Episode 19: Mary Cohen-Hearing incarcerated Voices

<h2><strong>Episode 19: Mary Cohen - Freeing Silenced Voices</strong></h2><h2><u>Threshold Questions and Delicious Quotes</u></h2><p><strong>How can singing a song help change the mind and the heart? </strong></p><blockquote><em>...the thing about singing that's really valuable for me at least is it's embodied. We're using our breath. We're using our voice. We're using our ears. We're feeling the vibrations in our bodies. So being able to do that with other people is super- it can be powerful. One of the students in the peace building class last spring shared such an insightful comment. She said, if you're in there singing together with your eyes closed, we don't know which voice is going to be walking out of the [00:31:00] prison at the end of the rehearsal, in which voices be staying in the prison.</em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p><strong>What is ubuntu, and how does it relate to prison choir work?</strong></p><blockquote><em>Ubuntu Is that beautiful concept from South Africa, meaning a lot of things, a person as a person through other people. Desmond Tutu defined it as, "my humanity is inextricably bound with your humanity". ...But we need to know who we are and be at peace with ourselves in order to step forward and find our sense of common humanity with others...you can only imagine a choir has songs with lyrics and some of those lyrics may resonate with one person and not so much with someone else, particularly if it's songs that have some kind of a religious connection. However, if we [00:12:00] follow deeply the idea of Ubuntu, we ideally can sing these songs because we're looking at our relationship with the larger communal body when we're singing together.</em></blockquote><p><strong>What do the Oakdale Prison, the Soweto Gospel Choir, and the TV show Friends have in common?</strong></p><blockquote><em>I found a song called</em><a href="https://oakdalechoir.lib.uiowa.edu/2019/06/04/changes-we-choose/#more-694" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em> How Shall We Come Together</em