Music for Transformation
Decoda’s Music for Transformation initiative is rooted in the belief that incarceration does not erase a person’s capacity for creativity, connection, or artistic contribution. For more than thirteen years, the program has built sustained partnerships in correctional facilities across the U.S., where incarcerated musicians and Decoda artists compose, write, rehearse, and perform together. These relationships nurture artistic agency and shared ownership, creating space for musical expression and dialogue about justice, freedom, and belonging.
Participant-created music also becomes part of Decoda’s mainstage concerts, community performances, and recording projects—connecting our work across prison walls and inviting audiences to encounter incarcerated people as artists whose ideas, experiences, and music enrich our shared cultural life.
Creative Collaborations
Discover projects growing from Music for Transformation’s sustained partnerships—from the creation of Lincoln Mosaic to portrait concerts and recordings celebrating incarcerated composers and their music.
LINCOLN MOSAIC – A New American Story
Lincoln Mosaic reexamines Abraham Lincoln's legacy through the voices and experiences of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists.
Rooted in over a decade of collaboration at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina, the project brings together Decoda musicians, guest artists, and incarcerated composers from Lee. Blending hip-hop, rock, country, blues, spoken word, jazz and classical into original songwriting, Lincoln Mosaic explores questions of our shared humanity.
Portrait Concerts & Recording Projects
Decoda’s Portrait Concerts bring music by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated composers to the stage, celebrating the individual voices and creative partnerships at the heart of Music for Transformation.
Professional recording projects carry this music beyond the concert hall, connecting composers with wider audiences and sharing their contributions to our cultural life.
“Music has a way of touching our minds, our hearts, even our very souls. It can cause a vortex of emotions to swell inside of us. It must be wielded carefully and responsibly. So, through music, even a prison’s climate can be changed.”
