Segment: If I Didn't Break Those Boundaries - We Wouldn't Have the December in Ghana We See Today

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Konnected Minds Podcast
Host: Derrick Abaitey
Episode Segment: If I Didn't Break Those Boundaries – We Wouldn't Have the December in Ghana We See Today
Date: April 4, 2026

This episode dives into the influential journey of pioneering Ghanaian DJs and event promoters who shaped both African music’s place in UK mainstream entertainment and the transformation of “December in Ghana” into today’s vibrant, must-experience phenomenon for the diaspora. Featured guests DJ Bright and Mr. Shooks share personal stories about breaking cultural boundaries, fostering community, and reimagining Ghana as a destination of celebration and pride.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Early Challenges & UK Beginnings (00:00–02:48)

• Breaking into Mainstream Radio:
  • In the late 1990s, Ghanaian music was largely limited to pirate and community stations.
  • DJ Bright and Mr. Shooks (part of the group 90%) lobbied hard for a mainstream platform.
  • Their persistent lobbying led to making and submitting a demo tape to Choice FM.
  • Within 24 hours, they were called back and offered a slot.
  • The group couldn’t all be on-air, so three were selected to represent ("the face of Choice").

"We kept on lobbying Choice until one day we got hold of it...We like to play African music. We did a demo tape, give it a Choice...Within 24 hours, I got a call...you've got a job.”
— Mr. Shooks (00:29–01:04)

• Birth of DJ Abrante as a Personality:
  • DJ Abrante’s dedication moved their show from the “graveyard shift” (4 AM–6 AM) progressively to better slots as audience and momentum grew.
  • He notably introduced Choice FM's Afrobeat show.

"DJ Brante, brilliant. He stuck to it."
— DJ Bright (02:39)

Evolution & Birth of Akwaaba Events (02:59–05:39)

• Transition to Entrepreneurship:
  • As 90% members went their own ways, DJ Bright conceived Akwaaba by teaming up with Clifford Opoku and others.
  • The Akwaaba collective quickly became a powerhouse, setting the stage for culturally themed events in the UK diaspora.

"Two or three days before the event, we decided to say we're going to call the events Akwaaba."
— Mr. Shooks (03:53)

• Sense of Belonging for Ghanaian Youth:
  • Previously, it wasn’t “cool” to be Ghanaian/African. Through Akwaaba, they fostered a visible, confident community.
  • Events like “Ghana Independence Dance” drew massive crowds, increasing pride and shifting narratives.

“When we started...one thing we got was a sense of belonging...There’s a sense of belonging now. It's so cool now to be Africans."
— DJ Bright (06:27)

“Ghana as Punishment” to “Ghana as Luxury” (05:39–08:45)

• Changing the Mindset:
  • In the past, diaspora parents sent misbehaving children "back home" as punishment.
  • DJ Bright, seeing opportunities elsewhere as a DJ, aimed to turn Ghana into a desirable travel destination, not a penalty.
  • Partnership with Ghana’s Vibe FM and local creatives led to the creation of “December in Ghana,” inspired by Europe’s nightlife scene.

“That fear of going back made me realize...I could change that narrative. There’s me as a DJ being flown out to different countries—why can't I come do the same thing in Ghana?”
— DJ Bright (07:26)

• Bringing the Diaspora Home:
  • The group organized charter flights from the UK to Ghana before direct airlines were widely available.
  • The events fused the UK’s nightlife experience with local Ghanaian venues, creating a December season that culminated in massive, multi-club events.

“We were charting planes for people to come from the UK to Ghana...to convince people to come to Ghana.”
— DJ Bright (08:59)

Transforming Ghana’s December & Lasting Impact (09:34–11:12)

• Establishing the Modern December in Ghana:
  • The plan: "Bring the exact same thing we're doing in the UK in December" to Ghana.
  • They coordinated with nightclubs (Boomerang, Bus Stop, Glen’s) and radio (Vibe FM), supported by notable partners and sponsors, to create a new nightlife ecosystem.

"That concept that I had at that time was to bring that [nightlife] back here. It wasn't easy...but every December we were doing something."
— DJ Bright (09:55)

• Changing the Diaspora’s Relationship with Ghana:
  • The combined efforts made it fashionable, not shameful, to go "home" for the holidays.
  • The December festivities and nightlife culture now drive tourism and pride among Ghanaians globally.

“Had I not contributed, and I don't book all these boundaries, I don't know, made it fashionable with the vision I had...I don't think we will be here with what we're experiencing.”
— DJ Bright (10:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "90% gave birth to DJ Bright." — DJ Bright (02:01)
• “It wasn’t cool to be Ghanaian. Over time...people like yourselves started creating awareness, events, communities...” — Interviewer (05:55)
• “We gave birth to December in Ghana. That's how it started.” — DJ Bright (07:25)
• “We were chartering planes for people to come from the UK to Ghana...to convince people to come to Ghana.” — DJ Bright (08:58)
• “Breaking all these boundaries, making it fashionable, creating that nightlife scene...” — DJ Bright (10:55)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–02:48: Entering mainstream UK radio; the lobby to Choice FM and birth of the Afrobeat show.
• 02:59–05:39: The evolution and founding of Akwaaba; creating event-based belonging in diaspora communities.
• 05:39–08:45: Shifting identity from “Ghana as punishment” to a destination worth celebrating; the birth of December in Ghana.
• 08:45–10:46: Chartering flights, translating UK nightlife to Accra; nightclub collaborations.
• 10:46–11:12: Reflecting on impact—making it “fashionable” to return, building the Ghanaian diaspora’s confidence.

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Summary

By challenging stigmas and building community through music and events, these pioneers dramatically shifted the cultural narrative both in the UK and Ghana. Their work directly seeded the now-famous “December in Ghana” phenomenon, making it aspirational for young Ghanaians and the wider diaspora to celebrate their roots and heritage—transforming what used to be a “punishment” into the pinnacle of festive celebration.

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Transcript

[DJ Bright]

From 1997, I remember me and Mr.

[Mr. Shooks]

Shooks always said, no, one day, one

[DJ Bright]

day we get a chance to play our music on the main. On the mainstream radio. At that time we had other community radio stations as well.

[Mr. Shooks]

We had a. Which we call it pirate radio station. Pirate radio station. But yeah, so we had the pirate radio stations that were playing Ghanaian music but not on the mainstream.

[DJ Bright]

So our job was to make sure,

[Mr. Shooks]

look, now that we have a voice

[DJ Bright]

As 90%, we will make sure one

[Mr. Shooks]

day we get, we go to the mainstream radio station.

[DJ Bright]

So we kept on lobbying Choice.

[Mr. Shooks]

We kept on lobbying Choice until one day we got hold of it that there's a license to be given for North London. That time Choice FM was only based as a South London radio station. So then we went back to Choice and said, look, we like to play African music. We like to be the representation of African music on the radio. We did a demo tape, give it a choice. I still got a demo table as of today.

[DJ Bright]

Yeah, I still got it.

[Mr. Shooks]

You know, 98 squad, choice of fame.

[DJ Bright]

And then within 24 hours I got a call from a very good friend

[Mr. Shooks]

of mine, Mr. Wayne Turning called us to say, look guys, you've got a job.

[DJ Bright]

Come stop being, come start playing music on Choice. That's it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, there were six of you.

[DJ Bright]

There were six of you.

[Interviewer]

So how did you do it?

[DJ Bright]

Okay, again, we always split the job up.

[Mr. Shooks]

All six of us couldn't be on Choice, you know, so we selected for Moscam, Mr. Shooks and Mr. Bren to be the, the face of Choice.

[Interviewer]

So you put three of the members from 90%. Yes, to. To go on Choice of him.

[Mr. Shooks]

That's it.

[Interviewer]

And these times DJ Brante was one of them.

[Mr. Shooks]

DJ Brante was one of them.

[Interviewer]

So you would say this was the introduction of DJ Brant here to Choice FM?

[DJ Bright]

That's correct. That's correct. 90% had a show.

[Mr. Shooks]

We had our own show on Choice FM, African Show.

[DJ Bright]

In fact, there was two African shows on Choice.

[Mr. Shooks]

There was 90%. And then we had another gentleman called Uncle Sam. And at P, they also had, you know, those who had a.

[Interviewer]

So then that means that. Yeah, well, from what you're saying then the reason DT ended up even on Choice was because of the group he was part of.

[DJ Bright]

DJ BR was part of 90%. 90% gave birth to DJ Bright.

[Mr. Shooks]

So let me, let me make that statement here. He gave.

[DJ Bright]

But let's give credit to DJ Abrante as well. I mean, look, let's give him his flowers. If I think of the journey With Choice fm. When we first went to Choice fm, the time which we were playing on Choice FM wasn't the best of times is what we call graveyard shift. It's from 4am to 6am when everybody's asleep. Yeah. So that was being done for years. Then it moved down from 2 to 4, then 12. 12 to 4. No, 12 to 2. So each time it kept on coming down the time wise, obviously now we, we're getting more attraction. Regular time. DJ Brante, brilliant. He stuck to it.

[Mr. Shooks]

He introduced Afrobeat show to Choice and I always give him credit from sticking

[DJ Bright]

from where we started from to where

[Mr. Shooks]

he took you to. And you got to give him that credit, you know?

[DJ Bright]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

When was it born as part of your journey?

[DJ Bright]

Aquaba was born in 2001.

[Interviewer]

Now talk me through the journey of saying this is the four of us, the six of us, six of us here, we're doing some business together. Now I am going to set up, you know, do something on my own.

[DJ Bright]

When 90% we decide to go our separate ways. Everybody kept within there.

[Mr. Shooks]

And Trips was still producing music and doing his engineering. Moss Camp always said it's always been a legend doing what he needs to do. Mr. Shooks was doing wonderful things as an MC. Black Ash the time was one of the best MCs when it comes to the jungle scene. Abrante is also on on Choice doing the Afrobeat show.

[DJ Bright]

I just had to do something and

[Mr. Shooks]

I remember speaking to my close friend and my partner at the time, Clifford Opoku and we said, why don't we do an event together? So yeah, we saw.

[DJ Bright]

We didn't even know what name we

[Mr. Shooks]

should have called the event at the time. And then two or three days before the event, we decided to say we're going to call the events Akwaba.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[DJ Bright]

I. I've always been Ghana.

[Mr. Shooks]

Everything about me has always been Ghana. So the name we could have come up with was Akwaba.

[Interviewer]

Could have been Obake.

[DJ Bright]

It could have been. It could have been. But I remember the name Aquaba because when you, when you get off the plane at the old airport, the first sign you see is Aqaba. You know, so that. I think that was the year I came back to Ghana. Okay. Oh no.

[Mr. Shooks]

Two years before I came back to Ghana. So I. Apologies. So I remember that sign Aqaba. I remember reading the Aquaba magazine on Ghana Airways plane. And so we just said, let's call it Aquaba.

[DJ Bright]

But it was not just me and Cliff. Okay.

[Mr. Shooks]

We had a Emilio. Yep. From west coast.

[DJ Bright]

Yeah.

[Mr. Shooks]

We had my, my right hand man, Eben. Yeah. Design, Entertainment and Jam Promotion. Then another good friend of mine, DJ Fire.

[DJ Bright]

Yeah, you know, and there's one or two.

[Interviewer]

Was Eben's brother also part of.

[Mr. Shooks]

Yeah, yeah, obviously he's next to Eben as well.

[DJ Bright]

So again it became another six Ghanaian guys who set up a Quaba.

[Interviewer]

Do you break off from them again?

[DJ Bright]

We didn't, we didn't break off. Eben has always been a rot of today.

[Interviewer]

But then he has his own company.

[DJ Bright]

He has his own company. You know, me and Eben as well

[Mr. Shooks]

had another company called Jump Promotions whereby we were doing events for non Ghanaians and Fire and Cliff ended up returning back to Ghana. At that time, you know, they returned back to Ghana. Emilio went on to produce west coast and is still now doing West Coast.

[DJ Bright]

Yeah, so yeah, we all came from

[Mr. Shooks]

the birth of both of Aquaba. I started with Aquaba doing events upon events upon events until now still doing Aquaba but now it's a bigger brand I'm going to be starting. Okay.

[Interviewer]

So we've spoken about a lot of things in the UK now during these times when you started doing the Aqaba events, a lot of young Ghanaians, you know, there were times when, even when I was in college, it wasn't cool to be Ghanaian. It wasn't cool to be African.

[DJ Bright]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It, I mean over time, very quickly it changed because people like yourselves started creating awareness, started creating events for us to communities for us to, you know, join in and, you know, meet each other, have conversations. Now there was something we're discussing which is, you know, Ghana was a, was a punishment for a lot of young people. I personally know young people who were sent back to Ghana because of how they were in the UK at the time. Now talk me through how this was the case, you know, during the times when you started Akwaaba, and how that has changed over time.

[DJ Bright]

As you can see when, when we started a. I mean one thing we got was a sense of belonging. You know, we had it before at 90%. But this timeline, you know, like how you say right now you have the Gen Z's now we had the millenniums at the time, so we know that, oh wow, there's a sense of belonging now. It's so cool now to be Africans. We're not being accepted. But one of the things that strike us is that look, people were so proud and popular. Anything you put out there, Ghana, Ghana, Independence dance, any Ghana event. The turnout was massive, excellent turnout. So it then became, why don't we change the narrative and bring it back home. Because also, we've also learned something. Once in the UK, we as 90%, I'm going back to 90%. Some of our bookings were not just in the UK, we were getting flown out to places like Tenerife, Ibiza, Greece, to play, to play at events. So when we look at that scene, that night life scene over there, I thought to myself, I could introduce that to Ghana. Because like you said, whenever you're in the diaspora, they mentioned to you at a time, we're sending you back home to Ghana.

[Mr. Shooks]

It was a punishment.

[DJ Bright]

It was a punishment because that means you've done something wrong, right? We're going to send you back home to Ghana. You know, you see you're shaking. Most of, most of my friends that it happened to. I know, I know one friend that run away from home, they even wanted to come and stay with me. I'm like, I'm staying with my mom and dad and my sister. How can you come and stay with me? But yeah, they're going to send him back home. So that fear of going back home made me realize that, no, I could change that narrative. I could change the mindset of people because there's me as a DJ being flown out to different, different countries to dj. Why can't I come do the same thing in Ghana? So I remember coming to Ghana, linking up with a radio station at the time called Vibe fm. He had the likes of Michael Jazz, Boseman, Kwame Fauci, the list goes on and on. But Vibe FM at the time was. Was a household radio stations here in Ghana. So my friend Cliff and then another great pioneer of mine, Aleno Sesibe, we fire, DJ Fire. We came together to say, look, why don't we do the return to Ghana? And then we gave birth to December in Ghana. That's how it started. So the collective group of us with a generation at a time, we still call ourselves, I think it's the name, we call ourselves Belay Group. The name Belay Group came from a nightclub that we used to go to in the uk. So that generation, we call ourselves the Belay Group, we all decided to come to Ghana.

[Interviewer]

And does this remind me of when there was an airline called Ghana International Airline.

[DJ Bright]

This was even before Ghana International.

[Interviewer]

Right. And then there used to be. I don't know whether you would have changed to do it.

[DJ Bright]

We used to chat.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To come to Ghana.

[DJ Bright]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Were you part of the people that.

[DJ Bright]

Of course, myself again, Alaino says we have just mentioned his Name Richmond and Mavis Ajakum. And we charted a flight with Alpha Travel, Astros Airlines. And then I think we move on to another. I can't remember, but it was for a period of time we were chatting planes for people to come from the UK to come to Ghana, because Ghana Airways was in Ghana, which I think was traveling maybe once a week or twice a week. So we had to find other means to convince people to come to Ghana. Yeah. So that's when we started doing chartered airlines to Ghana.

[Interviewer]

And the plan was simply to bring the exact, exact same thing we're doing in the uk.

[DJ Bright]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You were doing in the UK in

[DJ Bright]

December, team up with nightclubs, team up with a radio station like Vibe FM to show the biggest New Year's Eve party, Independence Square, sponsored by a company called Space Phone, which is not. So Vibe fm, Vibe FM crew, they played a major part when we came. They were the ones that were working alongside. We have partners.

[Interviewer]

And your plan doing that was to make it cool to come to Ghana.

[DJ Bright]

To make it cool to come to Ghana, to make, you know, to create a night, a night life scene here. Because we, we experienced already when we go to Tenerife. Tenerife. There's a place called the Strip in Tenerife. In one night, you could go to about, say, 10 different clubs, hopping from club to club, club to club. So that concept that I had at that time was to bring that back here. It wasn't easy because at the time, I think the nightclubs there, Boomerang nightclub, Bus Stop. Bus Stop. One of the greatest club Ghanais ever had, man.

[Mr. Shooks]

Boomerang.

[DJ Bright]

And we had celebrations, we had office, we had Glenn's, Glen's nightclub. So we teamed up with all of these nightclubs and I must give a big shout out to Kiki Bunsen, Duke Benson, Ampe Glens, and quite a lot of people that obviously welcomed us alongside Vibe fm. And every December we were doing something.

[Interviewer]

How do you think, you know, your, your, your involvement has shaped how the diaspora are now coming to Ghana today.

[DJ Bright]

Myself, had I not contributed, and I don't book all these boundaries, I don't know, made it fashionable with the vision I had at the time, I don't, I don't think we will be here where we are now with what we, what we're experiencing, because breaking all these boundaries, making it fashionable, creating that nightlife

[Mr. Shooks]

scene, Connected Minds podcast.