Jail Time Records: The notorious Cameroonian prison with its own record label

New Bell, a notorious prison in Douala, Cameroon, is a city within a city.

The facility has its own “taxis” (inmates who wander the crowded courtyards on foot to deliver messages), its own law enforcement force (bulky inmates who help nervous guards police the facility), and its market (a series of stalls where inmates sell and buy goodies like fried cassava and beet pastries).

Essentially, the residents of New Bell have adapted the prison’s lax laws to work for them. The clearest example of this spirit is Jail Time Records, a music studio and record label that creates mini-stars from the most talented inmates.

Empereur, the feared leader of gangs inside and outside prison, has garnered 24,000 views on YouTube with a music video shot entirely in prison.

Jail Time Records organized a huge concert for the prisoners in the New Bell courtyard earlier this year, as the prisoners’ songs gained fans from as far away as South Africa, the USA and Argentina.

“It’s a tool of resistance where we can really share friendship, love and our voices can be heard,” ex-con Steve Happi, one of the founders of Jail Time Records, told the BBC’s Talking Films programme.

“We no longer think about four walls, we find freedom.”

The Jail Time Records studio is a primitive studio; a small, sweaty recording booth attached to a room containing a single computer.

But according to a recent acclaimed documentary bearing the studio’s name, it’s also a place of great catharsis and creativity.

Directed by Italian artist Dione Roach, co-founder of Happi and Jail Time Records, the film was shot in New Bell over six years.

It won three awards, including best documentary, at New York’s Tribeca film festival last month.

In the film, a prisoner named Stone speaks into the studio microphone: “Heart of stone, this is a war. My senses are shattered like broken glass.”

“I’m closed and tight like a cell door. There’s no solid ground, I’m slipping like a fish.”