CHICAGO (AP) — Inmates at a Chicago jail will be getting guitar lessons thanks to a program created by musician Wayne Kramer.
The guitarist for late ’60s rock band MC5 spent time in prison in the 1970s for trying to sell cocaine to undercover agents.
Now, he’s helping run a nonprofit charity called Jail Guitars Doors USA, which donates instruments to prisons and jails in multiple states. He founded the organization in 2009 with singer-songwriter Billy Bragg out of a belief that music can help inmates and change them for the better.
Nearly 300 inmates signed up to participate in the program at the Cook County Jail’s Division 11, its minimum and medium security unit. Ten were chosen for the eight-week course of weekly one-hour group lessons. It begins Oct. 18.
