Etana: "Reggae music is the heart and soul of the people. It's everything that we are. It's life."

Etana, do you think your music has evolved a lot since the first album? Etana: "Oh yeah! Lyrically, vocally, spiritually, mentally, everything! It has evolved in so many ways."

Do you have a goal or purpose that you want to achieve with your music? Etana: "I want to one day fill stadiums as a female artist in reggae music. I also want to help a lot more people, especially in Jamaica, become more educated and find a purpose in life, to change their perspective of hopelessness."

That's interesting, it says a lot about what reggae music means to you. Etana: "Reggae music is the heart and soul of the people. It's everything that we are. It's life. More than anything, it's positive and conscious and it keeps you grounded, you know. That is what reggae music is supposed to be. A lot of people have tried to change that but it will not change as long as there is a Jamaica and as long as there are positive people who create reggae music across the world, like me, from California all the way across Africa and through Europe. All across the world there are people who do positive reggae and, as long as they exist, it will never die. (laughs)"

That's true. If you look back on the whole of your career, what have been the most pivotal moments for you? Etana: "Well, to be completely honest, I don't think I've gotten there yet. I think that I'm continuously growing and I've learned a lot along the way. I've gained a lot of growth and strength. I've struggled a lot and I think there's still so much growing to do. A lot of people will say "you have achieved this" or "you have achieved that" or "you've been here" or "you've been there" but I personally feel that I still have a long way to go."

So where would you want to go? What would you want to achieve still? Etana: "(laughs) I guess you are asking "after achieving all this, what else is there?". But I think there is a lot more, I think the world is huge and a lot of people still don't know who Etana is. I think I have a lot more great albums to do, albums that will be more popular than the ones before. In the end, making everything more popular and more known worldwide is my goal."

Okay. On that note, is there any musical style or any particular kind of album that you would like to do? Etana: "I plan on doing some fun stuff, and I say "fun stuff" meaning… (hesitates and starts laughing). Oh yeah I tried to do a ska album and let me just say this: it was halfway and it was being done with Donovan Germain. Maybe I will still go back to that… But I also want to do some other stuff, like maybe fuse with garage music, like from London, or maybe fuse with hip hop or seventies music and maybe even some trip music, just some crazy stuff. I think it's going to be fun. (laughs)."

Well, it would sure come as a surprise if you came out with a garage album! Etana: "(laughs) Don't worry, it would still be conscious, but just something very different."

How do you come up with your songs? Do you get the beat first and then come up with lyrics to match the music or do you have specific ideas or words in your mind and start to build a song from there? Etana: "Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the melodies come first, it just depends on the vibe of the music at that time, or on my vibe. When the lyrics come first, it's all me. It's my inner feeling, my vibe, me hearing the instruments in my head while I write the song. And then sometimes I get a track, like even with 'I'm Not Afraid', it was just a track and I just wrote the song in 5 minutes. (laughs)"

Your epithet is 'The Strong One' and, as you mentioned earlier, being a woman in the industry you have to be very strong. I read somewhere that you grew up as the only girl in a mostly male family. Do you think that has made it easier for you to tackle this male-dominated industry? Etana: "I think I was born this way. I was always rough, from when I was born. I was never a girly type, I never played with dolls. And even if I did, I kind of broke them apart to put them in the back of the trailers for the boys and then I would drag them along in the trailer. (laughs) So I was never ever a girly type of girl. I was the girl who climbed the trees, climbed the rooftop, jumped off the roof, pretending to be Superman. (laughs)"

Do you ever get tired of it though? It must take a lot to constantly live up to that ideal of being 'The Strong One'… Etana: "Sometimes… sometimes I just want to make mistakes, do crazy stuff and have it blow up in my face like a normal person. But then, as soon as I think of doing that I bump into somebody down the road and they are like: "Oh Etana, your music took me through this!" or  they start to talk about their favorite song and that just makes me realize that a lot of people out there love what I do and find strength in what I do. So I need to be strong for them. I can't afford to let things go. (laughs)."

Your music has a lot of impact on people and you mentioned wanting to have a positive impact on Jamaica and its people. If you could make one change in Jamaica, what would it be? Etana: "I would change all the politicians! (laughs) I think Jamaica needs a rebel, someone to change the old ways and the old things that have been oppressing the people. And if we can't find a rebel I would gladly give back the independence and go back to England ruling Jamaica because there is still a Governor General in Jamaica that Jamaica has to report to anyways. So I feel like Jamaica only got a flag but they've gotten the freedom of education away from us so people have to pay for education and now many can't afford it. So I feel that, yes we got a flag, but a lot of things that are important to the growth of the people have been taken away. And so I would give the flag back, just for that."

This idea is also connected to your charity (The Strong Ones United Foundation, red.). It seems that education is very important to you. Etana: "I've been getting a lot of requests for people to try to get help for education, for their kids to go to school. I mean something as simple as transportation to school, paying the bus fare, is a big hurdle for some people. Or something simple as a school lunch can be a problem for some. I've been doing this work for so long, I've been doing competitions, giving people certificates so they can get books for school, providing lunch money, school fee, bus fare, tuition, all of this on my own. And so I figured I'd start the foundation. I never wanted to publicize it so that it would seem as some sort of publicity stunt because I really was doing it from my heart. But I figured that the numbers of people having a hard time putting their kids through school were growing and I needed help helping them. And so I decided to make it public. I haven't totally made it public yet so that other people can also help because what I want more than anything is that, when people start to help, I need everything to be 100% transparent. I want people to be able to go online and see exactly where their money is actually going each year. So they can see what's being spent, what's over and what's left to do. That's how transparent I want it to be."

That sounds like a good idea. So at this point it's not something that people can donate to? Etana: "Not yet. Because if I don't have it structured and people start donating money, there are ways that we can lose money by not putting it in the right places at the right time or making the right decisions. So I'm making sure that it's a hundred percent structured and transparent. I've been a part of charities before and, after donating all the money and asking about it 2 years later, nobody could say where the money went. And it kind of discouraged me from playing any role in charities. So I wanted to do my own where I can have it be transparent to the world how the money is spent."

Besides from your music and your charity work, you also have a business or several businesses even. Can you briefly talk about that? Etana: "I have a skirt line, a jewelry line, T-shirts; it's a whole online store. We have some of the wickedest summer T-shirts for sale. And we have all the artists that we support and the people on the production line!"