Car­ol Quash

Eliz­a­beth Male­na Figueroa us­es her voice to pro­mote noth­ing but good­ness. So whether she is re­spond­ing to Scrunter’s Leroy, ex­plain­ing why she left home to go parang­ing, or croon­ing out one of her reg­gae re­leas­es, her mes­sage is al­ways about love and uni­ty.

“I try not to pro­mote sex, al­co­holism, or any form of drugs in my mu­sic. My mu­sic must be clean; it doesn’t mat­ter what genre it may be,” Figueroa told WE.

The New Grant res­i­dent comes from a fam­i­ly of mu­si­cians dat­ing back to the 1940s and got her stage name, Male­na Rose, from her habit of wear­ing a rose as an ac­ces­so­ry.

“I al­ways rep­re­sent my cul­ture, so I’m al­ways a lit­tle ex­tra in my at­tire,” she ex­plained. “I usu­al­ly have a rose stuck some­where, and I just added it to my mid­dle name.”Figueroa has per­formed with a num­ber of bands over the years, in­clud­ing her fam­i­ly band, The Uni­ver­sal Parang Band. Dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son her vo­cals are in high de­mand among parang bands. This year she per­formed ex­ten­sive­ly with The Caribbean Emer­ald as its lead vo­cal­ist.

“My fam­i­ly tells me I had been singing be­fore I could talk,” she laughed.

As a self-taught mu­si­cian and pro­duc­er, she writes all her songs and plays the chac chac. But parang is not the on­ly genre of mu­sic at which she is skilled. She be­gan singing reg­gae pro­fes­sion­al­ly in 2018 and has re­leased two sin­gles. For her it was an easy fit, as she grew up in a home where reg­gae al­bums had a promi­nent place. She is now com­pil­ing her own al­bum, De­signed From Cre­ation, which will com­prise 10 to 15 songs.“I chose reg­gae be­cause I’m a very con­scious per­son, and I al­ways want­ed to de­liv­er a mes­sage with a melody. I felt most com­fort­able in that genre, be­ing able to say the things that need to be said in so­ci­ety to­day.”

In 2026, she will col­lab­o­rate with one of the tal­ent­ed Black­man mu­si­cians (from Ras Shorty I fame) on one of her songs, My Prayer.

“He built the rid­dim for this song for me. His artis­tic cre­ation is there; all the in­stru­ments and things that you hear on that rhythm were done by Isaac Black­man.”

Figueroa said she wrote her first reg­gae song in 2018 but did not record it un­til 2023.

“I still have not re­leased it. It’s called Hard and is a sto­ry about fam­i­ly and the mis­con­cep­tion that we have to stand alone in­stead of com­ing to­geth­er in uni­ty.”

Her song­writ­ing skills al­so in­clude so­ca songs, but al­though she loves mu­sic gen­er­al­ly, she has nev­er ven­tured in­to the so­ca per­form­ing are­na.

“So­ca is not re­al­ly my per­son­al­i­ty. I have writ­ten many so­ca songs, and I ac­tu­al­ly had no op­tion but to record one I did for a song­writ­ing class with mu­si­cian, pro­duc­er and com­pos­er Chris Mor­ris. I don’t mind if some­one is in­ter­est­ed in util­is­ing the song, as it’s a nice, clean song,” but she has no in­ter­est in per­form­ing it her­self.

And, as with her taste in mu­sic, Figueroa is very par­tic­u­lar and cre­ative when it comes to her clothes. She rarely wears any­thing just as she pur­chas­es it and fre­quent­ly re­cy­cles her clothes. Some­times she would thrift items of cloth­ing she thinks have po­ten­tial and recre­ate them to rep­re­sent her.

“I nev­er re­al­ly wear any­thing that I just buy from the store. I al­ways add some de­tail, no mat­ter how small. So far I just do it for my­self, but in 2026 do­ing it for oth­ers is an av­enue I’m will­ing to ex­plore. I would like to cre­ate a ser­vice where you could bring all the stuff in your clos­et that you think could be recre­at­ed in­to some­thing dif­fer­ent.”

Al­so, as a mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er, she plans to ap­proach of­fi­cials at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to vol­un­teer her ser­vices to en­cour­age stu­dents to make con­scious de­ci­sions and vi­su­alise ex­act­ly what they want and work to­wards it.“I come from very hum­ble be­gin­nings, and I am proud of where I am to­day … I would like the young peo­ple to un­der­stand that you don’t need to have a mil­lion dol­lars to be able to ful­fil your dream. You just need to have that pas­sion and that de­sire and to get up every day and work to­wards what you want. It is at­tain­able.”

Figueroa said she made a de­ci­sion sev­en years ago to walk away from her full-time ad­min­is­tra­tive job and to in­vest in her craft.

“I would like for the youth to un­der­stand that it is nev­er too late. I’m 37 now, so I was not so young when I start­ed to man­i­fest my dream in­to re­al­i­ty. There’s no spe­cial time span for any par­tic­u­lar per­son. We all move on our own tim­ing; it’s not a race.”

Over the years Figueroa has en­coun­tered many chil­dren and young peo­ple who have been forced to live in less than ide­al con­di­tions and has ex­tend­ed her­self to as­sist.

“I have helped chil­dren out of abu­sive sit­u­a­tions, and I con­tin­ue to do so … And the sad thing is that some­times there’s noth­ing in place for these kids to help them. Most times, at the age of 16, gov­ern­ment sup­port is cut off, and even in the chil­dren’s homes, at the age of 16, they have to leave. My mis­sion for 2026 is to find my way in­to that sys­tem to make a change.”

For in­for­ma­tion on her mu­sic, fol­low Male­na Rose on Face­book, Tik­Tok and IG.