A School, a sound and a new movement
Contemporary gospel music emerged in Ghana in the early 1970s, marking a major development in the country’s Christian music. Churches had long used hymns, anthems, cantatas, indigenous songs and some western instruments, yet many conservative evangelicals still regarded rock, soul, disco and electric guitars as worldly.
Through Noise of Joy, Joyful Way Singers and its link with Calvary Road Singers, Mfantsipim incubated and nurtured a challenge to these attitudes, proving the value of contemporary Christian music for evangelism, fellowship and spiritual formation.
Noise of joy: The beginning of a new sound
In July 1970, guitarist Emmanuel Lartey, now the Rt Rev Prof Emmanuel Y Lartey of Emory University, formed Noise of Joy with fellow students Joseph Quist, Kwame Kyeretwie Ofori, Henry Badoo, TVO Lamptey and James Walton, joined by girls from Wesley Girls’ High School. That September, a visit by Youth For Christ’s Teen Team affirmed what the group had begun. Rather than suppress the movement, the School embraced it: because ‘Methodism was born in song,’ tutors such as W Paul Grimble and E John Watson encouraged the group to perform at services and gatherings across Cape Coast, as did Clarice Garnett of Wesley Girls’, who also guided them.
From noise of joy to Joyful Way
Parallel groups followed, notably the Evangels, led by Adisadel keyboardist Emmanuel Kweku Frimpong (‘Odas’). On 15 January 1972, Noise of Joy and the Evangels merged, combining a Beatles-style guitar sound with piano-led music reminiscent of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, a mix Professor Joe-Nat Clegg-Lamptey called ‘like dynamite!’ As Rev Joseph Gyebi observes, Joyful Way’s use of popular forms challenged prevailing evangelical attitudes and reached young people.
Taking the gospel beyond the school gates
Joyful Way toured nationally in the 1972 Nationwide Love Mission and was heard on GBC radio. In 1974 it appeared on Break For Music and launched Explosion of Joy, its Boxing Day concert, which still draws about 4,000 patrons a year and may be Africa’s longest-running annual contemporary gospel concert.
Joyful Way inspired Calvary Road Singers, founded around December 1976 with Rev Spencer Duncan as founding President. Duncan had become ‘born again’ at a Joyful Way programme at Adisadel in 1972. As Rev Ebenezer Markwei, a founding member, recalls, ‘right from the start, we wanted to be like Joyful Way.’ Later groups shared this aspiration, including New Creation, Come Back, Abundant Life, the Commissioned Family and, more recently, Team Eternity, whose founder calls Joyful Way ‘a template.’
Joyful Way and Calvary Road: Completing each other
Calvary Road combined music with drama, prayer and preaching. Dr Kwame Owusu Dapaah-Afriyie introduced it to Mfantsipim around 1980, and it grew into a network of campus ministries.
At Mfantsipim, a friendly, sometimes competitive rivalry fostered musical talent and leadership, producing a strong line of vocalists, keyboardists, guitarists and drummers. As Kojo Folson (Borax) – former Deputy Headboy, Calvary Road member and possibly Mfantsipim’s finest guitarist – puts it, ‘we did not necessarily compete with each other; we completed each other.’
Changing scenes and shifting tides
From the mid-1980s, the groups’ fortunes in Cape Coast declined. Joyful Way decided to close its branches in 1985, and the Cape Coast branch’s attempt to survive was dealt a fatal blow in 1986, when it was banned from Wesley Girls’ after a disputed service. The Adisadel branch gradually faded, but the Mfantsipim branch carried on as Joyful Noise, forming affiliations with groups at Ghana National and Wesley Girls’, and resumed its original name when Joyful Way reversed its decision around 1996.
Calvary Road, by contrast, was swept up in the charismatic church wave of the late 1980s and 1990s. More than a dozen churches emerged from it or were founded by its members, including Lighthouse Chapel, Living Streams, Harvest Chapel and New Creation Chapel, though its influence as an independent music ministry has since dwindled.
From school groups to national artistes
As noted, the groups produced notable musicians. From Joyful Way came TVO Lamptey, a leading gospel tenor; Patrick Osei-Hwere, arguably Ghana’s first recorded gospel rapper who also helped found Intellecto Choirofest, the inter-university mass choir festival; vocalists such as Luigi Maclean, Calvis Hammond, Seth Acquah, Elvis Bentil and Nana Yaw Ofori-Atta; and songwriters such as TVO Lamptey (Wonjie Oyi), Sackey Bennin (Osabarima), Justice Akushie (I’ve Found It) and the present writer (Wahenni). The Calvary Road tradition produced award-winners Nii Okai and the late Kofi Dua-Anto (KODA). Other old boys emerged outside the two traditions, notably Perez Music, a 2023 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards winner, trumpeter Frank Guildford and Rev Joseph Gyebi.
Joyful Way’s honours include the 1988 ECRAG and 1990 PAFAM awards and recognition at the 2003 Ghana Music Awards for its ministry and the packaging of Barima Yesu, written by the present writer. Its tours have reached West Africa, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States and Rwanda, and its 1979 visit to The Gambia led to the founding of Youth For Christ, Gambia.
A living legacy at 150
Mfantsipim’s musical traditions, including Joyful Way and Calvary Road, have shaped alumni in ministry and secular careers alike, building discipline, teamwork, leadership and Christian service.
On Saturdays, young men still rehearse in Mfantsipim’s Assembly Hall as Joyful Way, the Mfantsipim group, probably unaware of the history behind each session. Calvary Road’s legacy lives on through its churches and leaders. Ironically, churches that once resisted Joyful Way’s style now routinely use contemporary gospel music in worship. As Mfantsipim turns 150, its story honours the sons of the School who transformed not only the sound of Ghana’s gospel music, but also how faith is expressed and lived.
[A fuller version of this article will be published in the Mfantsipim Speechday brochure]
The author is Ace Anan Ankomah, Esq, FGA (MOBA’84), Lawyer and Music Hobbyist
