Music: Sevana Seeks "Justice"

-Noisey

Sevana’s transparency and soul-baring sounds are her strongest assets and she’s using them to bring attention to causes close to her heart. The 26-year-old native from Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, a parish that sits on Jamaica’s west coast, is a champion for the people and truth, packaging it in the soulful reggae music her fans have grown to love.

Born Anna-Sharé Blake, one of her foundational introductions to music was one that was very public. She was a past contestant on the island’s version of popular shows like American Idol and The Voice, called Digicel Rising Stars, and entered the competition as a group with two other girls she had known from school. They formed SLR— ‘S’ for Blake’s affectionate name Sherry, ‘L’ for Latoya and ‘R’ for Rashawn, the group’s other two members—and in 2008 made their debut on the Rising Stars stage, even advancing as top ten finalists. Outwardly, this would have been the moment that inspired her to pursue music but her first epiphany came many years prior when she was eight-years-old.

She describes her upbringing and Jamaica as a place where, whether one likes it or not, that indoctrinates its people with music. “Being in Jamaica you are intrinsically musical because music’s always playing. Even if you don’t personally listen to music, it’s on the street corner, every weekend dem have a dance. If you go to the shop, there’s music blaring. It’s just ingrained in us.” She cites Beres Hammond as a source of inspiration and in the past has cited the likes of Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, Bob Marley, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Prince, however, the artist whose had the biggest impact on her was Celine Dion.

Remember that breakfast where Sevana’s family discovered her talent? She happened to be singing Dion’s ‘A New Day Has Come’. And just as Dion laments about perseverance and fearlessly running towards fate, so the artist knew her destiny involved using her voice as an instrument of awareness. Since Rising Stars, she’s been able to do just that through her collections of singles that she’s released and features that she’s been on, as well as through her 2016 self-titled EP, Sevana.

Sevana is now trying to redirect her focus to the effects of climate change through both the single and the video for ‘Justice’. An issue that has largely been overlooked by government bodies who make executive decisions for themselves, and by extension, the world, given their power and political influence, Sevana wanted a record and video to raise more awareness through the power of music on the current condition of our global environment.