I grew up in Jamaica. Many people would associate it with reggae, but I would say that, culturally, Jamaica is quite a soundscape; there’s a lot of different music on the streets.
My mother is Irish. She moved to Jamaica in the seventies and a lot of the music we had on cassettes at home was stuff she had taped off the radio by Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs and Freddie McGregor.
When I got to 10, like many girls at the time, I was attracted to singers like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan. I think that’s what really drew me to singing, trying to imitate the sounds of these women with these big voices.
We moved to Australia when I was 14 or 15, and towards the end of high school, I realised that those women were inspired by jazz singers, so I started following the people who my idols followed....
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