Black n Peach simply the best - As Vodadfone Icons Mixed Edition closes
All is well that ends well. When last Thursday Vodafone Chief Marketing Officer Uche Ofodile stepped on the National Theatre stage to thank all the collaborators who contributed to the success of the Vodafone Icons Mixed Edition, she was stating a fact that needed no repetition.
The live and home audiences, the contestants, judges, musicians, coaches, clothes designers, show producers E-volution, technical crew, and everybody who worked on the 13-week reality television competition must have been smiling for good work done.
At the end of it all, it was the Black n Peach trio comprising Emma -Orleans Lindsay, Noble Nii Nortey and Noella Wiyaala who emerged winners on the wings of a Tina Turner song that said it all: “Simply the Best”.
Black n Peach won because they knew their strongest points and used them to their advantage – stage presence, good harmony and the strong voice of lead singer Noella Wiyaala.
On the final day, everything got going for them from the word go. Their choice of Becca’s song “Daa Ke Daa” effectively killed the competition when each of the three finalists – Waves, Black n Peach, and Vybez – were made to perform acapellas with only an acoustic guitar in accompaniment.
Their version of “Daa Ke Daa”, which regrettably was the only Ghanaian song in the final was way ahead of the “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye and “Isnt She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder that Waves and Vybez performed respectively.
In the second and third rounds, Black n Peach only came on to confirm one strategy that must have been obvious to the audience. The trio acknowledged the strong voice of their Grace Jones cum Angelique Kodjo class lead singer and pushed her forward. That did it.
Yet this was the trio who a few weeks earlier had found themselves on the brink of the gallows and had to be rescued from eviction, not once, but twice by the judges who obviously saw in them a potential that the voting public did not see.
Between Vybez who were runners up and Waves, the two other groups in the final, there was not much music to separate them. They ran a good race performing in the best ways they could but the winners were just too good for them.
For their prize, Black n Peach were expected take away a KIA Sorento saloon car, an amount og 60,000 Ghana cedis, a guaranteed one year performance contract, and an opportunity to perform at the huge 020 Live Concert scheduled to come off later in the year.