Louisiana does two things very well: music and prison. Georgetown University professor ethnomusicologist Benjamin Harbert explores their intersection in his documentary, Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians, which played in the Wasserman Cinematheque on Tuesday.

Unlike the other 49 American states, Louisiana's legal system is based on French law rather than English common law. The law states that defendants are presumed guilty until proven innocent. Right now, one out of 86 Louisiana adults is serving time in prison.
Harbert traveled to Lousiana's infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as the "Alcatraz of the South," or just "Angola" (the name of its post office). The prison has a rich musical history: It has held many musicians behind its bars, and many musicians have sung about it. There was folk singer Lead Belly who served four years on a murder sentence, and Tex-Mex artist Freddy Fender who was eventually pardoned.

Music is taken seriously at Angola. It's the saving grace for criminal musicians, and songwriting and practicing harmonies are treated sacredly. There's the Jazzmen group, Angola's Most Wanted, the Pure Heart Messengers and the Family Choir.
Angola also has a radio station, known as the Incarceration Station. Band practice is only allowed as a reward for prisoners who have been on good behavior.

Harbert brought the camera into each of the band's practice rooms, places the bleakness of prison life didn't seem to touch. At jazz practice, a man crooned about a woman, "Put on your red dress, and some of your high-heels, some of that sweet perfume." Was he singing about an old girlfriend? Maybe about somebody who he would never see again? It was the memory of a free man.

Harbert captured the earthly claustrophobia of prison that is impossible for anybody to imagine unless incarcerated. Angola, which is situated on 18,000 acres of lush plantations, requires vocational work of the prisoners: it's a disturbing still-frame watching the men march out to the okra fields, a huge blue Southern sky over their heads, and then seeing the prison-guard on horseback with a rifle, ready to shoot anyone who dares wander.

Harbert's film wasn't intended to be activist, but it was definitely provocative. When he introduced a prisoner, he only asked three simple questions: name, sentence and conviction.

And the convictions were jaw dropping. One man was sentenced to 20 years for possession of cocaine. Another had been sentenced to life since he was 17. There were wrinkly men in wheelchairs whom had spent their entire lives there, just waiting to die.

But there was never a sense of desperation. Most of the songs were Jesus-heavy, and geared toward the next life. Harbert traveled to the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, and Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, another male prison, as well. The lyrics weren't much different from those at Angola, especially at the women's prison, where the gospel choir remains the most popular club.

Although the prison songs are inspiring and many of the prisoners give off a death-like peacefulness about their sentence, New Orleans rapper Juvenile's "Dirty World" best articulates the feeling the film elicits: "They'll plant dope on ya, go to court on ya/Give ya 99 years and slam the door on ya."
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