The young boy Buakei, Cinquè’s (Djimon Hounsou) brother in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 award-winning movie Amistad is now an adult, a vocalist and co-founder of the band Soulfège, as well as the media outlet ASAFO productions. Derrick N. Ashong is one of today’s young African entrepreneurs with an eye for involvement. At 31, this singer/songwriter is working passionately with his fellow band members in promoting their Pan-African youth empowerment project, Sweet Mother Tour (SMT), creating tools of communication both youths and their leaders can use in discussing issues affecting the world today.
Ashong has been called a “product of many cultures and a citizen of the world;” born in Accra, Ghana, where he lived until age 4, he moved to Brooklyn, New York with his family and was introduced to a whole new world to which he quickly assimilated. By the time he was 8 he had moved again to Saudi Arabia and then to Dohar, Qatar, a small peninsular located next to the Saudi Arabian gulf. Ashong spent at least 8 additional years in the Middle East before returning to the United States to complete his last two years of high school in Voorhees, NJ, after which he attended Harvard University, Boston. By this time he had forgotten all but one of the Ghanaian languages—Ga, his father’s native tongue. “I can [understand] Twi, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking politics in Twi,” he laughs at this. Unfortunately, he has completely forgotten Late, his mother’s lingo. “But up until I was a teenager I didn’t know most Ghanaians spoke Twi and not Ga,” and then realized otherwise after visiting his mother’s side of the family in Ghana. “Maybe when I was 15 or 16 I was like what?” he laughs about his surprising “discovery.”
During his traveling years, Ashong took little pinches at songwriting and performing in school—studying to play the clarinet as well as the piano. As a young boy he learned to communicate his ideas through poetry, a craft he now beautifully demonstrates through musical lyrics. While in college, he performed as an actor and a musician, and was a member of an a cappella group called Brothers in 1994; here was when he met one of his present band mates, Jonathan Grambling. Ashong was also a part of the Kuumba Singers, a choir at Harvard that sang gospel and African music. All these years of training proved to be very beneficial as they have served to strengthen the quality of the vocal harmonies of Soulfège, his band.
While pursuing an undergraduate degree in African American studies, he got a break that would spark an acting career; Ashong was offered a supporting role in Amistad, a Steven Spielberg film based on the slave revolt that occurred on a Spanish schooner, La Amistad, which was then transporting slaves from Sierra Leone to Cuba in 1839. He took many semesters off college to play his character and considers it “a great opportunity,” because of the doors it opened for him. When Ashong returned to school he wrote a musical for his senior thesis, “Songs We Can’t Sing,” an exposition exploring issues of identity among Africans and African Americans which won the Hoopes prize, one of Harvard’s most prestigious undergraduate awards for outstanding scholarly work.
“Songs We Can’t Sing” hit close to home considering Ashong’s own personal struggles with figuring out his identity. The extensive traveling during his formative years left him little time to develop his own “self.” This did not occur to him until his late teens when he began to grapple with who he was. Was he a New Yorker? A Saudi Arabian? Qatari or Ghanaian? He began to view himself differently from other African Americans after his return to America: “I realized that…I (spoke) differently, I (ate) different food, I had a different set of values to a certain degree,” he says, slightly amazed. He terms the transition to come to grips with the American side of his identity a traumatic one because of the different ways things worked. By his sophomore year in college, he decided to go to Ghana to see what it was all about. “I decided that I wanted to know more about my Ghanaian heritage because my parents were always like you’re from Ghana, you’re from Ghana,” he says. He spent about five months conducting research that made him realize he could speak his native language better than he thought. “By my junior year in college I had decided that I was more comfortable in Ghana than the U.S. in some ways”… “So I was like, yeah I don’t have any other identity that’s like, immutable so I need to be closer to my family, to my heritage, to my culture,” he says. Ashong spent more time studying and learning about the Ghanaian culture and now feels confident giving answers about his heritage, something he could not do prior to his cultural awakening. Coming to a resolution with his identity issues apparently brought some satisfaction, “I was like, I’m obviously an African, and that was cool,” he says proudly and laughs. Now when he tells people he is a Ghanaian, it makes sense to himself, he says, and his music reflects that culture and more—a blend of High Life with Hip-hop and Reggae. He laughs and adds, “The Ghanaian culture was already so strong in my household; they speak Ga, if they don’t want you to understand they’d speak in Twi…they ate gari foto and jollof rice.”
Ashong is fluent in English and Ga, but can also speak Portuguese, some French, and Twi, which he understands but cannot speak very well.
Besides tailing a journey into self-identity during his college years, this actor/singer/songwriter was experimenting with post-graduation career options. After working for some time with an agent in Hollywood in the hopes of building an acting career, he realized that his heart lay with music, his first love, and moved back to Boston to complete a Master’s degree in African American Studies and Ethnomusicology at Harvard University. His return brought he and his present band mates together, leading to the birth of Soulfège. The group has been able to climb music charts in many countries with their soulful blend of musical styles. Their hit song, “Sweet Remix” mounted music charts in Ghana, competing with stars like Beyonce, R. Kelly, and Usher for the top five positions. Meanwhile, Soulfège’s music was weaving its way into TV stations in Boston, New Jersey, and Jamaica where they were featured on numerous radio stations and some major newspapers in Kingston, the capital. “I should point out that this was all made possible without an agent – without a PR person. So it’s not true that you have to be rich and famous to make an impact,” he says.
The creativity of the band’s work is distinctive; communicating a universal message of self-empowerment, something that has won many hearts. Their album has been nominated in the Boston Music Award for Best Music Act of 2005 and also for Best World Fusion Song in 2006 by Independent Music Award. They have been featured in a BBC entertainment report on African Hip-hop – a coverage that reached about 136 million listeners worldwide.
Ashong and his fellow band members, Jonathan Grambling and Kelley Nicole have taken their passion to another level. Some years ago, he became unhappy with radio and television’s negative portrayal of black people and women. “I just got fed up and [felt] a general sense that yo music has gotta represent more than just the denigration of our people,” he says. After being introduced to Hip Life on his visit to Ghana in January 2002, he felt a strong sense of pride to see how much Ghanaians were capturing and cultivating the culture through their own formed genre. That feeling, however, was one day interrupted: “I was walking on the street [in Ghana]”… “And a kid saw how I was dressed and heard my accent, and he rolls up on me and he says, ‘ei chale, wasup my n****’…I was like ‘what’s up my what? I have not heard that word in our vocabulary before.’” This incident got Ashong questioning the impact of Hip-hop culture, not only in the U.S., but also the rest of the world. That led to the inception of Sweet Mother Tour also known as SMT, an organization designed to use the powerful tools of popular culture through youth activists and media outlets in Africa and the Diaspora, to hopefully create a positive image of “Sweet Mother” Africa, using the same channels to make Africans proud and embrace their own worth. Together with his band members, they launched the organization in 2004, and produced contents that portrayed youth in Africa and the Diaspora and how they viewed themselves along with the world around them. The first time the group visited Ghana they took along six people; the second time, in the summer of 2004 after the establishment of SMT they were accompanied by 20 people, some of who were musicians, activists, filmmakers, and educators. Soulfège shot their video, “Sweet Remix” in Ghana, a song off of their Heavy Structured (Plus) album, and Ashong says passionately, “It was shot in Accra, a different picture of Africa”… “The Africa we see when we go home.” When the video began to receive a global presence, they decided that it had to be more than just the music—SMT was truly a movement.
Soulfège has since been invited to a series of conferences, particularly one in Indonesia which made them realize that problems of government corruption and lack of opportunity and resources lurked everywhere. People in Indonesia were dealing with the same issues as those in Ghana and Niger. SMT then expanded into a global youth empowerment movement that would always keep Africa as a central focus, but ultimately intended to reach out to touch all of its peers around the world. The group has lectured and performed in Africa, Europe, Asia, as well as the Caribbean and North America.
One of SMT’s major ongoing projects can be likened to American Idol or Making the Band: the organization tours different countries in search of up-and-coming African bands who have not yet received global attention. Contests will be broadcasted on TV and over the internet allowing viewers to cast votes for their band of choice. Soulfège has been able to meet with some of today’s top executives in the entertainment industry who seem to be in on the project, it is just a matter of finalizing an agreement. In addition to that, they have won the support of some of the best producers in film, television, and music. “Our crew believes in the project,” Ashong says positively of what seems to be a very crucial element in such a venture.
His fervor for the arts and entertainment industry run deep as he sees himself no where else. “I’m hoping that my career can be successful in music and television in such a way that we’re consistently investing in and developing new music and empowering other countries”… “Giving them a greater voice,” he expresses genuinely.
In about ten years, he predicts himself to be a mogul with ownership of a couple of media companies. Ashong hopes to place pressure on international aid institutions and Institute of International Finance to change the present model of development, that is, if it has not yet been accomplished. “I’ll definitely be a part of upturning that system”… “I’m hoping that my career can be part of opening doors for others to also come through,” he sincerely concludes.