Source: JAMAICA OBSERVER LIFESTYLE
By: Basil Walters
Title: Kingston State of Mind
Artist: Cherine Anderson
Director: Cherine Anderson
She generally represents the mellow side of dancehall, a musical genre that has become different things to different people. Her personification of the soulful branch of reggae radiates with comeliness and intellect that is as stunning and appealing as her sultry vocals.
Singer-actress Cherine Anderson.
Cherine Anderson oozes the kind of confidence and eye-catching charm that echos her winnability in a creative endeavour that has often proven unkind to the female of the species. This dancehall "soulstress," who is of the view that the music world needs to hear more reggae/dancehall from a female's perspective, is smoothly sailing to the forefront of her game.
If there is one dancehall act (irrespective of gender) who is on a roll at this juncture, it's Cherine Anderson. Less than a year ago, she had the number one record and number one video in Jamaica, for three weeks, Coming Over Tonight, a song she wrote and on which she collaborated with Chuck Fender.
In the latter half of last year, she also had the number two record on the South Florida charts for over 27 weeks, this was Good Love. It went on the charts sometime in July and it never came off until the end of the year.
Presently, Anderson has two songs in the Top Ten in South Florida, one of which is Coming Over Tonight, and another song called Skin To Skin, produced by Irie Pen, a label out of Miami.
But her latest musical project, Kingston State of Mind, is a lament of the shady side of her native community, which has been rocked by a prolonged spell of social explosion. Anderson, riding on Clement Coxsone Dodd's Darker Shade rhythm, gives an enthralling peek into her present head space.
"Something that is really dear to my heart because I grew up in East Kingston. I was born on Lucas Road in Rockfort, moved between there and Windward Road, Nannyville and Rollington Town," explains the singer-songwriter about one of the strongest social commentaries spinning on the turntables since the start of the year.
"I left for college, came back to Jamaica and just looking on, it's not that it's foreign to me, but it's gotten to a point now where if a five-year-old can say the man dead or dem shoot di lady in har head ..... I find it sad as it sounds like there no separation of what would have been probably a movie to me at five (years of age), and what's reality for Jamaican kids today," she added.
"Ah mean," she continues, "the issue was so personal that when I went to write Kingston State Of Mind, it came in ten minutes.... It took ten minutes of being in the studio for everything to just gell, it just came out. Even when time came to decide on who to hire to come in on the background, I said 'you know what, just run the track'. So I just sang all the vocals, background, everything.....It was almost like I was in a very different space."
Notwithstandin the upheavals her community is experiencing, Cherine Anderson has not abandoned her roots, and was quick to point out, "The funny thing about it, I'm not far removed from East Kingston, I still have family, my parents are there.
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