Fury Young
Co-Executive Director & Founder (he/him)
Fury Young is the founder and Co-Executive Director of Die Jim Crow Records, the first non-profit record label for currently and formerly incarcerated artists in United States history.
Growing up on New York's Lower East Side of the early 1990s, Young was surrounded by the arts, creative outsiders, and those in his community who were impacted by incarceration. As a third generation Jewish American, with a grandfather who was a rabbi and defense attorney, and a father who was an artist and community activist, passion for fighting against injustice runs in Young's veins.
In 2013, Young was inspired by his participation in Occupy Wall Street and the personal experiences of his close friend, ALEXANDER PRIDGEN — a Black Muslim who had been Muhammed Ali's bodyguard and served time. He began reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow while on a Pink Floyd The Wall listening kick, and halfway through the book Young got the idea to make a concept album about racial injustice in the US prison system.
In 2014, Young gained access to record music in Ohio’s Warren Correctional Institution, and from these sessions the DIE JIM CROW EP was born. Released to critical acclaim from Rolling Stone, the urgent, raw sound of the musicians expressing themselves on this record would ignite Young and set him on a journey to record in prisons throughout America.
For the next five years, while working as a film set carpenter to support DJC, Young recorded in prisons across the country and with returned citizens, as well as with professional musicians and producers in the free world. In March 2019, after recording twenty-five new artists in three prisons on a trip to the American South, Young decided expand Die Jim Crow into a non-profit record label.
Under Young's leadership, Die Jim Crow Records has gained access to five prisons and recorded full bands, choirs, and solo musicians, totaling over 60 incarcerated artists and over a dozen formerly incarcerated artists. Young’s first full length album for DJC as producer/art director, Territorial’s Tlaxihuiqui, was called “one of the most powerful listening experiences of [2021]” by Undrcurrents. As Co-Executive Director of DJC, Young leads the label’s creative direction and operations, while sharing programming duties with his Co-ED, BL Shirelle.
Young’s SOLO WORK includes music, film, poetry, and collage. His debut book of poetry, Meat & Milk, was published in 2016 by Lit Riot Press. Young has shown work at Anthology Film Archives, UnionDocs, The New School and MoMA PS1. He has been featured in Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Colorado Public Radio, Pitchfork, Grammy.com, and Lee Camp's Redacted Tonight, among others.