New Bell – a notorious prison in Douala, Cameroon – is a city within a city.
The facility has its own “taxis” (inmates who whizz through congested courtyards on foot to hand deliver messages), its own law enforcement (burly prisoners who help stretched guards police the facility) and market (a string of stalls where convicts sell and buy goodies, like fried cassava and beignet pastries).
Basically, the occupants of New Bell have adapted the jail’s slack laws to work for them. The clearest example of this spirit is Jail Time Records, an on-site music studio and label making mini stars out of the most talented prisoners.
Empereur, the feared leader of gangs inside and outside of the prison, has amassed 24,000 YouTube views with a music video filmed entirely in prison.
Songs from the inmates have gained fans from as far away as South Africa, the US and Argentina, while earlier this year Jail Time Records put on a huge concert for the prisoners in New Bell’s courtyard.
“It’s this instrument of resistance… where we can really share friendship, love and our voices can be heard,” Steve Happi, the former inmate who co-founded Jail Time Records, tells the BBC’s Talking Movies programme.
“We don’t think anymore about the four walls – we find the freedom.”
The Jail Time Records studio is rudimentary – a small, sweaty recording booth attached to a room inhabited by a solitary computer.
But it is also the site of great catharsis and creativity, as per a recent, acclaimed documentary named after the studio.
Directed by Happi and Italian artist Dione Roach, his Jail Time Records co-founder, it was filmed in New Bell over six years.
Last month it won three prizes, including best documentary feature, at New York’s Tribeca film festival.
In the film, a prisoner named Stone raps into the studio’s microphone: “Heart of stone, it’s war. My senses shatter like broken glass.
“I’m closed and tight like a cell door. No solid ground I slip like a fish.”
Stone, who used to be a soldier in Cameroon’s presidential guard, was sentenced to 10 years in New Bell for robbery and illegal possession of firearms. He insists he is not guilty.
The film captures him trying – often unsuccessfully – to reach his young daughter Maira on the phone.
“It’s been a long time. She needs to hear my voice from time to time, so she doesn’t forget about her father,” he says in a voice message to a family member, after failing to get through to Maira yet again.
The music video for Heart of Stone is a typical Jail Time Records affair. The production value is high, storytelling is captivating and hordes of fellow inmates get involved as actors and crew.
“The music that comes out of there is amazing,” says Taika Waititi, the New Zealand Oscar-winning director who, with his wife, the singer Rita Ora, served as an executive producer for the Jail Time Records documentary.
“Just in terms of the power of art in relation to redemption and what that can mean to someone who, you know, some of these people are in prison for life. I think having an outlet is an incredibly powerful and humane thing,” he says.
Jail Time Records was founded in 2018, when Roach volunteered for a non-profit organisation running events inside New Bell.
During a dance class for the prisoners, a crew of rappers took over the microphone and began freestyling. Impressed by their performance, she asked the prison authorities for permission to start up a studio.
The powers that be were receptive and so Roach enlisted Happi to run the studio as a producer and sound engineer.
According to Happi, he ended up in New Bell following a family argument over what should be done with his late father’s body.
Amid the dispute, his aunt, a high court judge, allegedly arranged for him to be thrown into jail for killing his father. He was acquitted of the crime two years later, Jail Time Records says.
In 2022, Happi, Roach and the prisoners released an album named Jail Time Vol 1. As is customary for Jail Time Records’ music, half the profit from the album’s sale went to the artists and the rest was reinvested into the label.
The studio’s survival is paramount to many of the artists, especially given New Bell’s bitter environment.
In 2022, Human Rights Watch reported that New Bell was housing 4,700 prisoners within its crumbling walls – four times its capacity.
The prison’s packed population, along with its unsanitary conditions, enabled cholera to spread rapidly during an outbreak four years ago, rights groups have said. At least six inmates died from the disease.
New Bell also has a reputation for violence. In 2008, guards shot 16 inmates dead during an attempted breakout.
Prisoners also attack and intimidate each other – the documentary captures Empereur, who is serving 10 years for multiple crimes, shaking down a bewildered young inmate for a necklace chain and some flip-flops.
Asked if the Jail Time Records project might glorify Empereur, the son of a traditional Douala chief, and other criminals who have committed violent crimes, Roach tells the BBC: “The process we’re doing is a rehabilitation process, basically.
“We enter the prison without any judgment and it’s the only way we can really approach this kind of work.
“Music, as with any creative process, is also a way of self-discovery… coming to terms with things you’ve done and hopefully changing for the better”.
The prison authorities appear to share this view.
“They were really welcoming of the project. Cameroon is a super musical country… everyone loves music,” Happi says, adding that the head of the prison attended this year’s concert and proceeded to dance with the performers.
With official support, Jail Time Records has been able to flourish, offering opportunities to more prisoners, including those in New Bell’s women’s wing.
Jeje, Jail Time Records first female artist, made her debut in 2022 with brooding Afrobeats song Show Me The Way.
“Nobody show me the way, nobody show me the way, I did it all alone,” sings Jeje, who was jailed after stealing money and running away from an allegedly abusive uncle.
As well as working with the women’s wing, Jail Time Records have expanded their project outside New Bell and Cameroon.
Roach and Happi set up a studio 1,000 miles (1,600km) away in 2023, in the central prison of Burkina Faso’s capital city, Ouagadougou.
Jail Time Records hopes it can replicate the success of the original New Bell studio, with its accompanying label, music video production arm and now, award-winning documentary.
The film ends with an “in memoriam” sequence; a tribute to six prisoners who died while the Jail Time Records project has been running.
New Bell may appear to be endlessly bleak, but according to Happi, music provides the inmates with a “lantern for a brighter future”.
“Before that, they had the stubborn mentality: it’s them against the world,” he says.
“They feel now important – they feel like they have a place in the society.”
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