'Dancehall Soul'

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Cherine Anderson's red hat is set at a jaunty angle on a mass of curly hair, tumbling past her shoulders, when she meets The Sunday Gleaner at Devon House.

Literally, it is one of a few things about Anderson's young-spunky-woman-relaxed-yet-trendy-on-a-summer-day outfit deliberately placed off the plumb line.

Figuratively, though, everything about the singer and actress (she's the doe-eyed youngster in One Love, all grown up now) is dead level. She is unequivocal about her brand of music ("It is dancehall soul. It is a fusion.") and her concept of her musical persona ("I am not obsessed about being the next this or that. I am just me. Cherine. Dancehall soul. It is a clean slate.").

Anderson is also clear about her progress in the business of music, saying, "It is like going up a ladder. The higher you go, the more you see." And, while she does not say how high the ladder is and which rung she is currently standing on, or reaching for, she is sure that there is a lot more to come. "This is still the baby stage of my career," Anderson said.

Biography

She has already seen a lot. Her biography does not list concerts that she has performed on - but festivals, 10 in seven countries last year alone. Then there are the tours - two with Sly and Robbie, one with Michael Franti (with whom she has done Say Hey, I Love You to hit the Billboard Rock charts), another with John Mayer, Slightly Stoopid and Counting Crows also in the road trip mix.

And this is before her debut album, set for release next year.

The album debut will be straight-ahead dancehall. "Some of the dancehall stuff is going to surprise people," Anderson said. However, she said, "I will never be lewd. The English language is too vast to say the same things over and over". But, "if it is sexy, it is sexy. If it is making love, it is making love. If it is politics ... ."

So, the album "is about all the things I am going through as a young woman. You might get up and dance, you might shed a tear".

A four-song promo CD shows the transition. The opening track, Ring The Alarm, is on the classic Stalag 17 rhythm and turns the renowned tenor song into a rub-a-dub dirge for fallen ghetto soldiers. The second track, Hall of Fame, is bubbly dancehall and gives the boys the invitation: "You can ring a ring my roses, I like that game/If you win, then you're into my hall of fame".

Anderson takes her rockers seriously. "If I am going to go on a rockers' rhythm, I want it hard, when you turn it up, it hits you in your chest. I want it like when Sly and Robbie were throwing it down for Black Uhuru. If it doesn't feel right, I don't want to be part of it." On the young guns side of the music-producing spectrum, Eagles and Doves was done with Stephen McGregor.

Free feeling

There are many young producers' work on the upcoming album and Anderson has not been afraid to approach them. She has heard music on the radio and wanted to be a part of it, calling up the producers. "There is no rule to making music. I just want it to be free," Anderson said.

While records are made in the studio, performances are where Anderson gets that real feeling of freedom. "I like to feel, I like to touch, I like to sing a line and see someone in the crowd singing out their lungs, even if they can't sing a line. It is an incre-dible feeling," she said. "Live is like where I am in my element. I am happy. I am in heaven when I am on stage."

She is level about her performance objective. "You paid your money to see this. You must feel better when you leave than when you came," she said.

And Cherine Anderson is keeping a level head, even as she pursues lofty personal ambitions. "I want to be the queen of what I do. It is where street meets sweet," she said.

• Cherine: Fallen under music's spell

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

The 'Dancehall Soul' lady chuckles when The Sunday Gleaner asks when she first went to a dancehall session. "I am from the ghetto. I went to dancehall Friday, Saturday, Sunday," she said.

Or maybe dancehall came to her, whether she liked it or not. The first dancehall session trek was to Skateland in Half-Way Tree, where Cherine said dancehall and soul music were played. The soul in her roots comes, in part, from people like Brandy, Monica and Usher. And she counts Spragga Benz, Shabba Ranks and Terror Fabulous among the great deejay influences.

"Shabba Ranks has the gift of rhythm. The way Shabba's voice caresses a rhythm is like no other. Then Buju came, and I was like, 'Shabba/Buju', 'Buju/Shabba'," she said.

There are other deejay influences. Of Lady Saw, she says, "I love the energy, I like the swagger. Saw is 'I am a woman, so what?, Let's go. I'm an artiste' ." Tanya Stephens is also on Cherine's dancehall chart, especially for her earlier songs.

Lauryn Hill's influence

Lauryn Hill is also important to Anderson.

"When Lauryn Hill came, I think the world stopped for me," Anderson said. "There were so many facets in someone who was Afrocentric, hot, had a lot to say, moved with the boys and still was considered a girl - and still spat rhymes hotter than the boys."

Still, there is no chance of her getting lost in her role models or being shaped into an unoriginal product, as Anderson says, "I can't be like anybody wants me to be. I don't want anybody to mold me into some other person".

Looking ahead, Anderson makes no predictions. She says, "In 10 years time, anything I have done to that point will speak for itself. I don't intend to be the next Bob Marley, the next Marcia Griffiths ... I am writing my own future, I am shaping my own music.

"I am just being a rebel with a cause, with a message. And that message is one thing - live. And I am living through my art," Cherine said. "The future is definitely secure, but history will speak for itself."