Rappers rock Pacific jails and charts (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Rappers rock Pacific jails and charts
14 November 2005
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3478256a4500,00.html

PORT MORESBY: The United States may be the home of gangster rap, but in
this crime-ridden South Pacific city the gangsters really are rockin'
the jails and the music charts.

Some of Papua New Guinea's biggest selling music stars have had their
careers interrupted by a stint behind bars for bank robbery, armed
hold-up or theft.

Their chart-busting songs tell of a life of crime, often in Port Moresby
where raskol (criminal) gangs rule a city which has had 114 murders so
far this year, but also of freedom and love.

In a country of 800 tribal languages, these gangster rappers have a
unique South Pacific style, singing in English, pidgin English and
their native tribal language.

Their music is also a blend of rhyming rap, reggae, traditional Papua
New Guinea sounds, gospel and pop.

Some openly admit that without music they would now be dead.

"If I didn't find music I would have died long ago," said a nuggety
Willie Tropu, a former bank robber who carries the scars down his right
leg from a police shotgun.

Advertisement

Advertisement
Tropu now works as head of security for a bank in downtown Port Moresby
when he is not recording his latest album.

Simon Tazzi, a former raskol rapper turned music producer, vividly
remembers his life in the "Silent Shadows" gang.

"I got shot by police a lot of times. A lot of bullets taken out of our
bodies a lot of times. A lot of friends die," Tazzi told Reuters at a
recording studio in Port Moresby.

Like others, Tazzi discovered music while behind bars and once out of
jail started recording. But under pressure from his old gang Tazzi
found himself wielding a gun in armed robberies, car thefts and
burglaries, and eventually back in jail.

One of his hits, Kake IB Car (Police Car), tells of a police chase
around Port Moresby's dusty streets where houses are hidden behind
metal fences and razor wire to keep out raskols.

Rapper K. Dumen was serving time for armed robbery when he recorded his
music video in jail. Clinging to a prison fence he sings about his lost
freedom in Freedom Bilong Me. Warders allowed the video if they were
filmed locking Dumen in his cell.

Crime is an accepted way of life in PNG for many people struggling to
survive in a country where 80 percent of the 5.4 million people eke out
subsistence lives in villages, life expectancy is 55.3 years and GDP per
capita is $US2619.

So far this year in Port Moresby alone there have been 114 murders, 151
rapes, 577 robberies, 671 car thefts, 377 break-ins, 317 assaults and
28 abductions, according to police statistics.

"You have thousands of kids coming out of school with no future, no
prospect of a job, so the only thing they turn to is crime," said
Tazzi.

"Some of us who are lucky find another avenue – for me it was music," he
said, adding that he now demands that street kids give up their life of
crime before he records them.

For the past 25 years PNG's CHM has been building a mini-music empire,
recording 3,000 albums, and is now set to launch some of its biggest
artists on the international scene.

CHM is one of PNG's major electrical importers and retailers, but owner
Raymond Chin has always loved music and started playing bass guitar in
the 1960s in a band called the "Strangers".

Frustrated with the lack of local music on radio stations, he started
recording PNG artists and paying stations to play it.

The sounds that wafted on the hot, humid airwaves quickly hit a chord
with listeners, who rely on radios, not television, for news and
entertainment in this mountainous land.

As his music label grew, Chin started staging 20,000-strong rock
concerts, but this is a tough land and people started throwing rocks at
concerts.

"A rock concert in PNG really is a rock concert. When someone stands up
in front, someone at the back throws a rock and then everyone starts
throwing rocks," said Chin.

"Law and order problems" eventually made it too risky to attend his
concerts at the annual Port Moresby show.

Live music shows are now held in secure venues, like the Port Moresby
Country Club, behind razor wire and electrified fences, security gates
and a caged front door.

Chin's CHM Supersound Studios manufactures 60,000 cassette tapes a year
(CD players are far too expensive for most people), records artists,
produces music videos and broadcasts a regular TV music video
programme.

"PNG artists are not educated in music school, most are street kids and
their talent is raw, but they have a passion to be successful," Chin
told Reuters.

"There is no charge. We find them and record them free and promote them.
Nowhere else in the world can someone walk off the street and become an
instant pop star and it costs them nothing."

Singer Chris Cassimis is the new face of PNG music. He is dressed in a
blue tie-dyed T-shirt and dreadlocks. He looks like a fresh-faced
reggae star, but prefers dreamy rhythm and blues.

Cassimis is a gang member from the Kaugeree shanty settlement, one of
Port Moresby's toughest suburbs, and he is about to record his debut
album called Tumbunaman (Ancestor).

He no longer steals, but his raskol friends do, and he is often the
beneficiary. PNG is a society based on "wantok" or extended family, an
unofficial social welfare system.

"I don't steal any more but they steal and when they do stuff like that
they come and give me money. They are all my brothers," laughs
Cassimis.

Cassimis says life on the streets is tough. "You have to be careful what
you do in Port Moresby. Now heaps of young people hold up people and
kill people in PNG. It's scary," he said.

"They (my gang) are my protection. If anyone comes up to me and wants to
fight me, I just have to go and tell them and they would probably get
shot."

Cassimis says many PNG musicians are raskols and their rap-style music
is fuelled by the pain of their lives.

"People sing about crime, their life in prison, life on the street and
their life being hungry," he said.

"Overseas you have gangster rappers but here heaps of gangsters sing PNG
music, you know who they are from what they are singing. When you look
at them, you see scary faces."