When Jamaican-born reggae, dancehall and gospel singer Papa San took the stage of the Fun in the Son festival in Kingston earlier this spring, it might have been a homecoming of sorts. Like many artists from here who were raised in a rough and tumble environment, escaping a life of violence and excess was a long journey. But it was one that has always leads him back to the hustle of the grimy streets of his hometown.In this island-nation, music, art and creativity born in the yoke of the ghetto are more than symbols of liberation and freedom. They are its key.“Music somehow elevates you out of that lifestyle and takes you on a different road,” says Papa San, who was born Tyrone Thompson. The artist who is known as Jamaica's fastest lyrical speaking DJ began his journey to fame from the area of Spanish Town not far from the capital, Kingston. This is where he flourished as a teen in talent shows and contests.“You get to success and everything becomes right because there are a lot of yes-men around you,” he says, “Then you start making terrible mistakes by just having the money and the friends who defend it.”A precarious rise to famePapa San describes his early climb from the precarious streets to an environment that fed by an addictive lifestyle that enmeshed him into a dangerous world of clan-politics, excessive womanizing and violence. It was that context which ended up costing the lives of friends, relatives and even several of his siblings. Ultimately, it lead him to a downward spiral.His Rastafarian grandmother raised Tyrone Thompson, and throughout his career - which has spanned over two decades he has adopted more musical styles than most artists would in a lifetime. He began as a dancehall DJ, went on to find acclaim in reggae, and finally left the secular world to settle into a devout life of faith and songs of praise.His signature style today is best described as high-octane Gospel, paired with his private hosting of bible readings in his Florida home. His audiences adore him, revere him, and even mime every word of his miles-an-hour lyrics. A concert of Papa San is a happening enraptured by an electric energy that results in tears, and audiences who are so electrified that they seem to take in the music from a trancelike state.“When I go to a show there are a lot of guys walking behind me, and they are all from the ghetto,” he says, “But they are just walking with the artist. Everything you do is with a mindset and that is the mentality that is still that of a ghetto person.”Elgo, the renaissance man in Montego BayOn the far side of the capital of Kingston are the azure blue-oceans of Montego Bay. On the outskirts of the tourist trail is a small, cram packed art gallery. This is where another Jamaican artist with a mission sits vigil. Errol Lewis, known as Elgo, is a painter, a poet, a merchant, a traveller, a businessman, an art dealer and a spiritual voice.While he too has brought his own art out of the constraints of the economic realities that many Jamaicans face, his mission is very much rooted in a desire to give dignity to a people whose history is weighted by a legacy of slavery and suffering.“I don't think that the struggle has ended,” says Elgo in a quiet and determined tone. “It has continued in a very subtle and undefined manner. But the nuances and tentacles of mental slavery remain. This is what Bob Marley sang about, about using music to open the eyes of the world. Art speaks eloquently and silently.”As we talk, Elgo glares at one of his own paintings depicting an anguished mother from whose breast drips bullets falling directly into the barrel of a gun. The work reflects the painful dilemma of Jamaican mothers whose nurturing love confronts the gangland society of murder and violence that has enveloped in the inner-city streets of this country's ghettos.Ultimately, he laments, Jamaica has become plagued by a philosophy of extreme economic violence.For his part Elgo hones the memory of his own African roots and nourishes the creative talent of the black artists of Jamaica. He was inspired by a trip to Ghana, where disappointedly he realized that black artists be they in Dadowa, Ghana or Kingston, Jamaica were left in a different league by a society rooted in sustenance and survival, unready to actually pay for their cultural product.Creating a market“What was interesting there was that the Africans were not interested in purchasing or looking at art. They would often come into the gallery and ask if they could eat the artwork. It was as basic as that,” he recalls of his attempts at running an art gallery outside of Accra, the capital of Ghana.When he returned to Jamaica he was introduced to a man that was said to have been the cousin of Pablo Picasso, to whom Elgo put a burning question in his mind. Why, he asked, did European artists get millions for their paintings while he was unable to name single black artist who would fetch similar amounts?A half our later the man returned earnestly and told him, “It is for you to set the standard, the ceiling for your culture.” The answer inspired Elgo to a mission.While the works of European artists like Pablo Picasso were negotiable, almost a bankable instrument, the same value system didn't follow for the black artists of Jamaica. He would create the market, he reasoned.“Essentially what that gave me was an impetus to look at the business of art,” says Elgo, “I have vowed to see that at least one black artist secured $ 1 million US for a painting, either in their lifetime or before my death. That mission is on my way. “Like a one-man cooperative Elgo promotes both his works and those of his fellow Jamaican artists, even giving them international reverberations at an important international contemporary art fair in Miami. While many of the works in the gallery are of the lower price brackets, some visitors are surprised when he comes up with local works priced from $ 25,000 to $ 125,000.Leaving JamaicaBut for Papa San, fame and fortune as a reggae star didn't provide him with the solace that he might have sought. He made millions, he says, but also lost millions. He lived an up and down lifestyle, losing over forty of his friends, and two of his brothers by gunshot. He hit rock-bottom.“When I reached the end of my road I looked around me and said that something is not working,” Papa San recalls, “I could have ended up in prison or been killed many times. I lost one of my brothers at that time and I tried girls here or there. It never worked for me, I was at the end of my rope and was ready to give my life to Christ.”“When God really talked to my heart about giving my life to him, music was really the last thing on my mind.”Within an environment where people were killing, shooting and fighting, music suddenly lay somewhere in the middle. But as much affection that the had for his homeland, Papa San then chose to move on from the political violence and strife, and he now lives in Miami. He left his old friends, accepted Christ into his life, and started over.“I forgave those who killed my brothers,” says Papa San, who began a new life, embracing a life of faith, “I lived with three different girls, cut them off I cut off on that very day, I settled down with the mother of my child who is now my wife. I never looked back. I have no taste to.”“Cultural navigator” Andrew Princz is the editor of the travel and culture site ontheglobe.com