Inflection

Abstract

Abstract In the 1980s, prisoners’ rights efforts waned, but the music continued. Chapter 5 traces the years following prisoners’ rights gains. A wake of musical change followed dramatic changes of the mid-1970s when court decisions resulted in federal receivership. Accounting for the inflection of post–prisoners’ rights reveals how music maintained incremental gains and expressed the unevenness and failure to deliver reform. This chapter follows the bands that adapted to the desegregated prison: Time Factor, Def Posse, Megasound, and the Big River Band. It also shows the parallel development of Angola’s gospel scene, chronicling John Henry Taylor Jr.’s cultivation of R&B singers newly facing life sentences.