micapam | j.l.b

Tanya Stephens, maverick reggae singjay, is coming to Australia! This is something every reggae fan should be excited about, and in fact any music lover. She is not your typical dancehall diva – her songs don’t just move your feet, they touch your soul – refreshing the parts others cannot reach.

Her debut album Big Tings a Gwaan in 97 established herself as a distinctive figure in dancehall, her often caustic wit and lively sense of the ridiculous offset by the beautiful quality of her voice. She has always been willing to think laterally: after her first three highly successful reggae albums, she left Jamaica for a sojourn in Sweden and dabbled for a while in rock and folk. Her triumphant return to the reggae scene was heralded by the anthem ‘It’s a Pity’, sung over the ‘Doctor’s Darling’ riddim by German reggae outfit Seeed, a revisiting of the Gregory Isaacs classic ‘Night Nurse’.

She is also unconventional in terms of lyrical content; while not shy of the sexually charged topics common in dancehall (‘Boom Wuk’, ‘Freaky Type’), she’s willing to tackle much deeper subjects. ‘You Keep Lookin Up’ on her most recent album, Rebelution, challenges religious orthodoxy (a brave move in highly conservative Jamaica) and even homophobia (again, rampant in Jamaica, where gays are outlawed) on ‘Do You Still Care’. “I know it’s not the most welcome thing to say,” she says, “when you are who I am, and come from where I’m from, but I worship logic. I adore the ability to see beyond a singular human existence to what I interpret to be the divine, which is everything and everyone combined. I understand that we don’t have to agree on everything to co-exist, so I respect the rights of monotheists to believe in what they believe in. It doesn’t work for me though. And since by every measure of every belief system we all agree that we all have the same basic human rights, then I think I have the right to be a non-believer! Logic has taught me this.”

This focus on lyrics with real meaning – the lack of which in the music industry she pointed out on Ghetto Blues’ ‘Way Back’, comparing the unthinking output of many of today’s artists with the substantial content of songs by an older generation of artists like Marvin Gaye – is a characteristic of Rebelution that will be continued with her next LP: “I call it a continuation because I am doing basically the same thing I started doing a few years ago, which is discussing topics which are of extreme interest and importance to me and which I think other people share an interest in also. I believe discussion is the beginning of every solution and I dedicate my life to solutions so I will be taking on more topics which unfortunately too many humans tend to avoid.” It’s near completion, but don’t hold your breath, there’s no deadline: “For me, when I’m done means when I’m satisfied that it’s a good representation of my thought process and not just when is a good time to drop an album.”

Tanya’s Sydney show will be at the Oxford Arts Factory, 23 February 08. We asked her if she’ll be playing mostly the songs we know, or whether she’ll be bringing new tunes: “I won’t be introducing any unknown material if that’s what you mean by ‘new’. As a consumer I am disgusted when I pay to go sing along with my favourites and instead get some unfamiliar new stuff that I can’t possibly be expected to get my mind around in three minutes. I find that most people I know personally agree with me so I don’t subject people to what I don’t like myself. I’ve never been there before so we have a lot of catching up to do!”

We look forward to catching up!