Etana exudes passion during her performance at Jordu Live last Saturday. - photo by Mel Cooke

Etana's big voice filled the intimate space at last Saturday's Jordu Live, held at Jordu, 7th Avenue Plaza, St Andrew, as she passed the test of the up close and unplugged performance, accompanied only by percussions and guitar.

She did not turn in a perfect score not because of ability or execution, but the structure of her performance. After taking a seat, smiling, and starting on a high with Wrong Address for the two-thirds capacity audience (most of which crowded around the tiny stage) going through her own material and following the backup singers' roots medley that ended with Rastaman Chant and coming in with her own All That You've Got is Your Soul then a hard-hitting Roots, Etana took the unaccustomed route close to the end.

She dipped into the songbooks of her elders, including Bob Marley's One Drop and Dennis Brown's Here I Come. She went for two new songs, the first A Woman's Voice, especially striking, but the other not making as much impact, slowing the momentum of a full-length performance. Still, the audience had been sufficiently impressed with what had come before and knew enough of Etana's material to ask for Money, which she delivered for them to get a lift closer to the expected closing high.

And birthday man Paul got a high all of his own, as Etana called him onstage to sing him happy birthday, complete with a peck on the cheek.

Jordu Showcase

Etana's extended performance closed off a night which included fashion from Jordu (Etana was also dressed by the store), the transformation from small concert venue to catwalk effected by simply stretching two coloured bands down the room's centre from the sides of the stage. And even before the Sexy Sensational models were introduced by MC Heather Grant, DJ Amber laid down the tracks and the top-place winners in the mid-month Jordu Showcase performed.

DJ/singer duo Mahai and Gary had been fifth in the talent exposé to select performers for Jordu Live, Shadow Blacks fourth, Classical Esca third, Bang Diddy second and Iya Shine first. Last Saturday night, though, Shadow Blacks and Bang Diddy with their obvious easy-going personalities and humorous lyrics stood out.

Shadow Blacks deejayed "me haffi rich like Michael Lee Chin/Have house big like stadium a Beijing" to cheers from the audience, although he did not restart. And Bang Diddy worked his slow, emphatic style to good effect, asking the audience if they believed a woman had tied him after "me trail har go Back Road" and "de jacket yu gi me no fit me" but he still stayed in a relationship with her.

The Sexy Sensational Models, a set of young women whose strut and body types are generally not of the stereotypical trotting gait and waif-like look, strutted their stuff, mainly party wear and semi-formals, with a business pants suit and a 'Fantasy' creation also included, the audience lining both sides of the runway ribbons getting a very close look.

They crowded the stage when Etana came up to take her seat on a silver stool, eyes closed and face highly expressive throughout Wrong Address. From the get-go, Etana, who interacted well with her audience and showed an engaging personality, blended newer and older material, standing to sing that she's "gonna be free, like a bird in the sky".

Positive attributes

In the up-close setting, a performer's flaws and positive attributes are magnified; with her vocal strength, range and emotional investment in a song's mood, Etana's latter loomed large at Jordu Live, although the wear on her vocal chords showed when she spoke closer to the end.

Warrior Love went over well, Clyde moved to centre stage from harmony vocals for Jah Jah Blessing (the first song to get a 'pull-up') and Etana connected the haplessness of the helpless across the world with:

"There is a place called Jamaica

Children lose their life in first grade

There's a little place in Asia

Children lose their lives to grenades"

Sometimes she sat, sometimes she stood, asking the gentleman Don't Let Me Down and telling a man up front "I will be the one". "We going to change the vibe a little," Etana said, hitting I Am Not Afraid and singing against "loose talking" and "bad min'" before going into the medley from her elders, starting with Harder They Come, that heralded the end.

Jordu Live, conceptualised by IPC Entertainment, takes place the last Saturday of each month, with the Jordu Showcase talent hunt in mid-month.