At age 26, dancehall genius Stonebwoy has a pleasant and warm personality uncommon among his peers and quite unusual for a contemporary dancehall musician.
Chief Executive of Burniton Music Group, Livingstone Etse Satekla aka Stonebwoy, is one of the few musicians living an exemplary life that makes one doubt the belief that the dance hall music genre has a tendency to promote profanity, vulgarism, immorality and violence.
He told NEWS-ONE that there is no way his music career will make him abandon the proper upbringing he had from his parents in his childhood.
“I believe my lifestyle cannot change. I have been simple, I have been me and I have lived my life just as I was taught. I am not a perfect person but the Bible says by their deeds, you shall know them,” was Stonebwoy’s response when NEWS-ONE asked about his positive attitude.
He explained: “Positivity is one thing. My attitude is from my upbringing. I was born into a Christian home, and not a house. So you have your parents, especially your father checking you. You have to read the Bible and believe you me there was no idle moment for me when I was growing up. The little free time you had, your parents would literally force you to go and read the Bible and study it like a text book.
“So the quest for wisdom became important to me at a young age. I was taught that you just could not live your life anyhow, say anything and just do anything. We are not all the same but it pays to make a positive attempt to be a different person. When I say a different person, I mean a good and decent person and not a bad one,” he added.
Checks by NEWS-ONE showed that Stonebwoy literally spent his childhood in church because his dad was an elder of the Deeper Life Church.
But he declined to comment when the paper asked which church he attended as a child.
“The church does not really matter and I do not want to mention it although a few people are in the know. Fact is, mentioning one church would make it seem as if I am saying this is the church that teaches the best. But it is not about church. It is about the Bible and the philosophy of life.
“Life itself is deep and nature teaches us all the time as we live and we grow. Even if you do not go to church and you do not read any book, I believe that within you, God has given you a special thing that hints you if you are doing something bad and also hints you if you are doing something good.
You feel the freeness in your spirit when you are doing the right thing and you feel the heaviness in your spirit when you are doing something wrong but you do not stop because you silence and kill your conscience,” Stonebwoy added.
When asked to tell who Livingstone was as a child, he said: “He has always been that guy that would rap, sing, read his books and top the class. That has been Livingstone but let us come back to my musician career because I believe that is my lane now and I want to focus on that.”
The award-winning musician recently returned from a tour of Europe and is working on his second album, ‘Necessary Evil’.
