Dancehall veteran Tanya Stephens appreciates the iconic affect Bob Marley has on Jamaica’s arts and culture, there’s no doubt about that. But the Jamaican headliner of the upcoming Bob Marley’s 67th Jubilee Celebration confesses she doesn’t even have a Marley album in her collection.
But that’s okay: she’s always done things her own way. Unlike most of Jamaica’s iconic musicians, Stephens didn’t come from Kingston. Instead, she hails from the countryside on the northern coast of Jamaica, where the music scene was very scarce.
“The only form of live music I was exposed to in my upbringing was at my town square on the weekends,” explains Stephens.
Stephens’ style of dancehall is unlike that of most women in Jamaican reggae. She raps and sings her self-composed lyrics for her solo tracks, which cover a huge variety of styles and topics such as politics, love, and social dysfunction.
“I’ve never really had any direct musical influences,” she says. “I don’t think I could even compare my style to anyone else’s considering it’s a huge mish-mash of everything I’ve been exposed to in my life.”
Stephens is currently working on a book that she’s been cooking up for a while now. She explains that her albums are also a form of storytelling.
“When I write my albums I mix things up so there is something for everyone to connect to on a personal level,” she says. “I use my music as a platform for discussion because there are many topics that are still considered taboo which we need to embrace in order to try to solve the problems.”
Stephens believes it’s a lack of communication that perpetuates a lot of the world’s problems and says her music can be a catalyst to come up with solutions.
“At the same time I still try to keep some tracks more lighthearted and coat problems with humour so we can all just laugh at ourselves and not take everything too seriously,” she says.
Stephens was able to keep her humour recently when she fell while performing in Jamaica.
“Once I fell, I started laughing at myself and decided to stay laying down,” she says. “Everyone else laughed as well, and it was a good way to turn something that could be embarrassing into something really funny.”
Tanya Stephens
Thursday, February 9
Club 9ONE9
victoriaskafest.ca