Earlier this year, producer and author Ian Brennan returned to the maximum security Zomba Prison in Malawi to record the prisoners performing their own music. Brennan had done this before, in 2013, when he and his wife, filmmaker and photographer, Marilena Delli recorded the first volume in the Zomba Prison Project series, I Have No Everything Here. Malawi is, by many accounts, the poorest nation in Africa. The suffering of is people is reflected in the titles of the songs. A few selections from the new album, I Will Not Stop Singing — “I Will Never Stop Grieving For You, My Wife,” “AIDS Has No Cure,” “All Is Loss,” “I Am Done With Evil.” For most of the songs, you have only the title and the music itself as clues to the story that led to their creation. That’s something I spoke with Brennan about. He did not want to divorce the lyrics from the song, he wanted them to engage in the music without intellectualizing it looking at a lyric sheet. Brennan does reveal some details behind the songs in this conversation, and the story behind the project itself.

You can read my review of I Will Not Stop Singing on the Department of Tangents New Release Roundup for September 9, 2016.