“There is such a pool of raw talent in prisons,” says David Jones, CEO of Changing Tunes and co-founder of Red Tangent Records. “There are [inmates] who potentially have a real chance of making it in the music industry so we thought we should do something for them.”
Red Tangent was founded in 2021 by the team behind Changing Tunes, a charity that uses music to support UK prisoners and ex-prisoners in leading lives free from crime. “Red Tangent is a label for people with lived experiences of prison run by people with lived experiences of prison,” Jones says. “That’s in our DNA.”
Securing funding from the National Lottery Community Fund, the label has been able to sign six artists in its first year, including singer-songwriter Ryan Kershaw, south London rapper Noble1BOF, and the hip-hop/metal collective Wak Therapists.
The label is hoping to help ex-offenders enter an industry that is already tough enough to penetrate for those with more obvious advantages. “If you are also coming from a place of having a criminal record, that’s a barrier,” says Jones. “Plus, all of the ancillary challenges that come with having been to prison: potential relationship breakdowns, debt, housing insecurity, mental health problems, addiction problems – they are extra barriers. That means that many talented artists with real potential are just never going to get picked up by commercial labels.”
Abe Gladstone was a 23-year-old who was “partying a lot and misbehaving” and ended up doing 19 months on drug possession charges. While in prison, he enrolled in one of Changing Tunes’ mentoring programmes; now 29, he’s one of the co-founders of Red Tangent and an MC in Wak Therapists. “The most important part of my rehabilitation, other than my family, was Changing Tunes,” he says. “The power of what they do is incredible.”
Gladstone says that his time inside revealed to him how many talented artists end up wasting their potential. “Drug addiction is the really big killer. The spice problem in prisons is enormous. You’d have talented people coming to Changing Tunes and they might turn up high or they might not turn up next week and you’d fear the worst,” he says. “It’s quite sad thinking about it. You can’t get to everyone, even though Changing Tunes really do try.”
Reggie Fowell-Boston, who performs as Noble1BOF, had a long history in the prison system, serving multiple sentences spanning 15 years for firearms and robbery, along with possession with intent to supply. “During my time spent incarcerated is when I picked music up as a hobby, as a way to release my feelings,” he says. “It’s a caged place with nobody to talk to, so music was that little escape – a lifeline.” Staring down a 10-year sentence, of which he served six, he realised things needed to change. Music was his vehicle. “On the last sentence, I was like, man, this is long, I can’t do this any more,” he says. “That’s when I started formulating a plan. I realised I’ve actually got a talent, I’m good at making music, and I want to share it with the world.”
For the artists it works with, Red Tangent has provided not just financial and industry assistance, but also empathy and emotional support. “Knowing that someone gets what I’m doing, they understand going to prison, and they’re willing to help me reach success, that’s a massive boost,” Fowell-Boston says. “It gives me the drive to keep going. I don’t know the route but I know where I’m trying to get to. And if I’ve got to go down a dead end, I’ll go down there, but then I’ll try the next road.”
Ryan Kershaw served six months in prison in 2019 after pleading guilty to purchasing pepper spray, which is regulated as a firearm in the UK, online. While serving his sentence, music proved to be a vital creative outlet. “I had all my dignity stripped from me,” Kershaw says. “I think [music] probably saved me at one point, because I couldn’t see any way out from what I was going through. I couldn’t see an end in sight.”
Kershaw uploaded songs he had written in prison to Soundcloud, and once he was released Red Tangent offered to put his music out, an experience that he describes as “a dream come true”. He says: “Those songs I wrote in prison, I got to record them professionally with strings, cellos, violins, double bass. Really top musicians coming in and playing my songs.”
For Jones, the aim of the label is to act as a stepping stone to propel artists while supporting them through a transitional period. “The hope for our artists is that they get snapped up by bigger fish,” he says. “We’re a tiny label with limited resources, but it is an important piece of the jigsaw in getting people to a place where going back to crime is not the obvious choice.”