Monday 8 August 2011

Rhythm 12 – Copyright or Wrong?

The UK is no stranger to people flouting copyright laws. My first direct experience of this was one of my brother’s university flatmates who purposely bought a CD writer to copy albums and sell them to students unable to pay HMV or Our Price’s (remember them?) inflated tariffs. That was 1997.

Nowadays, of course, the market for copied DVDs and CDs has been supplanted by lay people indulging in illegal downloading – whether it be music, films, software, or even books. We have the power, should we have a broadband internet connection, to pay nothing for these commodities.

In Sierra Leone, it’s not quite the same sketch. Realistically, pretty much nobody has an internet connection capable of downloading files so large. And official music and film shops don’t really exist (I’ve never seen one that doesn’t sell copies). Therefore, the market for hawking films and music on the street, and even in stand-alone shops, has continued to flourish. Until recently.

In July, the Government introduced the 2011 Copyright Act that would potentially prevent any sales of copyrighted goods. The logic being that it protected the intellectual property rights of the artists. Having witnessed how the download era has affected the music industry in the UK, I recognise how difficult it is for musicians to make any money. There is clearly a similar issue within the music fraternity here.

On the day following the Act being passed, the streets were emptied of people whose livelihoods depend upon the sale of copyrighted goods, with the fear they’d potentially be picked up the Police, read the riot act and have their stock confiscated.

All of this begged the question of what merit there is of introducing a law that looks good in theory, but cuts of the lifeblood of so many young people in one of the poorest countries in the world?

The simple equation is that people would simply not listen to music outside of radio broadcasts, if it wasn’t unofficially produced and sold on the street. No longer would boys be able to tap on your vehicle window to entice you to by ‘Salone Mix 2011,’ ‘Reggae Classix,’ or the like.

Rhythm 11 – Sweet Love

Some readers may be aware of the phenomenon that is the Africa Mercy, a ship that rocks up along the coast of West Africa to deliver health care – well, major surgery – to those most in need but unable to pay for it. In Sierra Leone, health care is only free for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five years of age.

The ship is just one of Mercy Ships’ fleet that do the same thing across the developing world. It is truly amazing work that the Mercy Shippers do, donating their time and skills, and actually paying to be one of the crew. There are some creature comforts on board, however, the highlight/lowlight of which is an official Starbucks coffee outlet!

Given its ubiquitous status on the patchwork quilt of Freetowners thoughts, it should come as no surprise that we have made up a song about the Mercy Ship. A current hit in Salone is Busy Signal’s version of “Nightshift” – see below – to which we have amended the hook lyric to the following:

‘Gonna give you some sweet love...sweet love...on the Mercy Ship’


It doesn’t quite connect when it’s written down, but if you give it a go it does become quite addictive. I’m often singing it – either in my head or out loud – at my desk, walking down the street, or even when swimming. The true irony of the new lyric is that the Mercy Ships organisation is actually faith-based, and thus I’m not entirely sure we’d have their blessing (see what I did there) for the song becoming its anthem!

As you’d imagine, we are extremely intrigued about what it looks like inside – the health care bits as well as the living conditions – and have been trying to find a way of having a look around. It turns out that tantrums really do work sometimes, as after we showed our upset at missing out on a raffle prize of a guided tour at a fundraising quiz recently, someone from the ship caught wind of our predicament and actually offered us a tour with no strings attached. Get in.