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 answers total)

Response by poster: 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

Response by poster: 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