Musicambia, where music meets change.
We have a special treat in store for you. Experience the powerful voice and storytelling of Kenyatta Emmanuel, artist, activist, and performer from Sing Sing to Carnegie Hall. Kenyatta will be joined by The Cambia Collective, Musicambia’s band of Teaching Artists and Alumni. Musicambia (“music”+“change”) helps people in prison write, play, and perform music, cultivating collaborative communities that benefit the health and well-being of everyone involved.
Following the musical performance, author Colin Asher be read excerpts from his forthcoming book, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music (W.W. Norton and Company, June 30, 2026). Copies of Colin’s book will be available for purchase and signing afterward.
This event is free to attend; we will collect donations for Musicambia to continue their extraordinary work changing lives through music.
About Kenyatta Emmanuel
Singer and songwriter Kenyatta Emmanuel Hughes offers song and story to contextualize and reinforce the human reality of our movement. Kenyatta is an artist and activist who has shared his music from Sing Sing to the Carnegie Hall, offering a full live concert the same day of his release after serving 24½ years in prison. Kenyatta collaborated with a range of stakeholders in and out of carceral spaces to impact the world artistically and socially, forming initiatives such as Voices From Within, which serves the children of incarcerated parents. His offering of music and message is consistent from his 2014 TEDx talk, through his presentation at the 2022 International Wellbeing Summit, exploring the beauty of life, love, and the human condition, reminding us of all that we hold in common.
Kenyatta Emmanuel is a teaching artist with Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections program, as well as the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. He is a Galaxy Leaders Fellow, and is currently developing a curriculum for Racial Justice and Abolition Democracy as an Artist in Residence for the Initiative for a Just Society at Columbia Law School.
About Colin Asher
Colin Asher is the author of The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music. He also wrote Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren, a literary biography written as a work of creative nonfiction. That book was celebrated in The New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. It was named “One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019” by Apple Books, a “Book of the Week” by Publishers Weekly, and an “Editors’ Choice” selection by the New York Times Book Review. Both Publishers Weekly and Booklist gave it starred reviews.
Cambia Collective and Musicambia
The Cambia Collective—Musicambia’s band of Teaching Artists and Alumni—performs music written by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.
Musicambia (“music”+“change”) helps people in prison write, play, and perform music, cultivating collaborative communities that benefit the health and well-being of everyone involved.
Their Flagship Program, which began at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 2014, meets weekly from September to June. Thirty incarcerated participants attend morning and afternoon classes for 4.5 hours, fostering teamwork, empathy, and a sense of responsibility to themselves as well as to their fellow students. Musicambia also has programs at Bedford Hills, Fishkill, and Eastern Correctional Facilities in New York, and in Kansas and California. We annually reach 125 incarcerated participants, as well as audiences of some 220 incarcerated people for concerts. Their Teaching Artists have won GRAMMY awards and collaborated with Pulitzer-Prize winners, and teach at universities including Juilliard, Curtis, Yale, Princeton, and Peabody. In 2026, Musicambia will release their debut album, the Musicambia Songbook. To learn more, visit musicambia.org.
