Prison Records: A famous 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” (prisoners who scramble to deliver messages on foot through the crowded grounds), its own law enforcement (prisoners assisted by police on guard at the facility), and a market (a chain of stalls where criminals buy and sell things like roasted cassava and baguettes).

Basically, the residents of New Bell have adapted the prison’s weak rules to work for them. The clearest example of this spirit is Jailtime Records, an on-site music studio and label that makes mini-stars out of the most talented inmates.

A gang leader in and out of prison, Empire has amassed 24,000 YouTube views with a music video filmed entirely in prison.

The Prisoners’ songs have won fans as far away as South Africa, the US and Argentina, where earlier this year Prisoners of Jailtime Records held a major concert at the New Bell campus.

“It’s an instrument of resistance … where we can really make friendship, love and make our voices heard,” ex-prisoner Steve Happy, who founded Jailtime Records, told the BBC’s Talking Films programme.

“We don’t think about the four walls – we find freedom.”

Gel Time Records’ studio is simple – a small, sweaty studio attached to a room where a solitary computer resides.

But it’s also a place of great catharsis and creativity, as demonstrated in the studio’s recent eponymous documentary.

Directed by Happy and Italian artist Dion Roach, co-founder of Prison Time Records, it was filmed at 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, it’s war, my feelings are broken like broken glass.”

“I’m as closed and tight as a cell door. I slide like a fish on any solid ground.”