Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
On the cover of Fyah Mumma, Queen Ifrica looks anything but a fire-breathing dowager, coming across as a woman in peace with herself and her environment. However, a run through the double handful of songs on her debut solo album, which begins with the self-defining title track, reveals sufficient flames to singe the guilty.
In these days offiery words on stage that sometimes seem like staged fire, Ifrica makes it clear that hers was literally sparked long before she took up a microphone.
"I am a Rasta from a youth. Fire is burning Babylon, corruption in high and low places," she said. "I come from Nyabinghi into reggae with my Nyabinghi fire that we literally light for 13 days or however long the Binghi last. This is not a commercial fire to bring attention.
"We lead by example. We burn weself first," she continued. "We don't go round an' burn people and round the corner you doing something worse."
An at many points Ifrica rasps in a tone that sounds like flint striking to spark a flame, she just as easily croons a memorable melody. When she blends the two, as happens on Mr. Bojangles, Randy and Born Free, among other songs, the contrast is striking and powerful.
The intertwining of her two musical sides did not happen overnight, and certainly did not start on the recent six-week tour of Europe she did with Turbulance and the C-Sharp Band. In fact Fyah Mumma was three years in the making, Beautiful Day and Lengthen My Days were among the new songs added to the established singles such as Hairdresser and Zinc Fence, her talents were being honed long before going on stage and into the studio.
They were forged in fire.
"Chanting. That is the first thing I was used to in the Niyahbinghi house I grew up in for a while. The singing come from that chanting," Queen Ifrica said. "Singing become more of a harmonious, soul vibe. Garnet Silk register because that was singing for me."
It was Garnet Silk's music that led her to the stage in the rise of Tony Rebel, Luciano and a Rastafarian Capleton in the early to mid 1990s there was "a set of young warrior who start to rise". At Niyahbinghi banquets Ifrica would sing Garnet Silk songs. Silk died in 1995 and at an audition for young artistes on the following staging of Reggae Sumfest, at the urging of other persons she entered and sung a Garnet Sprime song.
Prime time
"(Johnny) Gourzong decide to give me a prime time. Me a no coward still (although she said "when dem call me name me freeze up"). That night me end up work 1:30 a.m.," she said. Coming on after Buju Banton ended and there was a band change, Ifrica did an original song written for Garnet Silk when he died.
Then some time after, at a tribute concert for Garnet Silk in John's Hall, St. James, Queen Ifrica sang a slew of Garnet Silk songs. A member of the Tony Rebel's Flames Productions took her to meet him as she left the stage and when he called out that he was bringing along someone, without seeing her Tony Rebel said "yu know who me waan meet? The girl who jus' deh pon the stage".
Ifrica is still with Flames Productions today.
She loves the business that she is in, one that she says "it is not a bed of rose". "It helps to be very focused and think long-term.If I was not thinking long-term I would probably have given up," Queen Ifrica said of a business "where people are so self-centred and selfish and not looking at what reggae represents.
"Jamaica is the Mecca of reggae. It is an embarrassment when you travel and see how foreigners gravitate. The people take it way serious," she said.
"Don't think about arriving on the latest TV station. Think about arriving in the minds of the people," she advised aspiring artistes. "Don't arrive and leave and they don't even know that you leave."
As for her arrival in music, Ifrica says "yes, we want money from it, but to be popular in Jamaica it would give we more opportunity to have authority on the ideas of the young people... I would like to be more in the ears of the Jamaican people. I don't want to say things when they are not listening".
"I am invited into schools a lot," Ifrica said, adding that the state of some young girls and boys "is ridiculous".
"They are not only singing some of these songs that have some of the so-called violence. They are acting it out," she said.
And as for how the music business is in Jamaica,Ifrica said "you have to work harder in Jamaica. Now it is about getting a forward and being the most popular at any cost. I choose to take the long road and I know one day I will get across to the ghetto youths to where they can get some community projects going and the togetherness, not this myth ..."
True solo debut album
In an era when collaborations between performers are numerous, though actually working as a team is much rarer, Queen Ifrica has made Fyah Mumma a true solo debut album, with only her voice from beginning to end (along the way she refers to songs by Spragga Benz, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley). "A lot of people talk about collaboration with artiste, feeding off the fame of the artiste. Me would like a collaboration with a Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z. The collaboration me want to do with them is to get to this young people audience," she said, also pointing out that off-stage these performers do a lot of community work.
"I want to team up with them to come into our garrison Ifrica said.
"I don't sit here as a nun or the holy mother of God, but as an individual who know the earth make up of good and evil. I just want to be one of the soldier for goo. Evil have so much soldier, good haffi go fight," the Fyah Mumma said, laughing.
