FYMS - A tua nova música: Etana

Shauna McKenzie or more usually known as Etana started her carrer in 2006. Since then she has already released 2 albums.

From the beginning she was used to be the girl between the boys, since she was the only baby girl in a family of boys. In the reggae world she is one of the few female artists and is commonly called the reggae princess.

Her songs are related with love, fighting injustices and prejudices, having pride and so on.

Overall, my music has to uplift. It can’t just be that I go in a studio and string words together. My music must have a message, it must have a purpose. It has to make people feel good and want to really listen to what I’m saying.

Two years after initiating her carreer, Eatana released her first album called The Strong One - that’s why she also named as The Strong One. All the tracks were released as a single and also charted. The Strong One featured songs such as Warrior Love, Jah Chariot, Don’t Forget, I Am Not Afraid, Blessing, More & More, Caltariba System as well as her first two hits Roots and Wrong Address.

Travelling to another country to perform is perhaps one of the most exciting things for me. Especially if it is a country where English isn’t the first language. Being in Portugal or Spain, for example and hearing a crowd of 100,000 people sing every one of your songs word for word is just exhilarating.

While touring, Etana won several awards such as Best New Artist, Female Vocalist of the Year, Reggae Singer of the Year, Most Admired Female Artist, Cultural Artist of the Year and several Album of Year trophies.

In 2011 she released her second album called Free Expressions. Before that she released Free, Happy Heart and August Town, letting the fans very excited to what was coming.

This time around, I got really involved in the making of the album. For The Strong One there were a team of writers but it’s pretty much all me and my pen in the majority of the songs on Free Expressions. That was an experience I enjoyed, and I am definitely more into writing these days.

Last weekend, FYMS had the enormous opportunity not only to go to her gig at Festival MUSA Cascais but also to get to know Etana and have a very pleasant conversation. She is what you can see when she is singing live, a very relaxed person, always smiling even after such a exhausted show.
She started her show with this song: