Tanayah Sam (Photo by Jermaine Pinnock)
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A young Tanayah
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Footage from the Love Express sound system in Birmingham in 1986, the scene Tanayah's dad was involved inThe Jamaican music scene, once a cultural aside to day-to-day life, took more and more precedence. Tanayah's social group narrowed until it included only the offspring of broken homes and badman fathers, all of which – at that time – centred around dancehall club nights in Birmingham.Things fell apart: his mum chucked him out because of his increasingly wayward behaviour, and schooling stopped altogether. He moved in with his dad for a while before his mum, in desperation, sent him to Jamaica to spend time with his grandma. Tanayah was back within six weeks and had decided to take a different tack."When I got back to my mum's I was this humble kid. She can see a change in my attitude and I know not to go home with too much badness," Tanayah tells me. "But in front of my dad and my uncles I'm smoking weed. There's older women sharing my bed. I remember, at one point, being at my dad's and there were some Yardies there and there were four guns just laying on the table. By the time I was 15 I was gone – just deep in that world."
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Tanayah as a young man
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(Photo by Jermaine Pinnock)
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Tanayah says: "Yemen at the time was where a lot of Muslims were going to learn the religion. It wasn't as it is today. There was a connection there for me, brothers were there to meet me from different countries, from different races, and this became something that just cemented that there was no way I was going back into the criminal lifestyle. I started to learn a bit of Arabic and the cultural aspects of Islam."After four months Tanayah returned to England as a wanted man. Despite being on the run, and suffering two gang-related attempts on his life, Tanayah says he stayed on the straight and narrow through cash-in-hand and agency work, and a strict adherence to Islam. After four years the police caught up with him and, in 2005, he was sentenced to nine in prison for armed robbery."I was relieved when I did get locked up. The running took its toll," he tells me.§We pull up next to a mosque and Islamic bookshop in a rundown area, with two dead sheep in the trunk. A few men dressed in Muslim robes are hanging around outside. Tanayah starts putting the cut up meat into plastic bags and handing it out to people as a gift, in accordance with tradition.Nine or ten people are now gathered around the car. A guy pulls up in a VW Polo and asks Tanayah what he's selling. Learning the meat is free he happily takes a bag and drives off."I was relieved when I did get locked up. The running took its toll."
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(Photo by Jermaine Pinnock)
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