Queen Fyah - the interview

Gepostet in: Interview

Merrium Pondani aka Queen Fyah is a Malawian Roots Rock Reggae Artist who’s steadily making her presence felt in the reggae industry. The last born of three girls and raised by a single mother, Queen Fyah persevered through all the hardships she faced in life and is now paving her way to Legendary Status. Mzansi Reggae caught up with her when she came to South Africa to shoot a music video for her recently released chart topper “Gratitude”.

A piece of the interview:

Where did you grow up and how was your childhood?
I grew up in Malawi in different places, Blantyre then we went to
Liwonde which is just a town and went back to Blantyre City that’s where
I’ve been all my life from my childhood until I went to College and
became a teacher and a radio DJ and Producer. I have two sisters, the
first born is here in South Africa, the second stays in Malawi as well.
My father passed on long time ago

And how did you become a Rastafarian?
It was because of my friend Kommunique, he inspired me a lot, he was
trying to teach me the teachings of His Majesty, and after realising who
I was, I decided to go back to my roots, cause I know that everyone is
born a Rasta. It just take the family you are in, I was born in a
Christian family but it was maybe cause they were influenced to be
Christians way back. I know everyone is born Rasta it’s just takes some
time to realise who you are and go back to your roots. So that Rasta Man
helped me a lot and after reading some books I realised that I’m a Rasta
Woman, I should be a Rasta Woman, I should go back to my Roots as a
Rasta Woman.

How did the family react when you told them you are a Rasta cause you
grew up following the Christian way of life?
It was really hard because my Mother always thought that maybe I’m going
crazy, I’m going mad; with the hair, you know my Mother would always
tell me that I should cut my hair, but I refused up to now and she just
accepted that maybe let’s just leave her she’s a Rasta woman, right now
I don’t have any problem with my family. They’ve accepted that I am a
Rasta woman.

While we still on that I read somewhere you said (are you still
teaching?) “yes I’m still a teacher”. You were saying it’s very hard
when the government doesn’t accept dreadlocks. How was that journey?
It was really hard cause in the very 1st days they used to tell me to
remove the dreadlocks, I had to give one of the primary education
advisor some money to cut the story short. Like to stop them from
penalising me and stuff like that. It’s been very hard up until now,
maybe they’ve just accepted also. The school I teach I can never leave
and go somewhere else because that school accepted me. If I try to leave
that School or if I get posted to another school it will be difficult,
I’ll have to deal with those guys as well. I find it hard to leave that
School and teach somewhere else. It’s like I’m stuck, those people
accepted me. If I try to leave then I’ll have to cut my dreadlocks. They
say we are not supposed to teach with dreadlocks, they say what kind of
example are we setting? We are not setting a good examples to the
learners, you know it’s really hard but at least right now I have peace.

How long have you been teaching? Did you always know that you wanted to
be a teacher?
I didn’t want to be a teacher, to be honest, right now I understand that
maybe Rastafari that’s what he called me for. I wanted to be a nurse. I
had to apply after my secondary school for nursing, I was called for
interviews, but the day I got the letter it was after some time, some
bad minded people hid the letter so that I shouldn’t go to the
interviews, the grace period was over so I just left it. My mother is a
teacher, a secondary school teacher, so she was also telling me to apply
for teaching but as a secondary school teacher, but I refused I told her
that “I don’t want to grow poor like you” but then there was nothing I
was doing, I didn’t have a choice, I applied, unfortunately it was for a
Primary School teacher, I applied, that was in 2010, I went to college
that was in 2011, I got posted in 2014, so I have 5 years’ experience.

the whole interview

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Tags: Queen Fyah Rastafarian