Night darkest around Buju's dawn

Trouble stalks Gargamel on verge of higher heights

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

A 'Jollywood' scriptwriter could not have conceived a more involved tale with nail-biting developments and a particularly emotion-laden climax. Reggae artiste - a Rastafarian at that - wins the coveted Grammy on a Sunday and is convicted of drug charges on a Tuesday.

Who knows what sentencing day will bring - as there is always the possibility of the appeal process.

However, Buju Banton's career being literally shut down as he was on the verge of lifting his already remarkable music run to even higher heights is nothing new. While this may turn out to be the most extreme case of the Gargamel's darkest hour coming around his dawning, the career blues of a run-in with the law have affected Buju Banton previously.

Perhaps the most well-known of those cases is his conviction for possession and cultivation of marijuana on Friday, March 26, 2004. This came nearly a decade after Buju's monumental Til Shiloh album, followed by Inna Heights (1997), Unchained Spirit (2000) and Friends for Life (2003).

Together with his previous hardcore, dancehall oriented songs, they made for a powerful live performance package.

However, after his conviction and subsequent fine, Buju's travels, especially to the lucrative United States market, were curtailed. This was after his passport was presented in court to show that Buju had been outside Jamaica for almost 10 months the previous year, touring to support Friends For Life.

Still Buju, in popular parlance, 'buil'', and focusing once again on almost exclusively hardcore dancehall content for the first time in over a decade, responded with the Grammy-nominated 2006 Too Bad album.

Almost concurrent with that marijuana charge were allegations that Buju Banton was part of a gang involved in the beating of half-dozen gays.

Those charges, though dropped in January 2006, fanned the undying fires already stoked by Boom Bye Bye.

And long before the long locks, Buju Banton had a near brush with the law over allegations of firing an illegal weapon, which he addressed in the early 1990s song Vigilante:

"Well, I guess you hear it from you friend

Listen to Buju Banton, here is exactly what happen

No call me name, no spread, no rumour, I'm a vigilante

Gangster no mix up with CIA.

I buss a 45, not an AK

Them have the shells inna the courthouse pon display

Waan me singer testify, me singer holler no way

A yard me live where that happen every day

The judge say sentence him now, don't you wait another day

Have me life and all me movements under heavy survey"

He went on to explain the situation - somewhat.

"Them never hol' me inna foreign fe tiefin'

Them never hol' Buju fe no shoplifting

Guy dis' the programme an' the Banton disagree with him

Is the mercy of the Almighty save him."

Buju would go on to lift his career into the ranks of the reggae immortals with Til Shiloh.