Phoning Home

A project between detainees at Haslar IRC and participants from Rowner Community Trust, Gosport. 

This song arose in the course of generating some musical ideas. One of the RCT participants expressed an interest in the kind of ballads that Beyonce does, and another participant contributed a piano part. The musical idea was taken to Haslar that evening, and a Zimbabwean detainee who had previously lived in Portsmouth for years created the drum track. After some consideration, a different chord structure was suggested, with the acoustic guitar being a key to the development of the song; the piano was retained as a supplementary part. One participant in Haslar grew up in South London, but is now in Haslar after 3 spells in prison. Having reached 30 years old, he is serious about changing his life, and this project has clearly helped him express some of his thoughts and feelings. This song is in essence his story - his rap is autobiographical, reflective and honest.The chorus was developed through group work and conversations at RCT. Each participant came up with lyrics around the themes after listening to the detainee’s contributions. All of the group then sang as a choir, which was later supplemented by participants in Haslar. It reflects the possibility of people in your community or family ‘getting behind you‘ regardless of what you’ve done (like the choir did for the rap), how at best they can ‘sing hope’ into your life, and even if they can’t solve your problems, they can at least walk the journey with you.

A project between detainees at Haslar IRC and participants from Rowner Community Trust, Gosport.

This track starts with extracts from a recording that was originally made of the participant from Haslar mentioned above passing on his greetings to the RCT group, and explaining his ideas around this song. Originally he wanted to explore what it might mean to leave a voicemail for your younger self - what advice would you give to yourself when you were young, or how would you advise young people now, given your life experience? What messages do you think are key for your community? The core of the beat and musical idea originated from that initial conversation, i.e, produced in collaboration with him.His idea developed into talking about a dream where he met his younger self, but the theme inspired many of the participants to contribute, and the song contains numerous extracts of rap, spoken word and song arising from an engagement with it. Two of the contributions were intentionally altered to reference the original idea of a phone call, ie, providing a sense that this was a conversation between participants, and is a dialogue we all can reflect on.

A project between detainees at Haslar IRC and participants from Rowner Community Trust, Gosport.

This started at the request of a Pakistani detainee who firstly was interested in using something with a bhangra beat; he was keen to explore the idea of people coming together and celebrating their differences in harmony. Another Pakistani detainee contributed original melody and lyrics in his own language: a love song for his girlfriend, expressing sentiments of love and loss through separation. It was only when other participants engaged with this 2nd idea of a ‘love song’ that the song came together. Firstly a celebration of those people who become ‘our world’ and with whom we are intimate with in spite (and because of) our differences; and secondly using that picture to explore how we might live together within communities. Both detainees and RCT participants contributed, especially one RCT participant who contributed most of the guitar parts.

Music Provider: Fugitive Music

A project between detainees at Haslar IRC and participants from Rowner Community Trust, Gosport.

A number of the RCT group had previously been involved in a community Samba band, and a couple of participants were especially interested in exploring this. A bass and guitar were added by other participants, although only the bass made the final cut. At that stage, the idea was simply to have a collaborative ‘jam’ with detainee participants.The track was taken to Haslar in the evening, where extra percussion was added (hand drums, tambourine etc), some guitars, and a bulbul turang (an Indian / Pakistani instrument evolved from a Japanese equivalent). One of the detainees was inspired to write some words to sing over it, whilst another participant from Pakistan felt he could contribute with a song from his homeland. The arrangement was given shape in production.