From Listening Circles to Re-Entry Plans: The Work of the Carolina Prison Music Initiative

Orange County — When Mark Katz received the 2025 Harvey Award, it recognized more than a career in scholarship and teaching—it honored the Carolina Prison Music Initiative (CPMI) as both an artistic and humanitarian endeavor.

Mark Katz, PhD, is the John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences (Department of Music).
His initiative utilizes music instruction, songwriting, performance opportunities, and training in music-related skills to support constructive self-expression, personal growth, and dignity for individuals within prison walls, while building skills that facilitate successful re-entry into society.

“I got the idea for CPMI in the summer of 2024, but it didn’t come into being until the summer of 2025, after I received the Harvey Award from UNC,” Katz wrote in an email exchange with TLR. “This provided the funding I needed to hire instructors, purchase materials, etc.”

The program launched in earnest last fall. It consists of two classes: Musicking (which teaches students how to read music notation and play keyboard and guitar) and Songwriting.

“We finished one semester of the two courses (10 sessions each) and had a final concert in December,” Katz wrote. “We’re starting the same two classes again later this month.”

Coined by music scholar Christopher Small, musicking reframes music as something people do, not something that simply exists, such as a score, a verb, not a noun.

It encompasses everyone involved in bringing music to life—from performers and listeners to technicians and organizers—and includes composing, rehearsing, and even movement during performance.

“To music is to take part in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composition), or by dancing,” is how Small put it.

That expansive understanding of music as a shared social practice helps explain why musicking provides a fitting framework for CPMI.

Katz’s partners in music instruction include Eden Jones, a doctoral student in musicology who teaches the Musicking class, and Donovan Livingston and Kerwin Young, two UNC colleagues who teach the Songwriting class.

“The instructors develop their curriculum in consultation with me,” Katz noted. “They are skilled and experienced teachers, and I mostly stay out of their way, but I have observed most of their class sessions, and we talk regularly about pedagogy.”

This semester, Katz is hosting a UNC student to give a series of violin recitals.

In development is a reentry program for those recently released from Orange County Correctional (OCC) to help them develop music careers.

Re-entry support will focus on career guidance, helping participants acquire entrepreneurial and networking skills, providing access to recording studios, and creating personalized plans for moving forward. Guest artists and speakers will also contribute to the program.

Next are plans to expand CPMI into the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women in Raleigh.

In the meantime, Katz has acted on the idea of a music or song “listening circle,” which first came to him in 2024. He was supervising Jones (then a grad student), teaching Introduction to Rock at OCC, and asked people to discuss what music meant to them during their incarceration.

“It was clear that they felt a deep connection to music because it often reminded them of family, friends, and the world outside of prison,” Katz wrote.

“I wanted to understand what music means to people when they are incarcerated and to find ways to connect them with music while they are in prison.”

Katz passes around a sheet of paper and asks for two song requests each from the group. While there’s access to the radio and a music app on tablets, there’s no way to find and play a song of one’s choosing.

Many haven’t heard their favorite song in years.

One page of song requests collected by Mark Katz at Orange County Correctional.

He’ll have the songs ready on his laptop and, in each session, will play a few requests. They then talk about what the songs mean to them. Katz also brings in songs he chooses to listen to and analyze (for example, original/cover pairs).

Some participants also want to be able to play the songs on guitar or piano, and their requests are incorporated into the musicking classes.

CPMI has the support of Anna Stein, First Lady of North Carolina.

“An expert on prison rehabilitation and reentry programs, she was kind enough to come to our first concert and offer her encouragement to the participants and to CPMI,” Katz wrote. “We deeply appreciate her support.”

Pamir Kiciman is an artist who writes about a range of the arts and the creative process. This reporter can be reached at: Information@TheLocalReporter.press.