Ghanaian musician from Kumasi, Derrick Osei Kuffor Prempeh, and popularly called Kofi Jamar has revealed that prior to becoming a musician, he was a pallbearer.
According to him, most people confuse his former work and claim he worked in a mortuary when it was a funeral service.
He said, “It wasn’t in the mortuary per say. It was a funeral service and we were in charge of serving food at the funeral, cleaning and also discharging the corpse to the cemetery and the burial grounds. Just like the ‘dada awu’ boys”.
In an interview with Kojo Manuel on Y 107.9 FM’s Dryve of Your Lyfe Show he said, “So basically, I was one of the ‘dada awu’ boys and I was doing it before it became popular. Around that time, I had already dropped some songs that had gone round but they weren’t as popular as my songs are today in Kumasi.”
He added that after working in the funeral service, he also went to work as a security guard for two hotels in Kumasi.
“So I was also doing security jobs at Golden Tulip and Golden Beam while I was still trying to get my music out there,” he said.
Kofi revealed that he did security jobs for about two years and at some point, he felt he was big and did not deserve to be doing the kind of jobs he was doing.
He said, “Some of my mates sometimes mocked me and others tried to discourage me. Others also encouraged me and even tipped me when they saw me.”
Talking about how he feels about everything he has faced in the past, Kofi Jamar emphasized that most of these experiences pushed him to do better. “I felt it was toughening me up for whatever I had to face in life so I was just motivated.”
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom
