One hundred and sixty five inmates from across the country showed off their musical talents and skills on Friday (19 October 2012) at South Africa’s first National Offender Jazz Festival at the Grootvlei Correctional Centre in Mangaung in the Free State.
More than 1,500 patrons, including members of the public, correctional officials and offenders, danced the day away as offenders put on display some of their finest renditions.
Delivering the keynote address, Correctional Services Minister Sibusiso Ndebele highlighted the story of Larry Joe, an exceptionally talented singer and songwriter, who was released from the Douglas Correctional Centre in the Northern Cape on 13 December 2010 and stepped straight onto a stage in the prison grounds to perform songs from his first solo album, Crazy Life. On World Aids Day in 2008, Larry was invited to perform at a government function in Douglas.
There he met Aron Turest-Swartz who was performing with Freshly Ground, the well-known multi-award winning South African band that he co-founded in 2002. Impressed by Larry’s outstanding voice and the original songs he had written, Aron approached Larry and Correctional Services with a proposal to work with him to develop his skills and produce a solo album. Larry’s album, Crazy Life, was recorded in a single cell in the Douglas Correctional Centre.
“Larry Joe is a living testimony of someone who has undergone a truly remarkable inner transformation with music being at the very core of this process. Music is an effective means to foster correction, rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. The National Offender Jazz Music Festival aims at rehabilitating the offender through music, and group participation, and to identify the hidden talent within the offender. Priorities of the festival include encouraging offenders to be part of a group, and adapt to its norms and values, thereby promoting respect, individual growth and self-discipline.
“In South Africa, jazz music started as music of rebellion against the oppressive colonial status quo. When the dignity of Black city dwellers was taken away through various curfews, Marabi music exploded in Sophiatown, Alexandra and other Black residential areas. It was characterized by the meeting of the Christian hymn with African rhythms, finding new texts in the experiences of oppressive city life. Over the years, there have been jazz groups with monumental presence including the Jazz Epistles of the 1950’s, the musical King Kong of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as well as towering jazz legends including Merriam Makeba, Abdullah Ebrahim and Hugh Masekela.
As part of the Copyright related industries, music contributes up to R2 billion annually to our country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The music industry comprises of creators who compose, and perform, music, agents, recording companies, promoters, lawyers, retail outlets as well as a long value chain of copyright based royalties’ regime. In 2010, the Cape Town Jazz Festival alone contributed up to R685 million to the country’s GDP, employing over 2,000 people in the process. Therefore, as our inmates perform here today, remember there is an entire industry waiting for you upon your release.
“On 11 October 2012, Dr. Zoliswa Twani presented her research findings, as part of her PhD in Music, at the Department of Correctional Services Monthly Dialogue Forum. The PhD is titled: “Music behind bars: exploring the role of music as a tool for rehabilitation and empowerment of offenders at Mthatha Medium Correctional Centre." The findings highlighted that the Department should seriously consider introducing teaching and learning of music as an examination subject in Correctional Centres.
“In the 19th century, African slaves, freed during the end of the slave era, soon realised that they would not go back to Africa anytime soon. They set about finding ways of expressing their new found freedom, by re-inventing African music in the new world. Throughout the slave era, the Christian hymn had become their main mode of musical, and cultural, expression. With the new found freedom the hymn had to be retained, re-energised and fused with the African musical traditions they were about to forget.
The result was a new musical genre expressing a desire for a new life. Those who perform jazz are people who are constantly in search of a new life, a new beginning, a new way of looking at the old life and re-interpreting it. Jazz is music of expression based on experience.
“The Department of Correctional Services is embarking on Victim Offender Dialogues. The objective of this programme is to put the victim back at the centre of the corrections system, as the victim is directly, and personally, affected by the criminal act of the offender. Equally, the offender must be given an opportunity to reflect on his or her wrongs and request forgiveness.
We want to create opportunities where various stakeholders defined as victims of crime, those affected personally, their families, communities, community-based organisations, non-governmental organisations, religious and spiritual bodies, educators, councillors and local leaders, will assemble together with offenders with a single purpose to rebuild our communities ravaged by crime.
We want to reinforce corrections programmes through music, reading for redemption, creative literature, the arts, cultural events, heritage renewal events, sporting events, formal education and acquisition of skills, economic renewal through cooperatives and enterprise development, spiritual growth and self-correcting interventions, among others. The trilogy of victim, offender and community must play a leading role in the implementation of the Victim Offender Dialogues. The correction of offender behaviour is the responsibility of everyone.
“In their paper, titled ‘A Model for Community Corrections Residential Centres in South Africa from a Social Work perspective,’ University of Pretoria academics AEM van der Westhuizen and A. Lombard (2005), state the following: ‘Society expects the state to safeguard its citizens from criminal harm. However, solving crime cannot be the sole responsibility of the state, the police, the courts or the criminal justice system.
Crime originated in the community and therefore the community should not only be an important role-player in reporting and preventing crime, but also along with other role-players, in taking co-responsibility for the rehabilitation and re-integration of the offender into society.’ The authors go on to give a contextual framework for diversion, advocacy and re-integration as critical models that will involve various stakeholders in the corrections, especially the community corrections, system.
“As government, we are passionate about galvanising understanding, and support, for our transformative agenda from prisons to corrections, and preparing those of our offenders who need to get ready to be reintegrated as functional members of society. The emphasis of Correctional Services is on correction, and all of us can be corrected,” Minister Ndebele said.
Enquiries:
Logan Maistry
Cell: 083 644 4050
