Tru, Def Sound, and Brandon Samuels at the Audubon Center (Photo by May Rose)
After months of supportive conversation, navigating bureaucracy, and holding onto hope, we are officially hosting an afternoon concert for our incarcerated neighbors of the LGBTQ+ dorms at Men’s Central Jail to honor Transgender Awareness Week and National Coming Out Day (this was initially planned for Oct 11)!!
Our politic is always abolition & to echo Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, “Ending violence against queer, trans, and gender-non-conforming people requires a focus on the prison industrial complex.” One in six of our trans kin are or have been incarcerated & a significantly disproportionate percentage of those individuals are our Black trans friends and neighbors. Coming from a resolute belief that no one is disposable, we take this invitation very seriously, and appreciate Correctional Health Services and the EDIA Committee for allowing us to host a concert of deeply meaningful and transformative music for one of our country’s most neglected and abused populations.
Def Sound (they/them) is an Afro-Caribbean conceptual word artist born and based in South Central LA. Def is a postbinary contemporary hip-hop artist, producer, poet, art doula, and award-winning academic synthesizing music with Black critical theory and storytelling into healing mechanisms to decorate time and space.. They’re Grammy nominated for their work as a producer on aja monet’s debut album ‘when the poems do what they do’, has collaborated on several occasions with Saul Williams, and been featured in The L.A. Times, LACMA’s Poetry In Color, and KCET’s Emmy award winning Artbound.
We hope to be able to continue this as an ongoing offering. In this moment Living Earth is volunteering all labor as we do with much of this series & paying musicians what we can out of pocket. If you have the means we’d greatly appreciate a donation to go towards the ensemble that Def Sound is pulling up with & if you’re an enthusiastic grant writer or person who’d like to privately fund this particular labor of love please be in touch.
to clarify: we are accepting donations to help compensate artists. this gathering is not open to the public and donations are not tickets for entry. thank you for your support and understanding!
Built in 1963, LA County’s Men’s Central Jail is one of the oldest county jails in California.
The Men's Central Jail is considered one of the largest jails in the world and in May 2013, along with the adjacent Twin Towers Correctional Facility, MCJ has been called a "modern-day medieval dungeon" by the ACLU of Southern California.
On July 7, 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4–0 to pursue a plan to close the Men's Central Jail within 12 months. In voting to eventually close the (then) 57-year-old facility, county supervisors said they wanted to focus on community-based programs to treat mental health challenges of those entering and exiting the jail system administered by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Check in with LAist and FUSE to learn more about Care First, Jail Last and the Central Jail closure.