The feared leader of gangs inside and outside Cameroon's New Bell prison has amassed 24,000 YouTube views with a music video filmed entirely within the jail. Empereur, whose song *Sa Ngando* was produced in the facility's on-site studio, is one of several inmates gaining fans as far away as South Africa, the US and Argentina.
New Bell, a notorious prison in the economic capital Douala, operates as a city within a city. Inmates run their own "taxis" — prisoners who dash through congested courtyards to deliver messages — along with a self-policing system and a market selling fried cassava and beignet pastries. The clearest example of this adaptive spirit is Jail Time Records, a music label co-founded by former inmate Steve Happi and Italian artist Dione Roach.
“Cameroon's New Bell prison has its own record label, turning inmates into mini stars.”
"It's this instrument of resistance … where we can really share friendship, love and our voices can be heard," Happi told the BBC's *Talking Movies* programme. "We don't think anymore about the four walls — we find the freedom."
The rudimentary studio consists of a small, sweaty recording booth attached to a room with a solitary computer. Yet it has become a site of great catharsis, as captured in a recent documentary named after the label. Filmed over six years inside New Bell, the film won three prizes at New York's Tribeca film festival last month, including best documentary feature.
One of the documentary's subjects is Stone, a former soldier in Cameroon's presidential guard serving a 10-year sentence for robbery and illegal possession of firearms. He insists he is not guilty. In the film, he raps: "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 struggles to reach his young daughter Maira by 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 after failing to connect.
Earlier this year, Jail Time Records staged a huge concert for prisoners in New Bell's courtyard, and its songs continue to radiate beyond the prison walls. The label's success raises an unresolved question: can music offer escape where the law cannot?