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O-Shen


Jason Hershey, aka O-shen From 1994 through 1997, the young man later to call himself O-shen, was in the Washington State Prison at Walla Walla serving time for a burglary. It was there that he taught himself Tahitian. He carries a PNG passport, and a U.S. one. Until age 15,O-shen was raised in the village of Butaweng in northern Papua New Guinea by his American medical missionary parents. There, living among the Yabim people, he learned the language, customs and hard, gardening work that was expected of any young Yabim man. He knows how to plant, and when to harvest, sweet potatoes, taro and kava. He did not speak English as his daily language until moving back to the U.S. at age 15. Music was always a presence in his life. From the age of 4, he says, I was beating on boxes with the other village kids while we pretended we were rock stars. This pattern continued at his high school in Spokane, Washington, where he was a drummer in the school band. After serving his time in Washington, he moved to Hawai‘i, where he found work as a beach boy in Waikiki and began developing his music. I was tired of bubble gum reggae and the ‘ooh, baby I love you’ songs that everyone was doing, he says. One day, he looked up the address of the record company producing CDs for recording artist Fiji. I sent Fiji a demo tape and a four-page letter telling him what I was trying to do with my music. A few days later, he called me up. O-shen’s first break was doing a Niugini pidgin rap in...

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