Nick, If You Can’t Name Names, Don’t Talk at All

There is an old African-American choral song that says that “Gossip, gossip evil thing/ Much unhappiness it brings/ If you can’t say something nice/ Don’t talk at all/ Is my advice.” I first heard the Ishmael Adams-led Voices of Labone Choir do a splendid rendition of this son on GBC-2’s Saturday afternoon entertainment program titled “Variety Ahoy!” some 40 years ago, that is, shortly before I departed the then still-wholesome shores of Ghana for the United States of America. “Variety Ahoy!” was a flagship weekend entertainment program hosted by Mr. Godwin Avenorgbor and yours truly was featured several times on this most crowd-pulling show.

Well, it was the mellifluous and dulcet tune of “Gossip, Gossip” that resounded through my mind when I came across an entertainment news story titled “Omane Acheampong Reveals How Top Presenters Sleep with Married Gospel Musicians” Myxyzonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/3/21). In the preceding news story, one of Ghana’s popular gospel acts, Mr. Nicholas Omane Acheampong, is reported to have told TV XYZ program host or presenter Mr. Agyemang-Prempeh – aka Agyengo – that when it comes to the promotion of the music of the country’s gospel artists, Ghanaian male composers and musicians often find themselves lucked out because most of the radio and television presenters who promote these gospel artists prefer to promote female musicians because the females are invariably on the ready to provide sex to these program hosts and presenters in exchange for the promotion of their songs, whereas the male counterparts and/or competitors of these lady songstresses have no such natural and delicious goodies to offer the largely male presenters who, implicitly, almost every one of them, is a heterosexual alpha male, as it were.

Now, as far as I can tell from the global workings of Nature or biology, hormones, that is, it is very possible, if not quite likely, that at least 20 to 30 percent of these male radio and television presenters and promoters may very well be members of the LGBTQI+ group, that is, either gay or at least bisexual or a combination of both. I am, of course, not hereby or therefore implying that each and every one of these presumably presently closeted male homosexuals or bisexuals are necessarily on the lookout to bedding willing male gospel acts or musicians who may be strapped for cash like their promotion-hungry female counterparts of the kind that Mr. Omane Acheampong talks about in his aforesaid interview with Agyengo, but are equally willing to offer these gay and bisexual radio and television presenters some “goodies” or fun in exchange for the promotion of their music or songs.

You see, this facile and funny male chauvinist and inexcusably sexist idea that, somehow, it is only ambitious and desperate women gospel musicians or singers who, being direly strapped for cash to pay for the promotion of their songs or new releases, are so morally loose as to readily open up their legs and thighs at 45-degree angles, either way, to be royally serviced by these hopelessly prurient and obstreperously lecherous male presenters who do not seem to have anything worthwhile to do with their precious temporal resources than simply, thoughtlessly and remorselessly jump into bed with married female gospel singers and composers in exchange for airtime or the promotion of their songs and/or albums does not wash or resonate with me. I am not the least bit saying or implying that these things do not happen in the morally messy realm of the purely human. What I am just saying here is that it goes both ways. Which is that there are an equally slew number of married male gospel singers and artists who may also be cheaply on the take and may very well have been sleeping with both female and gay bisexual presenters in order to have their old songs and new releases promoted.

In reality, I much prefer to believe that many more female Ghanaian gospel musicians and artists are having their songs and music promoted, relative to their male counterparts, because generally speaking, female Ghanaian gospel musicians and artists tend to be far more talented and dedicated to their art and profession than their male counterparts. Plus, by and large, these female gospel artists tend to write and sing far more intelligent and culturally and existentially relevant songs and music than their male counterparts who, for the most part, tend to be all too predictable and superficial in terms of relevance and intellectual and moral heft and depth vis-à-vis the kinds of songs that they churn out, a remarkable number of which tends out to be sheer and mere retreads, patent ersatz, to be certain.

In sum, Nicholas Omane Acheampong would be much more credible finding a much more plausible explanation for why Ghanaian women gospel musicians tend to do better than their male counterparts in the making and marketing of their music, other than cheaply resorting to vapid traditional stereotypes such as the preceding pretext to massage and soothe their egos or make themselves feel better and superior than they actually are or may be. It is also nothing short of the criminally and morally scandalous, when the plaintiff makes the case-in-point claim that he has personally been shown a list of female gospel artists who have literally slept their way to stardom and yet cannot or is not bold and courageous enough to name names when dared to it by Agyengo, that is, the host of the XYZ-TV program on which Nicholas Omane Acheampong reportedly made his inexcusably defamatory allegation.

I also sincerely don’t see how venomously, vacuously and jejunely digging dirt on the integrity, dignity and chastity of his female competitors is apt to advance the career or the quality of the kind or kinds of music composed and produced by Mr. Omane Acheampong. This is all too luridly and nauseatingly Ghanaian to be taken seriously.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

July 9, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]