It Took Me 4 years Of Preparation To Fill Tamale Sports Stadium – Fancy Gadam Recounts

By Dan Lartey On Nov 13, 2023

The entertainment industry calls him Fancy Gadam, but Ghanaian music sensation Mujahid Ahmed Bello recently shared the behind-the-scenes work that went into packing the Tamale Sports Stadium in 2016, a huge accomplishment for him as a musician.

In May 2016, the “Commando” hitmaker revealed that achieving the goal of a full stadium required four years of painstaking planning. The talented musician, who is well-known for his distinctive fusion of Afrobeat and traditional sounds from Northern Ghana, clarified that the journey involved more than just musical skill—it also involved strategic planning and community involvement.

In an interview with Roselyn Felli on Joy Prime’s Prime Morning show, Fancy Gandam said that despite coming from the North, it was hard to break through the five northern regions because of the language barrier when asked how he filled the Tamale Sports stadium alone. He claimed that because his dialect was different from everyone else’s, he had to actively prepare in order to alter the story and ultimately break through the barrier.

It was not today that I began this musical adventure. I mean, the North is huge, so it took me four years to even step outside of my comfort zone before I could pack the Tamale Sports Stadium. Our dialect is not spoken in any of the five northern regions that we currently have. They speak different languages. Speaking ‘Dagbani’ and being able to break through these places took me 4 years,” he recounted.

The celebrated singer claimed that, despite being widely accepted in his area, he evaluated himself to see how he could win over everyone’s heart in the North when his debut album was released in 2010. He disclosed that, in his opinion, being acknowledged by his people first could provide him with a greater opportunity to break into the Ghanaian music industry as a whole.

Fancy Gandam continued to talk about how, despite his fame in Tamale, his debut performance in the Upper West Regional Capital, Wa., was a complete bust with only seventeen people present. He acknowledged that it was heartbreaking, but he persisted and overcame it all because he understood that, in his capacity as an artist, he would unavoidably encounter these kinds of circumstances, which he had to deal with. Seizing the opportunity to showcase his abilities and establish his worth for the small audience present, he proved himself. His work was made known in the Upper West thanks to the stimulating performance, which inspired the seventeen attendees to tell their fellow Native Americans about it.

I mistakenly believed that because of my notoriety in Tamale, I was well-known throughout the North and could therefore travel there. However, this is not always the case. According to him, only about 17 people attended his debut performance in the Upper West at the UDS in Washington.