INTERVIEW : TANYA STEPHENS
Interview & pictures : Benoit Collin
on Monday, September 05th 2005 - 10 635 views
We met Tanya Stephens at Summerjam last July. Found in her dressing room for a short interview before the start of her show, she welcomed us, smiling and available.
Reggaefrance / Hello Tanya, how did you start singing?
Tanya Stephens / I grew up listening to music. In Jamaica, it's natural for everyone to be so close to music. It's a very musical society. There are lots of musicians, perhaps the highest number ....
Everybody in Jamaica is a musician. So it came very naturally to me. I started out in the music industry as a teenager; I must have been 16-17. I sang my first song with my friends, it was a dancehall, on a sound system. We grabbed the mic... But professionally, I started singing around 1992.
You started with dancehall tracks. Can you tell us about that period?
I was young, and the easiest way to break into this business is to voice a riddim that has popular artists on it. It wasn't ideal, but I did it and it worked. My themes were mostly about sex, because it was one of the most important things to me at the time; I was a teenager. It doesn't have the same importance now.
Do you think there's a paradox in being a woman and singing slackness?
Not really. What people call slackness means anything that's geared towards sex. And everybody has a sex, women as well as men. So I don't really see where the problem is, whether it's a man or a woman singing those lyrics.
Is it harder to make your mark in dancehall as a woman in Jamaica?
No, I think it's hard to move on to serious things once you've entered the business. But getting into this business isn't really hard for a woman. There aren't many women, so there isn't really any competition.
Unfortunately, we're quite limited; whatever a woman's level, she's always compared with the other female artists. And the more women there are, the more she gets forgotten....
Can you tell us about your latest album, "Gangsta Blues", and the evolution of your music?
My music has to evolve, just as I evolve. My music is the expression of what I think, of what I feel. Growing musically is a natural thing for an artist. As I was saying earlier, when I was a teenager I sang songs about sex because it was an important theme for me at the time. As I grew up, I became aware of more important themes, and I started writing about more serious subjects.
You've been working with VP for a long time; how does the collaboration go? Do you have constraints or do they leave you totally free?
I'm not really free... I recorded freely with producers I felt comfortable with. Then VP would approve the song or not. But they wouldn't have blocked a track. It's in their interest for the artist to be comfortable.
Do you plan to stay with VP?
I have an album coming out in October with VP, so if I want to leave VP, now isn't the time to say it, because I need them until then (laughs).
Your lyrics about men are more moderate... Have you changed your mind?
No, it's just that I think it's not but it's less important. We're human beings, everybody makes mistakes, women too. It's just that it doesn't interest me because I don't have to challenge a woman. I have relationships with men, so my attention goes to the relationships I've had with men. I haven't changed my point of view. I've just seen more important things I want to talk about.
Any last word?
The first thing I have to do is thank everybody. There are lots of artists, I'm not just talking about Jamaica but the whole world: there are so many artists, and many I have more regard for than for myself! The fact that I'm here, that I have the opportunity to travel, that people like my work... It's more than I could ever have asked for. I'm still amazed that a little girl from Jamaica can do so much. I'm very grateful and I want to thank everybody. Beyond that, there's not much else I could say as a "message". I'm not a paragon, a role model; I can't give people advice.
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