On Friday, in the chapel at Mountjoy Prison’s Progression Unit, 10 prisoners from the In-House Voices choir and 15 women from the Solas Workplace Wellbeing Choir perform a tribute to Johnny Cash. The event is called Mountjoy Prison Blues.
It is in aid of Concern and it coincides with what would have been Cash’s 90th birthday. The prisoners are in white shirts with red neckerchiefs. The women are in black. Light is streaming through the big windows. In the audience sit family, friends and the American Ambassador to Ireland Claire D Cronin (this event is being put on in association with the embassy).
Mountjoy’s governor Eddie Mullins opens proceedings by talking about Cash’s generosity towards “people on the margins”. Then he suggests he might take the lads on tour. Everyone laughs. “I mean to another prison, lads!” he says.
Ambassador Cronin begins her speech by worrying people will understand her Boston accent, before talking about how Cash recorded the Live at Folsom Prison record and her own commitment to “the power of rehabilitation”.
Caroline Jones from Solas, the State agency promoting further education, gets the biggest cheer before her brief speech. She is the agency’s people engagement manager and a choir member. She talks about how everyone in the room has the power to influence others for the good. “In the choir we’ve never talked about the words ‘equity’, ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’, but we’ve lived it.”
A prisoner named Mick introduces the first song, The Auld Triangle, and talks about how it was written about prisoners in that very prison. He adds, with emotion, “I just hugged my daughters for the first time in 2½ years.”
Each verse is taken by a different prisoner before they’re joined by the harmonising choir on the refrains. When a prisoner finishes a verse, the man next to him invariably squeezes his shoulder supportively. When the harmonies kick in everyone beams.
Then they sing the Cash-penned 40 Shades of Green, which they’ve turned into a sort of lullaby, and they end with a rousing version of Folsom Prison Blues. Afterwards, Mullins gets the audience to vote for which song they want to hear as an encore before ignoring everyone and asking for The Auld Triangle again. “I pulled rank,” he admits afterwards. I don’t blame him. Hearing the Auld Triangle in this context is very moving.
After the performance, prisoners mingle with guests who are eating pastries and drinking coffee and tea. Mick is with his daughters. Another man sits with a little girl on his knee. Charlie who sang the first verse of The Auld Triangle in a rich baritone is sitting chatting to his childhood friends Becca and Tom. Due to Covid restrictions they haven’t been able to see each other for two years. They are both amazed he can sing. Did he know he could sing before joining the choir? He did not. “But I’ve a musical background so I know about self-correction. I do electronic music. But Ruaidhrí [Ó Dálaigh, the In-House Voices choir director] can take you places with your voice that you didn’t think you can go.”
He loves singing now. “When you hit the chord, and the whole place vibrates and your face starts to melt, it’s addictive . . . It’s a release. It’s the best day of the week.”
Tom and Becca are both holding collage artworks Charlie made for them. He started making collages one day when he got sent two copies of National Geographic instead of one and decided to turn one into a piece of art. “I started cutting it up in the cell.” He laughs. “I got a P19, a punishment slip because I had a razor . . . I had to do it in the art room after that.”
He shows an image of another collage artwork he’s been working on that’s actually five feet long. It’s complex and intricate and he explains how each flows into the other. “I’m trying to depict infinity and magic . . . For me I had so much drive that when I became involved in crime it was just another thing to excel at. In prison I can turn that drive into something constructive . . . I’ll sing for the rest of my life.”
I meet Andy and his girlfriend Shauna. Shauna has also never heard Andy sing. “Maybe I sang in the shower,” he says.
Why did he join the choir? “One of the lads on the landing asked me to come with him and I said I’ll give it a go to challenge myself.”
What was it like to do it? “We were all a bit sceptical we’d get it together. But the energy in the room helped us.”
What does he get from it in general? “I suppose I feel close to the lads through this. It’s like a brotherhood anyway, because we all live together but this makes us even a bit tighter.”
It’s the first time Andy and Shauna have been together for six months. “It’s so nice that they bring the families in,” says Shauna.
“It was a good vibe,” agrees Andy.
A man named Andrzej tells me that he has been in the choir for four years. Did he ever sing before? He is emphatic. “No. No. No. No.”
Why did he join? “Honestly? For events like this. Being involved in choir, it’s an element of real life instead of prison life.”
He does his best to keep his mind outside the prison, he says. He’s studying to be a maths teacher with the Open University. “It’s not like my cell is open but Ruadhrí and other people come in and we can have normal chat, not about prison life.” He laughs. “I mean, I don’t watch films with prison in it. I don’t see the enjoyment in that . . . We are what we imagine and if someone imagines they are a prisoner, they are a prisoner.”
He asks me what I’m going to write. He says that the last time a paper covered a performance like this the headline was: “The Most Dangerous Choir . . . they focused on the negatives.”
Caroline Jones asks me if I think they did Johnny Cash justice. They really did. “We were emotional doing it,” she says.
She talks about when the two choirs first started working together in 2019. “It was a bit like the Ballroom of Romance at first — there was men on the one side and the women on the other but now it’s one choir . . . It’s normal. We talk about everything.”
Stephen, who introduced the second song of the evening, is talking with his mother. Due to Covid restrictions he only got to hug her for the first time two weeks ago. What did she think of the performance? “It was lovely,” she says. She’d never heard him sing before.
“I have social anxiety,” says Stephen. “I wouldn’t sing in front of people or speak on front of people. I play piano at home.” He turns to his mother. “But how many times have you heard me play piano?”
“He won’t play on front of people,” she says.
Why did he join choir? “Charlie and Andy made me.” he says, gesturing at two other prisoners. “Through the choir I opened it up. You speak to the women that come in. It gives a sense of perspective on things . . . Even at practice the stress comes off your shoulders, all the stress of day-to-day life and missing stuff outside. You can relax. You can just have fun.”
Is it nice for him to have his mother see this? “Any parent, if you’ve a kid in jail, you’re worried that bad stuff will happen but then you see your kid is singing in a choir and doing well.”
“It was amazing,” says his mother. “It just makes you realise it’s not all bad. They are trying to help them and give them a bit more confidence among themselves.”
The visitors go down the metal steps to leave. The Solas choir hug members of the In-House choir. Prisoners hug their families. Caroline is telling one mother that her son is “a gorgeous person”.
I walk out of the prison alongside Kathleen and her grandson Ross. Kathleen’s son, Ross’s uncle, is in the prison choir and they got to see him today for the first time in a long while. Did they enjoy it?
“I got chills,” says Kathleen. “I thought the roof was going to lift off. It was fantastic. And my heart – oh god — it went out to them all. Not just my son. The whole lot of them.”
Does she like Johnny Cash? “My other son passed away and he loved Johnny Cash.”
“I hear the train a comin’,” sings Ross, to himself. “I’m going to blast that song when I get home, nanny.”
Mountjoy Prison Blues fundraiser for Concern can be found here: https://fundraise.concern.net/mountjoyprisonblues
