career.

SPEAKER_07

What was your dissertation on?

SPEAKER_00

I wrote about Christopher Small's concept of musicing toward a theory of choral singing pedagogy in prison context. And pretty much my whole career I've tested out that theory, which basically the theory is if it's facilitated effectively, choral singing in prison has a space for qualitative and quantitative growth. And I've published a lot of research about this work through the actual choral singing, my creative scholarship leading the Oakdale Prison Community Choir for 11 years in Iowa. The research indicates that choral singing will provide a space for incarcerated individuals to build a sense of self-esteem, to be more inspired to continue to study and to learn more. It definitely improves social growth and well-being. The bigger thing that I've really discovered, Melissa, through this work is the need for people not in prison to understand our common humanity.

SPEAKER_07

I want to kind of peel back a little bit if you're okay with kind of going back to like your childhood experiences with music.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, great question, Melissa. I grew up playing piano. I was inspired by my sister Judy. So when I was in third grade, I had the privilege of getting to take piano lessons. By the time I was in seventh grade, I started playing for worship services, really seeing the value of music making as a function in human life. And I knew I wanted to do something with music and with people. And so I thought I'd study music therapy. And I began my program at the University of Kansas as a music therapy major. And then one of the classes I took as an undergraduate with Dr. Alice Andero said, It's hard to find a job as a music therapist. So I shifted from music therapy to music education, continuing to be curious about the role of music broader than music for a performance. I've directed a lot of choirs in churches. So that gave me an opportunity to really think about the role of music as a function in worship, for example. Choral singing as a way to build community among the participants within that church choir. I've been very involved since 2008 when I started my job at the University of Iowa with a community music activity commission.

SPEAKER_07

Did you have any experiences with people in prison?

SPEAKER_00

I had no connection with prison. I just always thought it did not make sense to put a lot of people together without some kind of an educational program, as we learn so much by the people we're around. In 2002, when I noticed that this choir called the East Hill Singers were performing just a few miles from where I lived in Kansas City in Overland Park, Kansas, I was like, wow, I'm gonna go to this. It looks so interesting. I knew people involved in Arts in Prison. Arts in Prison is the nonprofit organization that began in November of 1998 after Elvira Both did this incredible sing-along with Robert Shaw. It was his last out-of-town engagement before he died in January of 99. And the seed money that was raised from that began the nonprofit organization Arts in Prison. So when I was in graduate school and studying prison choirs, I worked for that organization as a special projects coordinator. And my job was to recruit people to teach arts classes in the Lansing, Kansas prison, train them, get them going, help them with reflecting and improving their work.

SPEAKER_07

So you kind of evolved into it.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And the more I did it, the more I'm curious. There's just so much power and value in a situation where somebody uses music as a means for self-expression and community building and connection.

SPEAKER_07

Can we dive more into the Oakdale Community Choir? You've kind of referenced it loosely, but for the listeners, could you maybe talk a little bit more about how that came about and what it looked like at its peak form?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I sure can. And it's actually not out yet, but I've recently written a book chapter about my grief for the end of a project that was really central to my creative scholarship, to my heart, that this project's gone is hard. And I'm still in the grieving process. I got the email from the warden on March 31st of 2023, indicating they would not allow it to restart post-COVID. I'm sorry. So I had mentioned that work as a special projects coordinator with Arts in Prison. And part of the training that we would always do with someone that was newly to teach in the prison is we would have them go to another class in the prison to observe, to notice how the teachers interact with the staff, to really provide an introduction. Even if someone was going in to teach speech, they might walk in and watch a yoga class or something. So I did that myself. My colleague at the time in music therapy introduced me to a music therapist that was contracted out to go into Oakdale. So I went with Kyle Wilhelm. He was a music therapist working in Iowa at the time and watched his class and had a little introduction to the prison. Another colleague who had been volunteering for 10 years, Dorothy Weston was going in as a chaplain and she really understood some of the personalities of the people running the prison at that time. So she was a consultant. Oh, and the here's the big reason why I was able to even start it. Another person who was at the time a colleague in the College of Education's curriculum library, her husband was the warden. Paula was really into singing. And I'm given that I was brand new to campus, I had this idea. She was more than likely encouraged her husband to at least have a meeting with me. So I did, I had a meeting with him and with some of the other staff. And it began in spring of 2009 as a pilot to see how it would work. I had 22 outside volunteers and 22 inside singers. And we did our pilot semester, concluded it with a concert called Peace and Place. The prison allowed 85 people to come in to be in the audience. And from there, we did a summer session. At the end of the summer, the warden met with me and said, Sorry, Mary, summertime is just too difficult. Just have the choir in the fall and the spring. I said, All right, I can do that. Is there any way I could do a songwriting workshop in the summer months? And he said, sure. So I was able to start a songwriting workshop. It's really central to this project. Melissa, we created 150 original songs in 10 years. And the choir sang half of those at concerts. These songs are still on the Oakdale Choir website for people to take and use in any way they wish. Then it just grew. Okay, then guess what happens? This is the sparkly part of the story. In the fall of 2015, a new warden began. His name's Jim McKenney. The second day of his job at Oakdale, he stayed late, comes into a choir rehearsal. We shift to the song Old Irish Blessing. You know, may the road rise to meet you, may the wind be at your back. And at the very end of that song, he quietly said, That's how I want my time to be at Oakdale. And that fall, we had a reflective writing exchange. So every week we would provide a menu of writing prompts. One man said, He felt like what we were doing in the choir was creating a community of caring. I'm like, ah, that's exactly what we want to be doing, is creating a community of caring. And that was the first season that Jim was the warden. So it was really, really powerful. The week after he first came, he brought his wife to listen to a little bit of the choir rehearsal. Jim was so supportive. In addition to increasing how many people were in the choir, we had over 80 people.

SPEAKER_07

Were the participants who were incarcerated? Was it voluntary or were they forced to be there?

SPEAKER_00

All voluntary. Okay. Many of the inside singers did not have visits. And so the choir was their weekly visit. And Jim would allow even children or nieces or nephews who are under 18 to be in the audience, which was actually his choice.

SPEAKER_07

Because as you know, wardens have opportunity is different because we don't operate a choir, but at the end of every semester there's a performance and participants are allowed to invite family members in. Participants will see the songwriting project to the end just so that they can have the physical interaction with their children that they haven't had in years in some of their cases, because they aren't allowed those contact visits at the Worcester County House of Correction, but it sounds similar, right? And all of that's because the sheriff has allowed that. The human element of watching that is a lot. It's it's emotional.

SPEAKER_00

It's huge. Yeah. Yeah, and we would have choir inside singers who would create songs for their family member. I'll never forget when one man wrote a song called Four Times Bonita for his wife, who sat in the front row with their two grown daughters, and he sang this love song to her.

SPEAKER_03

I was inspired to compose the song in Melody for my cielito, which means peace of heaven. Who is my wife? I sang the song for her originally in Spanish for her birthday last year over the phone. She is here tonight accompanied with my two princesses. I know you feel uneasy when I do things like this in public. So please just close your eyes. And think that there is only you and me and the world we have worked together for all these many years. I name a song four times bonita, and you didn't know this.

SPEAKER_02

Because four is the number of completeness, and you have complete me in so many beautiful ways, and I will dedicate this song to you always loving each other as we promise to each other.

SPEAKER_00

Not only did Jim build this choir, he collaborated, Melissa, with the president of the University of Iowa to offer a program called University of Iowa Liberal Arts Beyond Bars. It was a college credit-bearing program. Lots of different classes were offered. It was such a transformation of energy in that prison. And there's other research studies when higher education programs happen in prisons. It's transformative. He even allowed the Soweto Gospel Choir to come into the prison, and we created an event called a musical learning exchange with an inside think tank and an outside think tank. The theme was Changes We Choose. So there was a time where I facilitated conversation among all of the participants, and many times for group singing, including an incredible singer named Maggie Wheeler. I was looking for the right song to do in this project, and I came across a song she wrote called How Shall We Come Together? We shall come together singing. She's also an incredible song leader based in Los Angeles. When I asked, could we use your song in this prison with a Soweto Gospel choir? Nike said, wait, you want to use my song in a prison with a Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa. I'm coming to Iowa. Oh, that's cool. It was a highlight of my life, that event. It was incredible.

SPEAKER_07

I'm sure that there are hundreds of stories that you have from your time with the Oakdale Community Choir and through some of the other projects that you've worked on that kind of embody what this work can do, like the positive impact it can have.

SPEAKER_00

There's so many stories. One that comes to mind though, I do write about this in the book that Stuart Paul Duncan and I wrote. It's called Music Making in U.S. Prisons, Listening to Incarcerated Voices. It came out in 2022. Kenneth Bailey, he wrote a song called May the Stars Remember Your Name. So she came to a concert and said, Hey, could we take Kenneth's song back to Warrenville, where the Fabulous Females program was? And Kid was like, sure. So they also at the time had a partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And one of the folks from the CSO was Yo-Yo Ma. So Yo-Yo Ma came into the Warrenville Youth Center with a group of musicians from the CSO, and they had Kenneth's song arranged for string instruments. And I got to be there and tell the story of how the song came about. And Yo-Yo Ma said, you know, this kind of a project could not happen without collaboration. Kenneth knew about Yo-Yo Ma. And when I told him that Yo-Yo Ma was gonna perform his song, he just like almost had a heart attack. Yeah, that's amazing. He was planning to see Yo-Yo Ma before he got into prison. So it was an incredible opportunity. And then after that, Kenneth gets out of prison. And guess what? There was a huge, huge flood in Iowa City that the whole Iowa River that runs through campus flooded. The music building was one of many buildings that was destroyed. So from June 2008 to 2016, during that 10-year period, we did not have a music building. The Hansure Auditorium was not around. It was an incredibly wild time to be a faculty member at the School of Music. When Hanture did come back to life the fall of 2016, guess who comes to Hansure? Yo-Yo Ma. Kenneth was out of prison. Kenneth and I go together to see Yo-Yo Ma perform. And it was just so special to be able to go with him. And, you know, after that opportunity for Yo-Yo Ma to play his piece, because Yo-Yo Ma is such an incredible citizen artist. So that was super powerful. And Kenneth has written other songs. He wrote a song called Watching Over You, which honored his grandmother after his grandmother died. And Kenneth gave permission for me to use that song after my sister died unexpectedly. My dear friend Kim Noler, I'm no Kim since five years old. So Kim sang Kenneth's song. I played piano at my sister's funeral. Oh wow. It was so powerful. And that's a song that a former graduate student, Kat Wilson, took Kenneth's lyrics and wrote the music. Kat, when she was in graduate school at the University of Iowa, came with me and did a lot of work with songwriting. I'll never forget there was one session, a songwriting session, where a gentleman, Perry Miller, he was a songwriter extraordinaire, so good with lyrics. He took the ideas from another guy in the choir named Chris. Chris fell in love with his wife while he was in prison. Chris wrote all these ideas about this woman that he loved. Perry took it and wrote this gorgeous set of lyrics. And Chris's fiance, her name was Mary. And at the songwriting workshop, Perry read the lyrics. Kat Wilson burst out, this beautiful melody. And then when we get to the concert, well, guess what? I don't want to stand there conducting these ten men that were performing the song, Mary, Mary, your heart is in my hand. This is a love song to Mary. And I am not going to stand there with these men singing to me. And so one of my other students conducted the song, and I just sat there and listened.

SPEAKER_07

Your Oakdale Community Choir really was a prime example of community engagement. You bring community members into the facility and you expose them to those personal relationships and everyone comes out changed.

SPEAKER_00

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07

I commend you for that. I hear you that it is tremendously heartbreaking not be able to return to that because it had so much life and so much energy. What happened? So you grew it and in 2020 COVID just took it out by the knees. How come they're not recommitting to it now?

SPEAKER_00

There was an incredible tragedy, awful tragedy. In March of 2021, two men in the Anamosa, Iowa prison tried to escape. This is in the midst of the COVID lockdown. They murdered Lorena Schulte, a nurse, and Robert McFarlane, a correctional officer. Is this where you were working? No, it's a different prison about 45 minutes from the Oakdale prison. The whole Iowa Department of Corrections just clamped down. There wasn't any volunteer going in at that time. But yet their response is that we don't want volunteers to come in without any supervision. So they were deciding what they would bring back. I had a feeling the new warden that started after Jim retired probably wouldn't want the choir because I had heard he did not do much with programming. So I sent him a message in January of 2023 saying proposing a Songwriting workshop. He never responded to that message, even though he said that he received it. Instead, the message from him saying they'd reviewed what programs they could bring back post-COVID and determined the choir was when they were not able or willing. They said it was a staff issue, they didn't have space. So after that happened, I mean I was so angry. But then finally, I'm like, okay, what is next? What is next? Praying and reflecting. What should I be doing next? The Oakdale Choir was about building relationships between people in prison and not in prison through music making. How could I do that in a smaller micro level? So I created the Inside Outside Collaborative Songwriting Project. In that summer of 23, I partnered several of the Oakdale choirmen with different musicians. Had it set up where if the musician on the outside was a student who needed financial support, I had a third fiscal sponsor who was an outside choir member who knew their partner in the prison. We would meet together, the three of us. And so we created quite a few songs that summer. And then I started receiving letters from musicians in the Anamosa prison. The folks at that prison decided to remove their music recording studio as still part of a punishment for those two men that murdered those two staff members. Iowa has life without parole, meaning there are people in prison that serve really long sentences. And music was how they would survive. And they're like, what can you do? So I rebuilt the inside-outside collaborative songwriting March of last year, March of 25, and getting a little bit of funding for some of the outside songwriters. We share it out on the International Music and Justice Inquiry Network Zoom calls. The last one we had last fall, some of the incarcerated family members joined. And that was really, really powerful. Unfortunately, the men in the prison are not able to connect. And I can do this project really without reaching out for permission from the prison. So we've created now a band camp channel that's called Songs of Generative Justice. Generative justice is a fairly new criminological theory that talks about building solidarity with people who have lived experience in prison in order to be more responsive.

SPEAKER_07

What it sounds like, and and I just want you to correct me if I have this wrong, but you have incarcerated people who are reaching out to you with songs they've written inside, and are they sending them to you to then be performed on the outside?

SPEAKER_00

Nope, not at all. This is about building relationships, just like the Oakdale choir was building relationships through singing together. This is building relationships through collaboratively writing songs together. Okay. So how are you doing that? It's hard. Uh it's very hard because the prison will not allow the men to share out any audio files they've created. So they use a system called Core Links, which is a clunky email system where they can write to each other. Some people have figured out a way to send tablature through Core Links. So I share that out with any outside musician starting the project. Ideally, they have a phone call and they can sing. Okay. That's what, like Rome Alone, the musician who's on death row in in North Carolina, they've got a system set up. It's, I can't even describe it to you because it sounds so complicated, but some of the musicians working in the inside-outside collaborative songwriting have followed the model. There's an incredible musician named L. LaDon. She's in Connecticut. Her program is In Just Us. She's a musician who's formerly incarcerated. And so she's collaborating with one of the musicians in Anamosa. Okay. So, in other words, to answer your question, each partnership kind of does it a different way, but it's a collaboratively created song. I see. So how do you get the participants? Unfortunately, the Iowa Department of Corrections hates my guts, according to some of the outside song, inside musicians. Until we have new leadership in the state, yeah.

SPEAKER_07

Okay. So you have like this kind of underground network of people who know how to find you, and then you have outside musicians who know, and you're just kind of making that connection. Exactly. It's a remarkable. I mean, the ideas are remarkable, and the courage that you have to kind of move forward is also remarkable and noteworthy. Would you say those are the two big programs that you've kind of created? Is the the Oakdale Community Choir and then this other kind of follow-up, the Inside Outside songwriting collaboration, which is a really cool idea.

SPEAKER_00

There's also a little sub-related project called Iowa. This is a name that was created by one of the inside songwriters, inside outside working artists. So, for example, if you look at the Bandcamp channel, there's this really cool image of an elephant, which is an art piece by an incarcerated artist. I don't have funding to give those visual artists in prison, but I can work to find a partner for them because it's all about building relationships. So pen pal partners. So that's something that could grow if I had a little more people power. And there's, you know, possibility if I get used some different grant funding to pay some students to help build that more. And I do have an incredible undergraduate research fellow right now who's helping with the Bandcamp channel. Cool. I'm also facilitating a singing circle. We meet once a month, and it's called Singing Love into Life. And we've been providing rides from Hope House. It's a halfway house in Coralville. Guys can sign up and then we'll provide transportation. And I also do a Tuesday pilot group this semester because I really miss weekly music making. And the music group is called Music and Play, where I facilitate community singing, improvisation. I'm a student of the Music for People free improv approach. And Interplay, I'm a certified Interplay leader, which is a system that uses storytelling for community building. And so that's that's like an ongoing thing. And then the Imagine Network, which happens whenever we have a meeting, which was very regular for a while, but not recently.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah, I want to expand on that a little bit too. So imagine I-M-A-J-I-N. Could you talk a little bit about what that is and what it looks like?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we have boy, I think maybe 300 or so, 300 people on the email list from like over 25 countries, people that are working at the intersection of music making and the criminal legal system. Some are practitioners, some are researchers, many formerly incarcerated members on the network, and we gather on Zoom for people to share out their work and to connect, build relationships and support one another in our work.

SPEAKER_07

Would you say they influence one another as well?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite things to do, Melissa, is introduce people to each other. I love being that yeast that connects people with one another. So this is a a fun way to do that.

SPEAKER_07

You know, if you take like a bird's eye view from where you are now and the trajectory that kind of got you there, if you just feel like you were just kind of on a path that sort of unfolded in front of you as it was like meant to, even though you didn't necessarily know where you were going as you were following it.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe you know the author John Paul Letterock. He has that book, The Art and Soul of Peacebuilding. I use that in a class I teach called Peacebuilding Singing and Writing in a Prison Choir. I started that class when we had the Oakdale choir, and now that the Oakdale choir is over, I've adapted the class. And in the book, John Paul he talks a lot about serendipity.

SPEAKER_07

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And so it's a mix. I mean, I am regularly, like on a daily basis, reflecting on discernment and intention in what I'm doing to make the hope that I'm putting my energy in a place that makes sense, that I'm living, you know, working to figure out my purpose and my dharma. In fact, my last appointment with my counselor, always talking about purpose. She's like, Mary, allow the purpose to come to you. So that's something I'm still exploring.

SPEAKER_07

I get it. Yep. Yeah. You know, as you were moving through grad school and you were moving into this experience of teaching and correctional facilities, you obviously had a good deal of training or traditional training. I'm sure there were deficits or areas where you felt like you were kind of learning as you went, and now you're on the other side. What are some fundamental skills that you really want your students to gain that maybe you didn't have when you walked into Oakdale for the first time?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, wow, so much. And I have incredible students at the University of Iowa School of Music. The students earn a performance degree and a bachelor's of arts in music education, and they are outstanding. A lot of the readings we read focus on the value of building relationships and being connected with the people that you are working with. So one of the projects that the students do is actually something I did back when I was teaching at Stanley Elementary, a variation of it. So it's called the Family Heritage Project. The students pick someone in their family, living or deceased, and learn as much as they can about that person and what the role of music is in their life. The person does not have to be a professional musician. Just what how is music part of their life? And every time the students come through with a deeper awareness of their family member that they studied, a deeper awareness of how music can really impact human lives. And it teaches them that building a positive relationship or and going into the classroom without any assumptions is vital.

SPEAKER_07

So that's kind of the biggest skill that you want your students to take away is not like walking into a situation where you assume that you know. Right.

SPEAKER_00

As well as affirming, affirming everything they can about their students. Always assume the positive and always look for the things the students are doing that are positive.

SPEAKER_07

Based on your experience and your research, do you see arts programming as a band-aid on a broken system or something that can drive deeper structural change?

SPEAKER_00

Both. Band-aid is so sad. But the deeper structural change is going to happen when people that are leading music programs in prisons are aware of the problems. And that was a big thing that when I first went in, I did not understand enough about how harmful the prison systems are. We're responding to conflict with punishment rather than getting the deeper question of who has been harmed, how can we heal those harms? What are some ways that actually address the crime survivors? We don't have that in our system. It's just so us and them. And putting a human being in a cage does not solve things. And in Iowa, the way they treat people who have mental health issues, they will put someone who has attempted suicide in a solitary confinement cell. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, this is unreal. Thank goodness. Now we have books like my colleague Andre de Quadros and Emily Amarine have an incredible book called Empowering Song, Music Education from the Margins, which is like the Apollo Fuery Pedagogy of the Oppressed for music educators. A lot of that work was birthed in the music work that Andre did in Massachusetts prisons. If people will pay attention to the music that's collaboratively written between people in prison, people not in prison, those voices lead the way on transformation and change.

SPEAKER_07

I wonder if taking that a step further and also helping to amplify those voices. Yes. I'm thinking about the participants in our program. They write songs, their voices are being put out there, and they're certainly saying what they need to say, but without an avenue to elevate it and get it out there further, then it doesn't necessarily have the kind of impact that it could, right?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07

This obviously is your area of passion and purpose. What drives you?

SPEAKER_00

I care about people. I care about the broader society. But it's really a sense of care for the people that I've built relationships with. One of the original songs, Ten Years in Memory of Mike, was written in honor of this gentleman's good friend who died. In prison, he was ill, but we don't have good medical care. And so by the time he was diagnosed with cancer, this gentleman died ten days later. Just hearing the stories. It's hard. It's a matter of balancing it out with going to fun music concerts and finding joy in the music. I mean, back when we had the Oakdale choir, it was hard and fun at equal amounts, you know? Yep. What gives you hope? Your podcast is definitely giving me hope. I'm super happy to have met you and to learn about your work and would like to make more connections between the work you're doing and lots of other people doing similar work. I feel like there's been a pretty strong shift toward the awareness of the need for social fabric. For example, I'm involved in another leadership group that's really taking that collaborative leadership model. That gives me hope. So if we get to the deeper common value of someone's different views, then we can find a space for welcoming different views.

SPEAKER_07

I can't wait to see how the rest of your career unfolds. You're just constantly bridging gaps, like not just between incarcerated people and other individuals on the outside, but you're just like a wealth of knowledge in terms of research and literature. Music is your tool, it's your resource, but you're so focused on connection and peace building.

SPEAKER_00

The very last concert we had, Melissa, with the theme was Remember Be Love. Michael Blackwell, uh graduate, he's he's an inside choir member who's has a life without parole sentence. He wrote it with Rebecca Swanson, who is a music educator in Iowa. Remember, be love is such a great message. And one of the themes of that song is forgiveness. There's a line in the song they wrote that says, Every wrong is the reason to forgive. On the book that Stuart and I wrote, we got permission from Wilfred Laurier University Press to use the melodic line from every wrong is the reason to forgive on the front cover and at the beginning of every chapter. And that's just uh threads through a lot of this conversation is let's be open to forgiveness.

SPEAKER_06

Humanity must rise above inhumane, pull our children back into the foams of sane. Use our wealth to be poverty spade, put hate in its hell and let love remain.

SPEAKER_07

There is something that happens in a room where someone picks up a pen and writes their first song. It doesn't matter if they've never played an instrument or read a note of music. The moment a person finds the words for something they've carried silently and then sets it to melody, something shifts. They are no longer just surviving their circumstances. They are authoring them. They have a voice. And when that happens inside the walls of a jail or prison, in a place designed to reduce a person to a number and a charge, it becomes an act of reclamation. That is the heartbeat beneath everything Mary Cohen has built. There's a song that has stayed with me since our conversation. It's called Remember, Be Love. It was the theme of the Oakdale Choir's very last concert before COVID brought everything to a halt. And inside that song lives a line that ended up on the cover of Mary's book, threaded through every chapter like a compass bearing. Every wrong is the reason to forgive. What she built across choir rehearsals and songwriting workshops, through prison walls and grief and bureaucratic silence, is what one of her inside choir members once called a community of caring. He coined that phrase to describe what the Oakdale choir had become, and I think it's the most honest definition of what this work is really about. Not music as performance, but music as a thing that cracks open the space between us. The space where a man writes a love song to his wife in the front row, where a formerly incarcerated musician collaborates across state lines through a clunky email system, where adults walk into a prison on a Tuesday night and walk out changed. We don't always know where the path is leading. Mary didn't, when she wandered into that East Hill Singer's concert in 2002 and felt something shift. But she followed it through 23 years of research, relationship, and loss, arriving, perhaps inevitably, at the work she was always meant to do, building peace. Not through policy or protest alone, but through the oldest tool we have. The one that asked nothing more than for you to open your mouth, listen to the person beside you, and find the note you share. That, Mary Cohen would tell you, is where it begins. Remember, be love. We'll have links to Mary's work, The Oakdale Choir's Original Songs, The Imagine Network, and her book, Music Making in U.S. Prisons, in the show notes. Share this one with someone, and if you can, find your way into a room where inside and outside mean a little less than they did before. Each episode of Intune will include a segment called The Pulse, where we step back from the conversation and offer something practical for the educators, teaching artists, and advocates listening. Today's Pulse was inspired directly by Dr. Mary Cohen's work and by the values that sit at the core of what we do here at Opportunity. Today's pulse is entitled Building Engagement Programs Rooted in Care, Reciprocity and Community. One, designed for relationship, not just participation. The most transformative programs aren't built around performance outcomes. They're built around the space between people. When Dr. Cohen launched the Oakdale Community Choir, she didn't set out to put on a concert. She set out to create conditions where strangers could become a community through music making. That distinction matters. This might look like prioritizing consistent, recurring contact over one-time events or building an unstructured time for connection before and after sessions. Two, center reciprocity from the start. Programs that position incarcerated participants as recipients of care rather than contributors to it, quietly reinforce the very hierarchies they're trying to disrupt. True communities of caring are built on reciprocal energy and intentional exchange. This might look like inviting participants to co-create program goals and norms, platforming the creative work of incarcerated artists publicly with their consent, or preparing outside volunteers to come in ready to learn, not just give. Three, know the system you're working inside. Dr. Cohen was candid. When she first walked into Oakdale, she didn't fully understand how harmful the prison system is or what it was designed to do. That awareness took years to develop and it changed her work profoundly. This might look like studying the history and design of mass incarceration before entering a facility, grounding your practice in restorative justice frameworks and trauma-informed approaches, or building relationships with formerly incarcerated advisors who can illuminate blind spots. Four, make creative authorship central. There's something distinct about helping someone write their own song, not perform someone else's, that speaks directly to identity and agency. The 150 original songs created at Oakdale weren't just musical output. They were acts of self-definition. This might look like offering songwriting as a core activity, not a supplement to performance, using open-ended prompts that invite personal storytelling without pressure, helping participants share their work beyond the walls through concerts, streaming, or community radio, or exploring Creative Commons licensing so participants retain ownership of what they create. Five, grieve what ends, then build what's next. Programs get shut down, wardens change, COVID happens. Mary lost the Oakdale Choir after 11 years and described it as genuine grief, but she didn't stop. She adapted, creating new pathways for the same essential work. Sustainability in this field requires emotional resilience as much as institutional support. You may wish to consider documenting your program thoroughly so its legacy outlives its run, cultivating relationships with multiple stakeholders, not just one key gatekeeper, connecting with peer networks like Imagine, so you never rebuilding alone, or when a door closes, asking yourself, what is the smallest version of this work I can still do? Six, find your gym. One of the most quietly powerful moments in Mary's story is the night a new warden walked into a Tuesday choir rehearsal on his second day on the job, listened to the group sing May the Road Rise to Meet You, and said softly, That's how I want my time to be at Oakdale. His championship didn't just protect the program, it expanded it. Concerts grew to 300 attendees. A university college credit program launched inside the facility, and children were allowed in the audience. Which brings me to my final points of suggestion, all focused on leadership. Institutional access lives and dies on relationships. Cultivate them deliberately. Identify who holds decision-making power in your facility and invest in that relationship early. Bring leadership into the room. Invite wardens, superintendents, and administrators to observe, not just to prove. Frame your program in language that speaks to their priorities, like safety, rehabilitation, recidivism, community trust. When your leadership changes, don't wait. Introduce yourself and re-establish the case for your work. Keep the dialogue alive. You can also send me your questions or coaching topics at opportunity music.org slash in tune, and I might feature them in a future episode. That's O P P O R T U N E I T Y Music.org slash. Until next time, stay inspired, stay connected, and keep making music that brings people together.