Odarky Andy, musician and first runner-up of Mentor Season 1, has given credit to a 9-year old girl for convincing him to join the one reality show that made his music dream a reality.
He told DJ Advicer on Happy FM’s Ayekoo After Drive that he began to chase his dream as a musician way back in the nineties but since he did not have a producer or management team to help him push his brand and music, he resorted to being a barber.
Being a barber, Andy did not give up on his music dream but rather leveraged on the little audience he would get at the barbershop to push his music.
“When you come to my shop, I only play my songs in there. I don’t play anyone’s songs, just my demos and then I’ll be singing along hoping that among the big people who come there I would get someone to help me”, he said.
Fast forward to how he came across this influential little girl, he narrated that the girl, who was about nine or ten years by then had just moved to Ghana from California with her parents and her father used to visit his barbershop whenever he needed a haircut.
“The young girl and her parents came to my shop so while I was giving her father a haircut, I was playing my songs and singing along. The mentor advert came on TV with the Accra auditions and the little girl told her mother to tell me to join.
Her mother told me but we took it for jokes and laughed about it. Three days later, the woman called to tell me that her daughter had been pressuring her so much that they were now at the show organizers’ office in Kumasi to sign me up”, he shared.
According to Andy, he saw it as an opportunity to get what he had always wanted out of music so as soon as he was informed, he closed his shop and went to Kumasi to complete the registration with his personal details required.
The singer conquered 750 contestants during the Kumasi auditions and was brought to Accra to represent Kumasi in the main event where he came out second after weeks of mind-blowing performances.
Andy shot to fame after the competition with his super jammable ‘Sweetie’ tune which according to him, was even recorded about 6years long before Mentor .
By: Maureen Dedei Quaye