Singing sensation Nana EQ – Part 1

She is known as Nana EQ from Grange Hill, Westmoreland, and rose to stardom at age 13, sharing the stage with some of Jamaica’s greats in entertainment including Gregory Isaacs.

She is bubbling with memories, and her stories are breathtaking and hilarious. Relax and have a Reggae Vibes feast as she takes you through her thrills and spills.

Here’s part one of an eight-part series.

“My real name is Brenda Finlayson. Head down now to Grange Hill and ask about Nana EQ or Brenda. In fact, go to any parish and somebody there must know me because Nana EQ follows the music and the crowd follows Nana EQ”

“I could run at mi school, Grange Hill basic school, but wi never run in lanes. As children, we get excited, just wanting to reach the finishing line. And there comes the hugs and you become a star right there.”

“I was about five years old, winning gold, silver, and bronze medals. But the bronze was won for relays.”

“Me personally didn’t have any national hero for sports as children, it was the bigger runners in the school we knew of.”

“Then I had a teacher. She always tell me, ‘girl you are going to be a star’. And me did believe her ’cause other people were telling me the same thing.”

“People see talent in me ’cause, guess what, I usually just take a pencil and plain paper and start to draw, just a draw. And, to me what I draw looks like foolishness. But when teachers come around, spin paper, they started to interpret and Nana EQ looks like a big artist.”

Nana EQ did not take her talent very seriously at an early age. However, she confessed loving music before she was ten years old.

“My favourite song was, “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” a song that sometimes I felt was annoying”.

Her mother Delsie could sing as she was able to draw a large crowd performing at church concerts. “Mom was a Baptist member and when she started to sing it was like singing full her belly.”

“I never grow up loving meat. Maybe that’s part of the reason I ended up being a Rastafarian. My stepfather would raise goats, hogs, and fowls.”

“Don’t laugh when mi tell you this. I used to love animals very much. You will see me talking to goats and fowls, and even give them names. So, I never like to see them get killed and how me vexed never want any of the meat to eat.”

“One day, a come home calling Jolly, a fowl. I gave that name. But I cannot see Jolly. A search the yard, no Jolly. Then a heard it’s Jolly they cook for dinner.”

“A bawl till a weak that evening. Jolly dead. People run to see which relative dead. A couldn’t stop crying”.

Her latest project is titled God’s Blessings, Donroy Muziq, a father Glenroy and son Savoy Donaldson production.

Keep smiling for part two. Only on the Reggae-Vibes site.

(Photos courtesy of Nana E.Q.)