Jah9 returns home with soulful performance at Lost in Time
Published:Thursday | February 29, 2024 | 12:08 AMShanel Lemmie/Staff Reporter
After spending half a decade away from home, Jah9 has returned to Jamaican shores with a stirring performance of her decade’s worth of hits.
At Saturday’s staging of Lost in Time Festival, Jah9, alongside over a dozen musical peers, delivered a range of performances.
While the night held intrigue for all in attendance, for Jah9 fans, this would be the first time the singer performed material from her 2020 album Note to Self locally.
Qualifying the experience, she told The Gleaner, “It is a joy. It is a joy to see the young people and to see the music resonating with them. Those who were much younger when I left and are grown up now and are in the audience singing the songs.”
She continued, “With my set it’s always getting used to the idea that people are listening, it’s not a ‘jump up, jump up’ set. It’s a very introspective time, it’s like a pause between the festival where people stand and are soaking in the word sounds. I saw the eyes and I could feel that people were paying attention and connecting with the vibe.”
While there was no shortage of reaction to the white-dress clad singer, one Kingston native who styles her self as the biggest Jah9 fan said the experience seeing her live once again was transformative.
“I first saw her perform at a show at Wicky Wacky and from that,” she said dramatically pausing. “Listen to me, that lady has captured my heart. She has captured my heart, my soul, entire being. When she performs it’s like I feel something. My soul just at peace when she performs. You see when I found out she was coming here, I couldn’t contain my joy,” Camillia Crossdale explained.
Crossdale, who is also a trained Flautist, told The Gleaner that Jah9 not only has silky smooth vocals, but her introspective lyricism has no equivalent.
“I attended Edna Manley (College) and every day when I would walk to school, she would be the one that would be playing in my ear. She starts my morning going to school. You know seh college rough and she just put me at peace.”
After meeting Crossdale, a visually grateful Jah9 explained the weight of that interaction for her.
“I don’t get out much but when I do, these things do happen and it’s always so humbling because you know why you do this work and even if you don’t get to meet the people, you can just feel it. You get the emails, you get the messages and so on but to see young people come and show that kind of love it really is truly humbling. I really do appreciate that especially coming home and performing for the first time. It’s really really Irie to know that the youths are paying attention.”
She explained that with her last album specifically, her goal was to facilitate introspection.
“When it launched, literally days after it dropped, the whole world fell apart and I was like ‘okay Jah, this is why’. So people got to sit in their homes and sit with those words and do the work. So I am really glad that I got to serve in that way.”
She said that although they weren’t club bangers at the time of release, she advocated for them with her record label because she knew the message was necessary.
Now four years later her new message has a more sensual style.
Categorising her upcoming album as Avocado meets Love Has Found I, she expressed, “Big people things coming up. Just know the songs that are coming up are for nurturing a different kind of vibe. It is for the interpersonal, it is about that interconnectedness, that man and woman need to reconnect to. Kind of bridging that gap because I see now that there’s a lot of talk about independent woman and man; it’s just a great divide that we have to bridge and I feel like that is the new work. That is what I’ve been inspired to write about now and that’s the direction that we’re going in now. Showing a softer more feminine side, a more sultry side. Showing females the other ways to be feminine because it’s not just about exposing yourself.”