Ghanaian songstress, Angela Senam Keteku, popularly known as the African Mannequin, has disclosed that her music career started in a shrine.
She explained that although she had a music background, she never thought she will be doing music professionally.
Talking about where she draws her style of music from, she told Akosua Hanson on Y 107.9 FM’s Y Lounge, “Music for me started on a different note. Most musicians started from the church but I started from the shrine because I used to back my great grandmothers.”
According to her, her great grandmothers were fetish priestesses of a shrine in the community where she grew up in the Volta region.
“They were the singing goddesses of the Yahweh shrine in Volta. I used to follow them and I did not even know it was music then, so I just used to back them up.”
She explained the place as where the sick were and through music they were healed. “Others who were also going through other stuff also got their comfort.”
Enam emphatically stated that this was where she got her inspiration to do music. “I wanted to do what my grandmothers did and I knew it was something straight from my village and something owned by my grandmothers. I was serving something very vital through music which is not very common now.”
She furthered that she decided to do this because, she also she felt she had the opportunity to be exposed. “I decided to make this therapeutic music popular for a large number of people to also benefits. If people brought to that shrine in that small village are benefiting from it, then it means the whole world can also benefits from afro spiritual music.”
Enam went on to say that although she knows it will not be easy to stand out and do something different, she believes this kind of music needs to get to the people, hence her decision to pursue and promote the genre.
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom
