DAD’S BLESSING: Ofori Amponsah’s Roadside Chat With His Father — “What Are You Humming?” — Changed His Life Forever

Sometimes, a life-changing conversation does not happen in a boardroom, a recording studio or on a big stage.

For Samuel Ofori Amponsah, it happened while walking alongside his father.

At the time, the young Ofori Amponsah was working in his father’s salt business. His father distributed salt across the Ashanti Region, and the aspiring musician was managing part of the operation.

Music, however, remained on his mind. Then one day, while the two were walking after a car-related setback, his father asked him a simple question.

“He asked me, ‘What do you want to do in life?”, Ofori Amponsah recalled in an interview with Kafui Dey.

He told his father that he wanted to return to school.

But his father had noticed something else.

“Sometimes I see you writing and doing stuff. What are you doing? What are you humming?” Ofori Amponsah answered: music.

His father asked whether he was serious about it.

“Yes”, he responded

Then came the words that changed everything.

“If it’s music, why don’t you put your mind to it?”

For a young man whose family had been losing patience with his uncertain relationship with school, the statement was powerful.

Ofori Amponsah had already disappointed his parents by repeatedly saying he would return to school, only to disappear back into music.

But instead of forcing him back into the classroom, his father gave him something he desperately needed: permission to pursue what was inside him.

“And that was the day I just said to myself, ‘I will do it,’” he said.

The moment was particularly significant because, as Ofori Amponsah admitted, his father’s response was not what many Ghanaian parents might have given a young man who wanted to pursue music.

“They were losing hope in me,” he said, laughing.

His father, however, saw something in him.That roadside conversation became a turning point.

Years later, the young man who had been uncertain about his future would become one of Ghana’s notable highlife voices. And it all began with a father noticing that his son was humming.