INTERVIEW : ETANA
Interview by : Cyril le Tallec
Pictures by : Marlène Boulad
on Wednesday, June 25th 2008 - 9 637 views
Etana is to singing what Queen Ifrica is to the deejay style: the leading figure of the new generation of Jamaican women. Inspired, even militant lyrics and a reggae tinged with soul and jazz are the ingredients of her first album, "The Strong One", which comes out this week. Although she already knows Europe, having toured it with Richie Spice as a backing singer, she will make her debut at the front of the stage this summer, as she was due to appear on the bill of the Reggae Live Tour. Reason enough for us to make the introductions.
Reggaefrance / You began your career as a backing singer for Richie Spice at Fifth Element Records; can you go back over that period?
Etana / After a raid on Fifth Element’s premises in 2006, one of my managers was arrested and shortly afterwards the other manager was arrested too, so I found myself alone… I decided to create my own structure, Freemind Music, and to join Solid Agency with Sharon Burke (a booking agency that handles Bounty Killer, Mavado and Barrington Levy, among others, as well as various hip hop artists in the Caribbean, editor’s note). I can tell you I’ve come a long way… Many people stop me to ask how I managed to grow so fast, but I don’t think it was fast: it took a lot of time and work, and I still work very hard today.
Your label is called Freemind Music; what does that represent for you?
In this industry, you have to deal with politics. It’s just like life or an office: you have people who try to pull you down, producers who underproduce your music or who favour one artist over another, things like that. I’ve always thought music should be free. All the extras, the bad spirit and the corruption aren’t important to me, music is a pure thing… If you don’t speak English, that doesn’t stop you learning that song, that’s the pure side of music. That’s why I called my label Freemind Music.
In your track Roots, you sing “You can’t water down and dilute, you can’t hide the truth from the youths”; what is the argument behind that line?
When you watch some cartoons, there are Black or “darker” characters who generally play the bad part, while the lighter characters get the good part. In the end, it subliminally affects the minds of the children who watch these programmes. They try to influence them and make them lose their bearings from their very first steps; but there are also other young people who grow up, find their path and know what they want. I grew up watching those cartoons myself, but I chose my own course. When I sing “you can water down and dilute, you can’t hide the truth from the youths”, I’m talking about this generation that is coming up, which is more clear-sighted. Many of them are no longer attached to Christianity or other religions and their values, the way their parents could be. Today children are born and know the truth. You can’t water down and dilute the truth!
In your music, and notably in Roots, we can hear soul and jazz influences; what kinds of music do you listen to?
I remember, eight years ago, after attending Catholic churches, Baptist churches and every church imaginable, I realised something was missing. I was taught that you try to do bad things and then beg for forgiveness, and afterwards everything disappears… But that’s not the truth! If you do something wrong, you’re bound to pay for it sooner or later, whether tomorrow or in five years. I was taught that you had to die in the name of Jesus, that to meet God you had to go through His son, but that’s not reality. God created the living beings on earth and there’s no intermediary between Him and His creatures. I realised something was wrong, so I started reading the Bible, doing research, listening to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, Capleton, Sizzla at the time of “Black Woman and Child”. I started learning and realising, and what I took from it is that life is eternal… When you live in love and in positive light, nothing bad can happen to you, no demon can reach you. That’s when I started listening to deeper music like jazz. I listen to all kinds of music, jazz, rock, hip-hop and R&B… Music frees the mind. It’s like God and the flowers or men, there are many of us and we’re all different, so why should we love only one style, be attached to a single genre? Me, I bring all these genres together to make just one, my own.
How would you describe it?
I’d say free and sincere. People talk about my way of writing or the choices I make when I decide not to be on every riddim. When you sing on juggling riddims, your song ends up lost in the mix… But with my way of writing and by making the music I want to make in my heart, people feel it that way. What’s true about music is that people live it and see it. People can feel fear, they can see it… People can detect your nervousness, they can see lots of different things. The freer you are with that, the better it will be for you.
Which artists have inspired you?
I have eternal gratitude towards Bob… What he did is impressive and what he still does is incredible... After that it’s Sizzla Kalonji, from “Black Woman and Child” up to what he sings today. He sang lots of things that came true over time, he’s a real visionary…
Have you started collaborating with foreign producers?
As you’ll see, the album isn’t uniform. There are acoustic songs, others with jazzy atmospheres… Then I have some tracks close to R&B, others to world music, a bit of everything… It’s like a garden full of flowers. I don’t impose any limits on myself, I write my songs, I’m an artist, that’s what I do. If a producer calls me with an interesting project and it sounds right, I go and do it, you’ll see.
The Jamaican government is getting stricter and stricter with music parties, introducing a curfew…
I made a track, I’m not afraid, which talks about lots of different things, for example the fact that some people work at diverting people’s attention… We should be focusing on certain things and in the end, they capture our attention and steer our minds towards trivial matters. I’m not afraid is a song a youngster can sing on the way to school… My other songs, if you take them out of the context of everyday life, can be misinterpreted. As long as the government tries to deprive the people or the youths of the ghetto of music… You know, music helps us stay alive. Bob said: “one good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no pain”.
In the ghetto, you wake up and go to bed with music. You get up at 6 in the morning and the music is already playing loud; you come back at 7 in the evening, the music is still playing. It lets them release their suffering, forget their daily misery. When the government imposes a 2 a.m. curfew on outdoor parties (the overwhelming majority, editor’s note), nobody comes home from work to get dressed and go straight out to a party: people work, there are rush-hour traffic jams... If you go out at 11 p.m. or midnight and the party ends at 2 a.m. just as you’re enjoying the music… In the end, you’re giving people more time to think, to fight and to do lots of other things.
The worst thing that can happen to the Jamaican people is to be prevented from listening to their music, it’s very dangerous! The politicians shut down our parties but they don’t create jobs. And yet everything is going up: the price of petrol, rice and flowers keeps rising, and not only in Jamaica, everywhere in the world in fact. Jobs are lacking, people are losing their homes and getting into debt, that’s what is happening in the United States and everywhere else. Poor little Jamaica! When I say that, I think of all the riches of our island and I’m fed up with hearing people talk about this country as a third-world country, because it isn’t. The world looks to our island to catch the musical vibration, in sport and in everything we do from the heart, because it is a country of heart. How come that with all these good things, they try to take it all away from us? The government must leave us the freedom to enjoy ourselves. The politicians must create jobs quickly, but above all they must stop talking and start acting, because long speeches only serve one purpose: increasing crime.
Which Jamaica do you love?
There are two places I particularly enjoy. The first is just before you reach Dunn’s River Falls in Ocho Rios: when you get to the bottom of the waterfalls, you see the river meet the sea, it’s a splendid sight. I like that spot because it’s very restful. The other is in Portland parish; the only problem is that the road you have to take to get there is impassable… But once you’re there, it’s simply incredible. The hotel rooms are little private bungalows with their own plot of private beach, there are birds and you feel as if you’re in a park.
You’ve travelled the world on Richie Spice’s tours; what do you expect from your first big tour of your own?
We’re starting the tour with Europe and I’m very excited. Europeans have a different approach and vibration with music. I spent 15 years of my life in the United States, where I grew up. And I think Europeans are much more sensitive to the cultural side of our music than Americans. In Europe, the women are more like my grandmother, rooted in a certain tradition; in America it’s the opposite… I hope to enjoy Europe a lot, the vibes will be good. In the United States, when I go to the West Coast, to L.A. for example, it’s as if I were in Europe! Whereas on the East Coast, I have to sing my love songs.
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