Etana
Artist. Roots
- Active
- 2005-present
- Sunrise
- August Town, St. Andrew, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Shauna McKenzie
Etana is a singer, the leading woman of roots reggae in the late 2000s, whose debut album The Strong One (2008) won album of the year at the International Reggae and World Music Awards.
Born Shauna McKenzie in August Town, she was taken to Florida by her mother at nine, studied at Broward Community College, writing songs during lectures, and joined a girl group called Gift, a Universal Records project, before leaving it over its provocative image. She came home to August Town in 2002. In 2005 she impressed the 5th Element team and became a backing singer for Richie Spice, touring with him for about a year, until the label encouraged her to record on her own; it called her "the First Lady."
Her first single, "Wrong Address," gathered steady radio play after a slow start, and "Roots" (2007) drew on her travels in Ghana. The Strong One came out on VP in 2008 and also won album of the year at the EME Awards. She said young fans, "especially young girls," had come to believe that music meant focusing on their bodies, and that she had helped change that. Free Expressions (2011) had more of her own writing, and she worried aloud that reggae was "forgetting about the real bass line and the real drums." Angus Taylor calls her "the soft-spoken singer songwriter with the room-shaking voice," and hears I Rise (2014), made with Clive Hunt, as a "bigger step into classical roots territory."
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Duane Stephenson (collaborator)
- Richie Spice (session work)
Notes
- "Etana," biography, Reggaeville, accessed October 21, 2026, https://www.reggaeville.com/artist-details/etana/about/. Avia Collinder, "Etana, the Strong One," Jamaica Gleaner, October 28, 2007, https://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20071028/out/out3.html.
- Collinder, "Etana, the Strong One." "Etana," biography, on Gift.
- "Etana," biography. Collinder, "Etana, the Strong One."
- Collinder, "Etana, the Strong One." "Etana," biography.
- Angus Taylor, "Interview: Etana," United Reggae, February 23, 2011, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n581/022311/interview-etana.
- Angus Taylor, review of I Rise, via Clinton Lindsay, October 28, 2014, https://clintonlindsay.com/2014/10/28/album-review-by-augus-taylor-onwards-and-upwards-for-etanas-i-rise.
