Zero, zero, one, one, nine/'ca Yellowman make yuh feel so fine.

September 21, 2007 9:34 AM

What meaning (if any) might the number "00119" have in Jamaican culture or music? (As seen in Yellowman's song Zungguzungguguzungguzeng. Lyrics - Youtube [lyric in question begins at 1:09]). Postal code? Telephone prefix? Inside joke?

I'm a non-casual fan of dancehall music, and I'm stumped. Searching on the web hasn't given me any good leads (though, every time I say that, someone'll come up with some ridiculously simple and elegant search term that produces fantastic results).

Does anyone have a Jamaican relative that they've been meaning to call for a while? I have a suspicion that this might be the only way. Many thanks.

posted by cadastral to media & arts (6 comments total)

Forgot to add that the song came out in 1983... so it's quite possible that this little piece of slang might be extremely dated.
posted by cadastral at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2007

I don't know what it means, but I know that Yellowman in particular was fond of pulling jokes from Jamaican pop culture, commercials and everyday life. freeeeesh. jamaican. keeetchup.
posted by gnutron at 9:47 AM on September 21, 2007

Here it says it may be a reference to their version of 911, though 119 is also the album number. I'm not sure this is the meaning though.
posted by drezdn at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2007

drezdn, thanks... looking promising. (what search terms did you use, if you don't mind me imposing?)
posted by cadastral at 10:24 AM on September 21, 2007

Another "I don't know but why let that stop me" answer: Jamaica didn't (and still doesn't, I believe) have postal codes. Phone numbers were five digits long in 1983, with a two-digit area code if you were calling long-distance, so that sounds likely.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:33 PM on September 21, 2007

Cadastral, I think I tried "zero zero One One nine" in quotes... Possibly with yellowman too.
posted by drezdn at 7:24 AM on September 24, 2007