Had you always wanted to be a singer, how did you come to music?

On my mother’s side, music was always in the family. My uncle, who was blind, used to write and sing songs that were popular in the church. My mother was a chorister and as a small girl I would drum in the church. I started singing and dancing from a very early age. Even at about the age of five, though I didn’t realise it, music was already empowering me. One day, my mum and dad had a big row and my mum took us to stay with an auntie in Tamale. We were in a local bar and I started singing and dancing. I entertained the patrons so well they threw coins for me. I picked them from the floor and gave them to my mother and told her not to worry because I could always do this to get money.

A few years later, when TV and video cassettes came to the village and I was able to watch Michael Jackson and Madonna, I learnt all their songs and would imitate them in the compound to entertain friends and family. In my teens, I began to realise I had a real singing voice when I was always included in the school entertainment programmes. Then it all started to become a more conscious process. I told myself that I was going to get out of the village and become a famous singer. Not an easy journey, but it is happening.

Wow! In your performances, you can see you have such amazing energy. What is it that makes you think music can bring about social change?

Music has given me everything. And I am grateful. I can never have imagined that I would travel the world and meet so many wonderful people. When I was a child in the village, I saw a postcard of a woman in Holland carrying milk in front of a windmill, I believed the windmill was a giant fan to cool the people and that you could drink as much milk as you liked. I thought it was a vision of heaven! Well, thanks to music, I have now been to Holland and seen these things for real!

Music has given me both popularity and responsibility. The popularity is good because people will take you more seriously. But it comes with duties. You automatically become a role model and that gives you the power to influence. I know that many girls and young women look up to me as a young woman who has managed to break out. I try to encourage them to believe in themselves. I always talk to them about going to school and using that opportunity to become economically independent.

I believe in the saying, “When you educate a girl, you educate a whole nation. When you educate a man, you educate an individual.” So, it’s the education and independence of young females that will bring about social change. As a leading female musician in Ghana and Africa, that is how I plan to have a positive impact. I also work with Unicef Ghana and the Ministry of Gender in Ghana to combat early child marriage and education.

You have talked previously about how no woman has ever won the biggest music awards in Ghana. Were there particular problems you faced in the industry there or do you think this is just a symptom of worldwide issues that women in music face?

From what I read, it appears that women all over the world are complaining about discriminatory practices in the music industry and Africa is just no different. It starts when you are a female child and are told that music is no future for a girl. When you get older, controlling men in the industry will tell you that if you are willing to fuck them, they can get you a recording contract or put you on a show. Of course, the naïve female doesn’t realise that the man has no intention of honouring the devil’s bargain.

Many, many talented females have been lost to music as they give up their aspirations in despair. I have been both strong-willed and lucky. I managed to resist these lies and then met a manager who did not impose such conditions. But even then, as a woman I had to struggle in an industry that always favours men. The leading awards scheme in Ghana is the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards. It has been in existence for 17 years. In that time, no woman has ever won the artist of the year. In all the leading shows in Ghana, women are never featured as the headline act. Their images appear as an afterthought on the billboards. All that said, I have met honourable men and I love them, but overall the industry is run by men, for men.

You are quite the activist though… are you doing something, aside from making your presence felt, to challenge this inequality?

Musical inequality is a symptom of general inequality around the world. Even in western societies, I read that women are still struggling to get equal pay. In practical terms, there are two or three things I can do. I can sing about it. I can talk about it. Thanks to the internet, I can also work outside the system direct to my audience using social media. I can also start my own things. For example, I have created The Djimba World Music Festival in Wa (my hometown) in the Upper West Region of Ghana, far away from Accra, where the commercial music industry is mainly based. I have also set up my own rehearsal and recording studio to encourage local musicians, especially girls, to develop their own abilities.

Amazing. And finally, what are your aspirations for the future?

Short-term, I want to run a successful festival, to release my second album by May 2017, make an epic video for “Tinambanyi” and finish building enough of my family house so that we can live in it. Long-term, I want to have a very long and varied career and to be a symbol of hope for my continent.