Jail songs mark time

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

The jail cell, it seems, holds an all too familiar place in Jamaican popular music, as so many of its brightest (and not so bright) stars have found themselves on the inside, looking out.

With Buju Banton serving time in the United States and Ninja Man and Vybz Kartel cooling their heels in Jamaican lock-ups as they await their respective trials, now is as good a time as any to revisit a few of the jail songs in Jamaican popular music, which look at the prison experience from different angles.

In 54-46 (That's My Number), Toots and the Maytals go to the heart of the prison experience with the dehumanising replacement of an inmate's name with a number. Still, it concludes on a wry note of escape - Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert sings in the late 1960s recording that while he is out "right now someone else has that number".

not necessarily a terrible experience

Being in jail is not necessarily a terrible experience, as Vybz Kartel relates in song commenting on "when shotta go a jail". Ironically, considering that he has been in lock up for an extended period, he deejayed at the time "me lawyer a big Queen's Council, so me never worry bout bail".

And, with concerns about preferential treatment by police officers prompting Kartel's transfer, the song paints a picture of conditions better than the typically austere prison life, where "me no nyam prison food, steam fish and lobster tail".

True Reflections, done by Jah Cure, is a searing commentary on doing time, long time, Cure looking outward from "behind these prison walls/doing my paces/doing my time". And he sings "prison a no bed a rose/the livity it makes me bawl".

Having done the time, there is looking back, which Busy Signal does in song with Nah Go A Jail Again, describing conditions where, to sleep: "Some man a beat it pon de floor".

There is a promise, though, never to return, as Busy deejays:

"Seh wi nah go a jail again - oh no!

And wi never gonna fail again - oh no!

Like a ship wi ago sail again - oh oh!

You would a never see mi call mi friend fi bail again

Nah see mi a court house no more - oh no!"

Barrington Levy gives a take on prison from the outside and the effect of music on the prisoners in Prison Oval Rock, where:

"The prisoners are skanking

While the warders are watching

Some try to escape when they

hear the music playing"

And Black Uhuru played on the name of the former General Penitentiary in Kingston, to sing about the "generals in penitentiary". However, there is hardly any regality in a place where "is like an oven baking for 2,000 years".