ST JAMES, Jamaica — Renowned for her soulful, conscious and uplifting lyrics, roots, rock, reggae crooner Lila Iké is advising female creatives that they can embrace militancy while still maintaining their femininity.

In full flight on night two of Reggae Sumfest at the Catherine Hall Entertainment Complex, the debonair songstress argued that members of the fairer sex can successfully assume the same militant stance as some of their male counterparts.

“We no waan we family fe hungry, me no waan me mother fe bruck. And me waan some young girl inna Jamaica know sey, look ya no, you can hot and sexy and do your hair, and do you wig, wear you nails and all of these things and still have militancy; still have consciousness, still have self respect, still full of morals,” she declared.

“Me see [Tony] Rebel stand up inna the crowd. You no feel like wah Rebel do is anything different from what I am doing? We are all creatives expressing ourselves, you know. Different strokes for different folks,” she added before launching into the glorifying Good and Great.

Before revving into her smash hit Where I am Coming From to complete her set, the Manchester native expressed how bewildered she was on her recent arrest in St Catherine for driving a vehicle with a demonstration license plate with a passenger onboard.

“Yesterday I felt so alone, so lost, so confused as to why I am being arrested because I had a passenger in the seat of a demo car…. wha dem call it demo plate? You know the blue plate? I was so confused. Only to come to Sumfest inna the same car with the same passenger. The devil couldn’t stop this!” she expressed.

“Kick off Where I’m coming From. We naw hitch. Once more pon dem again. Let’s go!” she added.

Throughout her well received set, she belted out selections from her catalogue including Second Chance, Thy Will, I Spy, Sweet Inspiration among others. She segued into Freddie McGregor’s Prophecy, while dropping the hard-hitting Wanted.

She signalled that she had plenty more hits in her arsenal but couldn’t perform them all due to time constraints.

— Horace Hines