Benjamin Harbert's 2012 documentary Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians aptly begins where John and Alan Lomax's fieldwork and recordings left off: the Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola). Unlike the Lomaxes’ work, however, Harbert's film brings a new and important dimension to this music. Whereas previous observers heard only audio recordings of the prison performances, seeing the faces of those performing drastically changes the calculus of the observation by adding an increased humanistic and personal element.

The film is organized into three expository sections based on the three Louisiana prisons Harbert visited: Angola, the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, and the Elayn Hunt Correctional Institute south of Baton Rouge. The Louisiana setting is especially important and telling, given that the state incarcerates more of its population per capita than any other in the country.Footnote ¹ This statistic is compounded when considering that over half of the state's prisons are unscrupulous for-profit private institutions typically owned in part by local reprobate sheriffs, and that the majority of the prisoners are African American.Footnote ² As such, the musical exploration of these prisons provides a vast social and cultural commentary on race, class, and the Louisiana penal system, which Harbert captures in this work.

Run as a self-sustaining farm, Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the country and has substantial music resources. They include equipment for music production and recording, speakers, amplifiers, microphones, instruments, dedicated facilities, and ensembles for its inmates. One of the primary sources of music in Angola comes from the inmate-run radio station KLSP-FM (91.7). Initially started as a means of communicating with the prison's large population, KLSP is the country's only Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed radio station operating within a penitentiary and has a broadcast range that barely extends beyond the prison's 18,000 acres. The station plays jazz, blues, country, gospel, and R&B. Warden Burl Cain does not allow rap, hip hop, bounce, or other related genres.

In addition to the music broadcast on KLSP, Angola boasts many other music-making outlets. Inmate Leotha Brown remarked, “In prison you have to have some kind of outlet.” Brown expressed himself by playing soprano saxophone while other inmates participate in various ensembles. Several music groups exist, including an a cappella quartet, “The Main Prison Gospel Band,” “The Jazzmen,” and “Angola's Most Wanted,” a country music ensemble. Much of the music performed at Angola is for church services (a significant part of Burl Cain's belief in “inmate rehabilitation through Christ”), and one scene captures a rehearsal of “The Family Choir” at the interfaith chapel in which members learn a gospel song by rote.

While filming at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, Harbert captured choir director Consuela Thomas auditioning inmates for voice parts and then teaching vocal techniques during a rehearsal. This group often performs original compositions written by inmates.Footnote ³ Thomas notes how music helps prisoners openly communicate, express feelings, and cope with struggles. At the Hunt Correctional Center (a transition prison), bands play rock and country while other inmates perform freestyle rap or make music using body percussion. Although these two prisons add to the breadth of the film, it is unclear how they relate to the overall narrative other than providing secondary and tertiary examples of institutions with musicians. The transition from Angola to the other two prisons in the film is lacking and raises questions as to the effectiveness of their inclusion.

Pedagogically, the film is perhaps most influential when viewed within the context of a recent blog post and subsequent reactions on Musicology Now. In “Don Giovanni Goes to Prison: Teaching Opera Behind Bars,” Pierpaolo Polzonetti enumerates the powers of opera to heal the prison population in ways that cannot be accomplished by “the blatant lyrics and pounding beat of rap music.”Footnote ⁴ His assertion that “musical forms do convey feelings with immediacy only when understood, structurally, historically, and contextually,” reveals the biases of both an intellectualized approach to music and of the early twentieth-century music appreciation movement. Harbert's film challenges Polzonetti's problematic assumptions. Acting as an exhibition of the many types of music that evoke feelings and visceral responses, the film demonstrates how rap, among other genres, is considered by the prison musicians performing it to be a way to “get everybody communicating” and “lessen tensions.”

Although Follow Me Down is lauded as a concert film, there are few performances outside of short observational sections of music making. Additionally, in exploring the role of music in these three Louisiana prisons, Harbert appears to be more of a passive observer of these soundscapes rather than gathering data through intervention or interaction. Although this approach is an entirely sound methodology, the film lacks a cohesive narrative, making it difficult for the viewer to fully connect with the featured musicians. Presenting the musicians just as the title indicates, the portraits are missing needed depth beyond a cursory depiction. That being said, the overall quality of filmmaking and production is excellent, and Harbert should be commended for his systematic investigation and work in presenting the lives of an often-overlooked portion of the American musical landscape, not to mention its population.