Mentor Text: Singing Through Prison Walls

“Singing through Prison Walls” is a video showing the singer, Naima Shalhoub in her weekly music sessions with the incarcerated women of a San Francisco County Jail. Naima visits jails and prisons in her area and sings to them in order to bring them a sense of hope and peace, and to recording her album, “Borderlands”. The purpose of this video is to not only bring attention to her new album, but also show the humanity of these incarcerated women and attempt to make a change in the prison system. Clips of the women listening to Naimi’s music displays how the music brings joy to their days. They are all bopping their head to the beat and smiling. She gets the attention of viewers by sharing the experiences that she has with these women. In an interview, Naima shares the heartbreaking messages that the women in prison relay to her, saying things like “thank you for being my hour of freedom of every week” and “even with the struggle of missing my kids, I feel like theirs hope.” This shows how even just something as small as an hour of music a week can help the recovery of women in prison. The money made from her album will go to helping women when they get out of prison, to stop the cycle that it is now that is: “Once your incarcerated, your basically incarcerated for life.” The hope is that the people watching see how incarcerated people are still human, and that small changes like an hour of music can make a big difference in an imprisoned person’s outlook on life.