‘Music was a lifeline’: the record label helping former offenders thrive after prison
“There is such a pool of raw talent in prisons,” says David Jones, CEO of Changing Tunes and co-founder of Red Tangent Records. “There are [inmates] who potentially have a real chance of making it in the music industry so we thought we should do something for them.”
Red Tangent was founded in 2021 by the team behind Changing Tunes, a charity that uses music to support UK prisoners and ex-prisoners in leading lives free from crime. “Red Tangent is a label for people with lived experiences of prison run by people with lived experiences of prison,” Jones says. “That’s in our DNA.”
Securing funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, the label has been able to sign six artists in its first year, including singer-songwriter Ryan Kershaw, south London rapper Noble1BOF, and the hip-hop/metal collective Wak Therapists.
The label is hoping to help ex-offenders enter an industry that is already tough enough to penetrate for those with more obvious advantages. “If you are also coming from a place of having a criminal record, that’s a barrier,” says Jones. “Plus, all of the ancillary challenges that come with having been to prison: potential relationship breakdowns, debt, housing insecurity, mental health problems, addiction problems – they are extra barriers. That means that many talented artists with real potential are just never going to get picked up by commercial labels.”
Abe Gladstone was a 23-year-old who was “partying a lot and misbehaving” and ended up doing 19 months on drug possession charges. While in prison, he enrolled in one of Changing Tunes’ mentoring programmes; now 29, he’s one of the co-founders of Red Tangent and an MC in Wak Therapists. “The most important part of my rehabilitation, other than my family, was
Read more on theguardian.com
