Wonder Woman of the Week: Ana Vee
- Apr 6, 2022
- 2 min read
Our Wonder Woman this week is a musician who is helping to carve out a place for women in a new generation of reggae performers in a new region of the world. While reggae may have its origins in the Caribbean, the Pacific's island nations are becoming a fast new headquarters for the genre as artists blend Oceanian instrumentals with Jamaican vocal styles to create a new Pacific Reggae subgenre. The new subgenre however has largely been dominated by male artists with music videos featuring women as the target of male gaze. That's changing however thanks to the work of artists like this week's Wonder Woman Ana Vee. Vee was born in Hawaii- one of the major sources of Pacific Reggae along with the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. Vee spent her childhood playing guitar and learned to sing from her mother- another talented Hawaiian musician. By adulthood, Vee had gained a talent for both performing and writing music.
After releasing the unofficial island anthem "Hawaii," Ana Vee's name was all over the radio in Hawaii; but her name spread pretty quickly. The artists used her local success to expand horizons and began producing music beyond the reggae genre including songs with hip-hop and 90's pop ballads to create her own sound in the market that garnered international attention. Vee's work wasn't just about creating a platform for her own success. Instead, the musician focused her work on opening doors for other women and girls to have a space in the Pacific Island subgenre to produce their own music and garner international success to shatter barriers for women in music and balance out the sexism in the genre.
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