Status Audio Magazine

THE SHOW MINUS ONE

Hosted by, Bassam Haddad
Dec 08, 2015

Transcript

Noura Erakat (NE): Welcome to Status Hour. My name is Noura Erakat and I am here now with Naima Grace Shalhoub two days after a very special performance in the San Francisco County Women’s Jail in a Mother’s Day performance. I will let Naima tell us a little bit more about what the performance was and what led up to it.

Naima Shalhoub (NS): Sure. Thank you Noura. It is so good be here with you and talking with you about this. I am seriously honored that you were there—it meant the world to me. So, basically, around a year and a half ago, I started asking around in my community of folks who had any connections to people inside—either juvenile halls, or jails, or prisons—working with women. I wanted to have the experience of sharing some music with incarcerated women. Coming from my own, just wanting to learn more about the prison industrial complex, what I could do in terms of my small part in playing a role in ending it like so many other artists and educators are doing now. So, I got connected with Angela Wilson at San Francisco County Jail. I pitched to her my idea of facilitating a music session, having themes of freedom and resiliency, and she was excited about it. And before that even started, there was