On April 10 at 7 p.m., 5C students gathered in Edmunds Ballroom at Pomona College to experience death row prisoner Keith LaMar’s spoken word poetry, accompanied by a live jazz band. LaMar works closely with members of the 5C Prison Abolition Coalition, who have brought LaMar’s work to Claremont four times.
Tag: Keith LaMar
Robin D.G. Kelley discusses the rhetoric of music in incarceration and abolition
On Monday, March 2, the 5C Prison Abolition Collective (5C Pris Ab) hosted the “Sounds of Abolition” talk by UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley at Scripps’ Balch Auditorium. The talk launched a fundraising push for the April 10 Freedom First concert, featuring Keith LaMar, a spoken word artist on Ohio’s death row after the 1993 Lucasville Prison Uprising.
Keith LaMar performs poetry from death row at Freedom First concert
On April 17 and 18, the 5C Prison Abolition Collective hosted an abolitionist poetry reading and concert featuring the work of Keith LaMar, an incarcerated man on death row who called in to the concert to perform his spoken-word poetry.
Freedom First concert series: Keith LaMar performs spoken word poetry from death row
Keith LaMar has spent the last 30 years of his life on death row for a crime that evidence shows he did not commit. Since his conviction, LaMar has dedicated his life to criminal justice reform activism and education. His work has taken the form of starting book clubs at high schools, writing and autobiography, and co-writing a jazz album, “Freedom First” with pianist Albert Marquès.
On Oct. 7, Marquès was joined by Zack O’Farrill, Kazemde George, and Yosmel Montejo in the final performance of the Freedom First West Coast tour at Pomona’s Lyman Concert Hall. While the musicians performed on stage, LaMar called in to recite his original spoken word poetry from an Ohio prison.