Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

“Is this love, is this love, is this love that I’m feel­ing?”

These time­less lyrics from Bob Mar­ley sparked some­thing deep with­in Teneille Young, a Trinida­di­an singer-song­writer whose jour­ney re­flects the same soul­ful essence.

When Young per­formed her first live cov­er of Mar­ley’s Is This Love in De­cem­ber 2019, it wasn’t just a trib­ute to a reg­gae leg­end—it was set to be a turn­ing point.

The elec­tric­i­ty of the mo­ment ig­nit­ed a long-held dream she had car­ried since her child­hood, one shaped by singing along to icons like Mar­ley, Li­onel Richie, and Tina Turn­er.

Now based in Kingston, Ja­maica, Young has em­braced the very spir­it of Mar­ley’s sto­ry­telling and reg­gae rhythm in her mu­sic, cul­mi­nat­ing in the re­lease of her de­but sin­gle More to You. This is the first song that was launched in late No­vem­ber this year from her up­com­ing Ex­tend­ed Play (EP), Wild­flower, which she was able to churn out with the ex­per­tise of leg­endary Ja­maican reg­gae pro­duc­er and song­writer Mike Ben­nett.

Young ex­plained the in­spi­ra­tion she had when writ­ing this reg­gae-based love song. “I jour­nal a lot; I al­ways make time in my day to jour­nal, whether it’s ear­ly in the morn­ing or late at night, and my jour­nal en­tries some­times end up be­ing po­ems. I have ex­plored love as a teenag­er in my 20s, my 30s, and in my 40s. When you fall in love, you feel all this elec­tric­i­ty, pas­sion, and fire­works. It is not that it does not con­tin­ue; falling in love is love­ly, but grow­ing in love is beau­ti­ful, and that is what More to You is about,” she said.

From her ear­ly years, Young al­ways had a love for singing. Singing has be­come a way of life for her as op­posed to a ca­reer or pro­fes­sion. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Young got the space and free­dom to work on her craft, re­sult­ing in the record­ing of her first pro­fes­sion­al cov­er and mu­sic video to Queen’s I Want to Break Free in March 2020.

This cov­er of Young’s video would pro­mote the many roles of women in to­day’s world with themes of au­then­tic­i­ty over per­fec­tion, self-love, and be­ing your own biggest cheer­leader.

“For me, it was want­i­ng to break free from me and the chains in my mind, telling me that I can’t be a rock star, I can’t sing, I can’t per­form be­cause I was 40 at the time, and it’s not some­thing that you would ex­pect some­one to do and kind of be pre­oc­cu­pied with what oth­er peo­ple would think, and I was just like, you know what, I’m go­ing to do this,” she said.

In 2023, Young re­leased her first al­bum ti­tled Dream, which was pro­duced in T&T by Carl “Beaver” Hen­der­son. The al­bum had three orig­i­nal songs called Dream, Love Let­ter, and Wild­flower.

In De­cem­ber 2023, Young and her fam­i­ly moved to Ja­maica from T&T when her hus­band got a new job op­por­tu­ni­ty. She ex­pressed the chal­lenges she faced when tran­si­tion­ing to the new cul­ture. “It was chal­leng­ing be­cause I moved a ma­ture fam­i­ly to a dif­fer­ent coun­try, and it was not planned. My hus­band is the CEO of the Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank (NCB) Ja­maica Lim­it­ed, and he was of­fered this job last year in the mid­dle of a school term. I did not think at my age I would be mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent coun­try and kind of leav­ing be­hind every­thing,” she ex­plained.

But it gave her an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand her mu­si­cal jour­ney.

This move would take her some­what full cir­cle, from her 2019 op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form in front of a crowd singing a song by the leg­endary reg­gae singer Mar­ley to now mak­ing Ja­maica her home, dab­bling in the reg­gae genre, and work­ing on the re­lease of her Ja­maican-pro­duced reg­gae al­bum.

Young’s main fo­cus now is com­plet­ing her al­bum, and she is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the oth­er songs for the al­bum. “The oth­er song to ex­pect is Wild­flower, Teneille’s ver­sion. I call it my ver­sion be­cause it has the In­di­an in­stru­men­ta­tion, we have added a bridge, and I’ve grown vo­cal­ly on this EP. Mov­ing from Trinidad to Ja­maica is what Wild­flower rep­re­sents,” she ex­plained.

Young is grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate mu­sic in Ja­maica that feels and sounds like her. She has been work­ing on her per­for­mances, re­fin­ing her craft, and writ­ing while hav­ing some fun along the way.

“Ja­maica was writ­ten in the stars for me, the Bob Mar­ley per­for­mance was God’s way of paving the path for me and open­ing my eyes to my true pur­pose in life,” she said.

Asked what ad­vice she would give to some­one look­ing to pur­sue the same field that she is in, with a touch­ing re­sponse, Young said, “It is your job to ac­cept, for­give, cel­e­brate, and val­i­date all ver­sions of your­self; it’s not some­body else’s job to do that, it is your job.”

In her pre-teen years, Young grew up in ar­eas around Trinidad, and she pays homage to this in her up­com­ing al­bum Wild­flower. Grow­ing up, Young re­called, she was ex­posed to busi­ness life as she helped out in her moth­er’s fam­i­ly busi­ness called Sun­day Bas­ket, a fast food restau­rant that was pop­u­lar­ly known in the 80s and 90s.

Young’s love for mu­sic has ex­ist­ed for as long as she can re­mem­ber. She idolised artiste from the band Jour­ney, with her favourite song be­ing "Don’t Stop Be­liev­ing", and she is al­so a big Tay­lor Swift fan.

The singer has a de­gree in busi­ness. She has been mar­ried for 18 years to An­gus Young and has three daugh­ters, Lay­la, 16; Leah, 13; and Lily, ten, who are her biggest sup­port­ers.

Young’s sto­ry does not just rep­re­sent a woman go­ing af­ter her dreams; it shows the pow­er of be­liev­ing in your­self and chas­ing your dreams at any point in your life that you choose. 

On her fu­ture goals and as­pi­ra­tions, Young re­spond­ed, “My mis­sion is not coun­try spe­cif­ic. My hope is to leave the world a bet­ter place than I found it. True ful­fill­ment can come from mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the world, even if it’s for just one per­son. Mu­sic has heal­ing pow­ers. I can think of songs that have got­ten me through the most dif­fi­cult times in my life. My vi­sion is not about be­ing ‘big’ but us­ing my mu­sic and my lyrics to touch and change the lives of peo­ple. I want peo­ple to smile, to dance, to sing along and I want to in­spire them to go af­ter their own dreams. It’s not about Ja­maica or Trinidad. I am proud to be a woman of the Caribbean.”