BUJU INNOCENT?

On December 8, 2009, reggae singer Buju Banton slipped on his swim trunks, pulled a pair of jeans over them, and, along with two friends — a female companion and his longtime driver and pal, Ian Thomas — jumped into his silver Land Rover with a “Jah One” vanity plate. They left his modest duplex in suburban Tamarac and began the drive to the Gulf Coast for a day of fun in the sun.

Alexander JohnsonAlex JohnsonDavid Oscar MarkusReggaeArts, Entertainment, and Media
As the exit sign for Naples came into view, Buju called a man they were to meet named Junior to give him a heads-up they would soon arrive. But Junior said plans had changed. They needed to drive to Sarasota and meet him at a restaurant. From there they would grab keys for a friend’s boat. Buju agreed.

In Sarasota, the three men sipped margaritas at a restaurant while the lady friend sat in the car. A short while later, the trio headed for a dimly lit warehouse, where someone closed and locked the shutter door behind them. Inside, a stranger who was lurking in the corner began speaking to Junior in Spanish, leaving Buju clueless. There was no boat or keys in sight.

With his long dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail, Buju paced and swayed, his lanky frame oozing nervousness. He asked to use the bathroom but was told the toilet was broken.

“Let me go do it outside,” he said.

Junior and the stranger avoided answering him. Then the stranger walked over to a parked car and opened a hidden compartment in the trunk to reveal 20 plastic-wrapped kilos of cocaine.

“I felt my stomach turn,” Buju testified months later. “I tried to play it down and be calm. I keep telling myself… be cool, be cool, it’s gonna be, just be cool.”

Buju’s friend Thomas was cool. He plucked a kilo from the pile and plopped it onto a workbench. Buju followed closely behind, peeking over his friend’s shoulder as he made a small incision in the packaging. Thomas dabbed a fingertip of the powder on his tongue and proffered the blade to Buju, who followed suit.

After tasting the cocaine, Buju sank into a chair in the corner. He fiddled and tried to occupy himself while Thomas pulled out a phone and negotiated prices with an apparent buyer in Georgia.

“Yo, find out how much he wants,” Buju murmured. He later claimed he had no idea who was on the line and that his remark was just an attempt to appear legitimate, to play it cool. Thomas carried on without pausing.

When the warehouse door screeched open, the men exchanged phone numbers. Buju claims he spent the long drive back to Tamarac throwing up from a combination of stress and margaritas. Later that night, Junior phoned the singer twice. Buju avoided the calls.

The next day, Thomas drove back to Sarasota alone and met Junior at an Applebee’s for a round of negotiations. Junior pushed to get Buju involved in that day’s antics. “He does not want to do nothing, man,” Thomas responded. “That’s not him, you know? Music, eat, sleep, shit every day.” Junior agreed to sell five kilos to Thomas’s connection in Georgia, then left the restaurant, called his supervisor at the Drug Enforcement Agency, and said it was a “miracle” that he held onto the deal.

On the morning of December 10, 2009, authorities busted Thomas and a guy from Georgia named James Mack at the Sarasota warehouse, where the two were caught with a gun and $135,000 in cash while trying to buy several kilos. Cops then pulled Buju from his Tamarac home and placed him under arrest on two charges: conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense — even though the firearm at issue was carried by Mack, not Buju.

It’s a case built upon the handiwork of a mendacious snitch — Alex Johnson, AKA Junior — with an extensive criminal history and clear financial motives to see Buju arrested. An aggressive federal prosecutor spent big in two weeklong trials in Tampa to secure a celebrity conviction. The saga sheds light on how far the government will go and how dirty it will play to win the few big battles left in the long-ago failed War on Drugs. Now, while one of the most successful and controversial Jamaican artists — a man who won a Grammy for best reggae album a year ago — sits in a Miami penitentiary, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether unconstitutional tactics were used to nail a man who had no known criminal record.

Mark Anthony Myrie, better known by his nickname Buju (“Banton” is a title applied to storytellers and DJs), was born into the blistering heat of Kingston in July 1973. The youngest of 15, he grew up immersed in the poverty and political strife of a country that had gained its independence from the British Empire only a decade earlier. His mom sold provisions at the local market; his dad was out of the picture. As a young boy, he sneaked out at night and peeked into the nearby dancehalls to wtach locals perform.

I can remember there was a particular song by a great singer from my country by the name of Mr. Dennis Brown, and this song was called ‘Promised Land,'” Buju would later testify. “In those days, we lived in a — what is called a board house, and we had… like metal sheets on top of our roof. Whenever the sounds would be playing across the street, our neighboring community, it would shake the very foundations of this house. And I always admired that song and tell myself one day I want to be part of the… creation of this kind of music.”

Curly Cash, a Jamaican-born musician now living in Miami, remembers when Buju didn’t have a pair of shoes and owned few clothes beyond his khaki school uniform. They would hang around Kingston, Buju climbing orange trees to pluck his lunch. There was something pesky about him, Cash says. His confidence and determination seemed absurd for such a young boy. The older Cash once lent 20 bucks to Buju. He also suggested the boy spend some time looking for a job. But poor, hungry Buju just laughed. It was music or nothing.

United States Marshals Service
Buju’s mug shot after he was arrested at his Tamarac duplex in December 2009.

Buju and his Miami-based attorney, David Oscar Markus.
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Alexander JohnsonAlex JohnsonDavid Oscar MarkusReggaeArts, Entertainment, and Media
In the ’80s, it took months if not years for an artist to get into a recording booth in Jamaica. Aspiring performers waited around the gates of studios praying that a producer would give them a break. It was a rainy day when Buju’s chance came. He ended up in a taxi with an older DJ named Clement Irie who was going down to Blue Mountain studio. Irie wrapped up his set and asked the producer to give the boastful teenager a shot. The producer told Buju, who was then toasting under the moniker Gargamel, to sing when the red light came on.

“I didn’t stop singing until the rhythm itself stopped playing,” Buju recalled during court testimony. “When I opened my eyes and looked, they were all jumping around here like they liked what I was singing. Yeah, and that is where I really got my first start.”

He was pure dancehall, spitting out lascivious boasts over pummeling beats. His roaring delivery quickly became a trademark many would emulate. Buju began churning out singles, and in 1992, he broke Bob Marley’s record for number one hits in a year.

But also that year, “Boom Bye Bye,” a single he had recorded while still a teenager, was re-released. It is a violent antigay song that, among other things, discusses shooting homosexuals and burning them “like an old tire wheel.” The song opens with this declaration: “World is in trouble/Anytime Buju Banton come/Batty bwoy get up an run/At gunshot me head back/Hear I tell him now crew/It’s like, boom bye bye/Inna batty bwoy head. ” Batty bwoy is a derogatory term for gay men.

Buju’s old friend, silk-voiced reggae star Wayne Wonder, remembers how “Boom Bye Bye” came about. He and Buju blew up in Jamaica around the same time. In the early days, Wonder says, they would “campaign,” or party, through the dancehalls to build up their following. They collaborated on numerous hits at Kingston’s Penthouse Records and went on to tour Japan, Europe, and dozens of other places together.

“We were listening to Punanny Riddim [a popular reggae beat] in my two-door Civic [and] just picked up Buju,” Wonder recalls while working at his home studio in Davie. “We were driving back down and pick up one of my little girlfriends. And she gives us dis story about two guys who got caught in a bathroom. ‘Boom Bye Bye’ wasn’t intended for any animosity or to incite violence ‘pon gays and lesbians. It was just a personal thing, you know. And a vibe come out in the car, and Buju just says, ‘a boom bye bye in a batty bwoy head,'” Wonder recalls to the beat of the song as he rises out of his chair.

It is widely reported that the song was inspired by the rape and murder of a young boy by a gay man in Jamaica. While the song grew popular as a way for Jamaicans who were enraged by that incident to funnel their anger, it had the opposite effect in the United States and Europe. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and dozens of other groups denounced the violent lyrics as hate speech. His airplay abroad diminished. Labels took a step back. Even years after the song’s release, sponsors would back out of festivals when they learned Buju was on the bill.

Carolyn Cooper, PhD, a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of West Indies, explains, “The Jamaican language is very metaphorical. I try to make the argument that when Buju says all homosexuals must die — it sounds very literal — it’s an indictment of homosexuality and not an incitement to actually kill all homosexuals.”

But people like Brian Winfield, managing director for Equality Florida, contend that “Boom Bye Bye” couldn’t be a clearer incitement of violence against gay people. “The lyrics talk about shooting gay people; they call on listeners to shoot gay people in the head and burn gay people with acid and fire,” he says. “[Buju] has been profiting off the song for 20 years.”

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-02-09/news/reggae-great-buju-banton-is-locked-up-on-dubious-drug-charges/2/