YORK COUNTY, S.C. — A dozen songwriters from Nashville recently spent a few days with inmates at the York County Detention Center.
Why? To turn their stories into songs.
Jeni Dominelli is the founder and CEO of The Beat of Life, a nonprofit organization that provides therapeutic music programs to human/social service organizations and populations in need.
"We believe music is so much more powerful than a form of entertainment, that it actually has some incredible healing and transformative properties that we all are using without even knowing it," Dominelli said.
Some of the songwriters who traveled from Music City to York County have been arrested before. Some have dealt with issues like incarceration and addiction in their families.
"We choose songwriters that we know can come into these places and have a point of relation," said Dominelli. "That's really our goal: To make everybody feel like their story matters no matter how dark of a place it came from."
Rose Carter was one of the inmates who shared her story. She's been in the detention center for more than five months on drug charges.
"I've been lost for five years. And my prison wasn't here or jail wasn't here; my jail was at home," she said.
Carter's young son died in December 2013. She was paired with songwriter Sidney Howe who helped her talk through her grief.
"They broke me down a little bit, just digging into those memories that I buried. You know I put my son in a box because nobody can carry that with them," Carter said.
Howe was determined to write an emotional song -- even though Carter didn't want to go there at first.
"Like that was my goal. Because I knew she had some deep stuff," Howe said. "If people don't want to get sad, it's because they're sad."
The duo's song, "13", is the first one featured on the YouTube playlist posted by the sheriff's office. There are 11 more songs available on the website. The sheriff's office invited the public to listen to them all and vote for a favorite.
"You've warmed my heart with your story," another songwriter told an inmate. "It's a blessing that I came."