Women and men

Very few women are present in Svenskt visarkiv’s documentation of prison songs. In recordings made by Sundin and Ternhag, they are completely absent — apart from documentation by Ternhag of community singing at a gathering at the Hinseberg women’s prison in 1975. One female singer was, however, recorded by Håkan Johansson in 1991 — and Christina Calldén is on the LP Kåklåtar. Of course, women make music in prisons, but despite this, they are poorly represented in the material. There are several reasons for this. Bertil Sundin found singers by asking. During every interview, he asked if the interviewee knew of other singers. Since contact between male and female inmates was almost non-existent, it is not surprising that he didn’t get any tips about female singers. Perhaps the stigmatising involved in a prison sentence was also harder to bear for women, and women, as a result, were less willing to be interviewed. Finally, far fewer women than men are sentenced to prison in Sweden — which of course means fewer singers. According to the home page of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, just over 5 % of those serving time are women. This figure is from 2015, but it is reasonable to assume that the proportion of women in prison was much the same in the 1960s and 1970s.

The woman interviewed by Håkan Johansson in 1991 learned prison songs when serving time at Hinseberg. She relates:

That meant that I got into the good books of these — how should I put it? — I don’t want to say “queens” straight out, but they had been inside a long time and a lot. They favoured me and they taught me songs and I played for them, like.

Just like many male singers, she shows that the ability to play and to sing prison songs led to higher status among inmates.

The singer and composer Sara Thuresson conducted a music project in the Hinseberg women’s prison from 2015 to 2017. This project resulted in the album Hinseberg which was released in 2017. The texts are written by inmates and tell of dreams and shortcomings. Thuresson developed the project into an exhibition together with Malmö Museums in 2018.

Listen to Hinserberg on Spotify