Prisons are not usually high on people’s lists of places to visit, yet for musician Eric Genuis, prisons are exactly where he makes most of his concerts.
“If you ever want to cry, we can talk about stories of their lives on death row and their lives previous to being incarcerated,” he said.
“And I thought, there’s a whole population of people that I have not given a second thought to. And I thought, this is my Carnegie Hall.”
Genuis says once he realised the true impact music can have on people’s lives, he was determined to bring it to those who society has forgotten or deemed unworthy.
“I’m not one of these guys that goes into prisons because I want to entertain them. I want to remind them of their humanity in a way beauty can do.
“But when you expose someone to beauty, it bypasses the brain and it cuts right through all the pain. It cuts right to the soul. It cuts through all the history, all the neglect. It cuts through all the betrayal, all the hurt, all the walls,” he explained.
He has played more than one thousand shows in prisons through this initiative called Concerts for Hope. Many of the prisoners have shared how the concerts have changed them.
There’s one that left a big impact on Genuis. One man was on the verge of committing suicide because he’d lost all hope. His cellmate had offered him to see the concert, yet he was apprehensive to go as he didn’t want to hear “some guy sing jingle bells.” But he went.
“He said, ‘you gave me so much hope.’ He said, ‘I just hung on to that concert for the for the next, for the rest of my sentence. I’m out. You’ll never hear from me again. I will do well. And and I just wanted to thank you,'” recounted Genuis.
Since 2016, Genuis has been playing these Concerts for Hope around the United States. He will continue this life mission of helping the imprisoned and marginalised see their dignity and the beauty of life through music.