Enjoy a life-changing adventure with offenders, correctional services officials; university students and academics in a South African correctional services centre. The music behind bars explores a range of teaching techniques and approaches with illiterate and semiliterate participants in music culture circles.It is a testing platform for aesthetic values and principles in an unusual environment where power and human relations are at play for life-long learning; empowerment and rehabilitation of offenders. Never in my life have I experienced and witnessed such determination, enthusiasm pleasure and willingness to contribute to knowledge creation by people who have had limited exposure to music performance and education.