"La carcél del Sing Sing": Music and Incarceration

A discussion with Audrey Amsellem, Ivan Calaff, and Christopher Washburne

The song "La carcél del Sing Sing" has specific tentacles that tell a story that runs the spine of Latin America throughout the twentieth century.  From Bienvenido Brens, the original creator of the song, to the very different and differently emblematic performances by José Feliciano and Alcis Acosta, the song marks Dominica, Puerto Rico, and Colombia, all three of them Latin American nations that are still heavily present in the carceral system in the US. Recently the song is seeing a resurgence, not as a song of incarceration but as just a bolero. The panel will discuss the social dimensions of music production and reception and set the song’s landscape, its content, and its musical components. 

Audrey Amsellem is the Program Manager for the Justice-in-Education Initiative at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Columbia, where she has taught for many years. Her research lies at the intersection of music, law, and science and technology studies. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Research Improvement Grant, the 2021 Surveillance Studies Network Early Career Researcher Award, the 2024 Just Humanities Grant, and is a member of the Open Voice Network at the Linux Foundation. Her work has been published in interdisciplinary journals such as Surveillance & Society, Law Text Culture, and Sound Studies. Her forthcoming monograph, US Law and the Sounds of Dispossession: From Copyright Law to the True Threat Doctrine, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan later this year. Dr. Amsellem joined the Justice-in-Education Initiative in 2022, where she teaches Music Humanities and courses on Hip Hop at Rikers Island. In addition to teaching, she has organized multiple workshops on Rikers such as Mastering Money: Business, Finance, and Economics (in collaboration with the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change), and Music and the Law: A Case Study of Drake v. UMG.

Carlos Ivan Calaff is a Research Analyst and Reentry Coordinator at the Center for Justice and Justice-in-Education Program at Columbia University. In 2018 he was released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. He is currently studying at the School for Professional Studies at Columbia University. He is a proud Puerto Rican father of two boys, a lifelong Bronx native, an unapologetic Knicks fan, and a musician.

Chris Washburne is a Professor of Music at Columbia University, where he serves as Chair of the Music Department and founded the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program. He has published numerous articles on jazz, Latin jazz, and salsa, and is the author of several books, including Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate (Routledge, 2004), Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York (Temple University Press, 2008), and Latin Jazz: The Other Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2020). He holds a Ph.D. in Music from Columbia University and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from St. Edward’s University.  He has served as a Teaching Artist for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute for 30 years, conducting programs in the NYC Juvenile Justice system, Riker’s Island, Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Homeless Shelters, and various NYC area hospitals. He is an accomplished trombonist who has performed on over 150 recordings, including two Grammy Award winners and eight Grammy-nominated albums. He leads the highly acclaimed Latin jazz group SYOTOS and the Rags and Roots Jazz Band. Throughout his career, he has performed with renowned artists and ensembles such as the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Marc Anthony, Justin Timberlake, and Celine Dion, among many others.

Host or Publisher The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities