Professor Nuts

"Inna de bus dem a fight an fus

Inna de bus dem a kick up rumpus"

Professor Nuts' Inna De Bus is an enduring favourite, the humorous song recording the happenings on the standard unit of public transportation in Jamaica. It teems with the energy of people, most strangers to each other, bouncing around in a contained space which, chances are, they would rather not be on.

When it was released in the early 1990s, it seemed to be a direct commentary on the Corporate Area bus system of the day, the chaotic affair dominated by 'Quarter Million' and 'Shaka' buses on which music thumped and people often thumped each other.

changing his voice

So Professor Nuts hit a chord with the public with the Dungle Man label (run by George Nugent) production, changing his voice to fit the different characters as he deejayed:

"Me hear, one stop driver

Lef me bag

Oi Missa D yu arm smell bad

Hey likkle bway deh inna de blue tam

Tek yu foot offa me corn before me get mad

Now de ducta deh come dung wid de money bag

An a shout fares please till im troat ole tiad

'Ear a man bawl out only 10 cent mi have

'Ear a man up a de front

Yu know me jus' get rob

De ducta sey wha?

De minibus stop

De ducta hol de man, gi de man couple slap

Fling im outa de bus lan im pon im neck back

Everybody fin' bus fare quick afta dat."

However, it was a case of the more things change the more they remain the same, as Nuts packed experiences from decades before into Inna De Bus. He told The Sunday Gleaner that the lyrics were written in about 1988. "A few part of it is personal experience from pickney days, then most was what people talk about," he told The Sunday Gleaner.

The bus he was speaking about was the Patty Pan that ran to Jones Town. "I was living at Little Kew Road and I used to go to school in Jones Town," Nuts said. So to get to school he would take one bus down to Slipe Road and then the Patty Pan into Jones Town.

"Only Jones Town did have Patty Pan, because the roads were small," Nuts said. When he started taking those buses, he paid the children's fare of one cent, getting not only a ride but a storehouse of memories he would draw and build upon years later for a number-one hit.

Passengers entering a bus in Kingston in this 1990 file photo. Even today, some interesting tales are told on the bus while travelling through the Corporate Area. - File

relevant for years

And just as his boyhood memories were incorporated into the song, written many years later, Nuts expects Inna De Bus to be relevant for many generations to come - at least, until buses no longer run. "Is the same pushing system and the mouly arm. As long as there is public transportation is a lifetime experience," Nuts told The Sunday Gleaner.

Inna De Bus was recorded at Dynamic Studios, a few people sitting in on the session. Their reaction was a preview of things to come on a wider scale, as Nuts said "it was laughter. Is like a mini stage show in the studio. All the engineer a dead with laugh. I think (the late) Ruddy Thomas was the engineer".

And although the lyrics had been performed at dances before it was recorded it had not been delivered at a stage show. The first big concert Nuts did it on was Reggae Carnival at Cinema II in about 1995. It was "dramatic. You know when the mad man touch the stage and talk about the minibus and the action to go with it".

And Inna De Bus continues to resonate with listeners to the record and at live performances to this day. "Mostly the older generation, they know what it is. Even the younger ones they love it, it is a story to them," Professor Nuts told The Sunday Gleaner.

And there is a line that gets the audience every time:

"A woman see a chink pon a man shut back

She run go tek it off

De man sey put e back

Oonu want everyting oonu see black man got."

That was not one of Professor Nuts' personal Patty Pan-experiences. "I heard that one from my adopted mother," Nuts said, laughing.