MUSIC BEHIND BARS

BL SHIRELLE SPOKE with me on the phone in the middle of June, right before the release of her new album, Assata Troi, which came out on Juneteenth. A few weeks after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, it was impossible to start our conversation anywhere else. “It’s a tumultuous time,” she told me, describing the scene in Philadelphia — a mix of peaceful protesting and ATMs on fire, brutal accidents caught on tape, the deaths of young activists. But the violence, for Shirelle, is just a symptom of the illness. “Structural racism is so deeply ingrained in the country — it’s literally how the country became what it is. There’s never been an America without it.”

Since 2018, Shirelle (left) has been the deputy director of Die Jim Crow. Founded in 2015 by Fury Young, DJC is the first nonprofit record label for currently and formerly incarcerated musicians. As a community organizer