Piesie Esther on her discovery, what immediately made her unique

Gospel star Piesie Esther has recalled how she started her music career, identifying what set her apart from her contemporaries from the very beginning.

Currently a deaconess and celebrated singer-songwriter, she was born and grew up in the Church of Pentecost.

Esther said she started singing in Sunday School and while enrolled in a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) school, she would perform during school celebrations of local tradition and culture.

“My family has many gifted singers,” she made clear, adding, however, that she is the one that has wide public recognition.

Piesie Esther explained it was through working in Kumasi as a backing vocalist for Gospel veteran “Mama Georgia Adjei,” with whom she lived, that she met “Reverend Asamoah Boateng” at whose Great Light Worship Centre in Accra, her career would take off.

Rev Boateng, popularly known as Apae Live, executive produced Piesie's first two albums.

Noting that: "I write all my songs," she explained that her biggest challenge, prior to all the support she has received thus far, was: "not getting assistance or a helper when you are competent and knowledgeable in an area".

She was on the No.1 Showbiz programme, Tuesday, July 11, 2023, speaking to Taller Dee.

“The world is witnessing a gift and grace God has given me,” she said contentedly.

The 2023 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMAs) Gospel Artiste of the Year disclosed that her music formula has always been using her personal trials and triumphs seen through the lense of "God’s Word," alias the Bible, to admonish and encourage her audience worldwide.

What is unique about her music, she asserted, is her themes and titles.

“Consider my songs. Empare Me (It’ll Never Happen to Me), Mentease (I Won’t Accept This) – this was very different from the songs of the time – how do you make a song and insist that: ‘I won’t accept this’? Those words [and expressions] were never in music at the time,” she said.

She explained with how Mente Ase was written.

She had read in the Bible the anomaly observed in Ecclesiastes that sometimes royals walk while slaves ride horses. Noting that the Almighty God had better plans for her, the reversal of the stated abnormality, she declared she will not accept such and sang about the experience.

“My message, I think, made me unique,” she said.

Contrary to what her contemporaries did, she remembered she had “given her hair a proper down-cut” and would “wear a suit and striking boots” for her videos.

“These all made me different indeed,” she said, noting that: “Such swag was not the norm of the day.”

Typical of her, the modest vocalist swiftly thanked God for using her music gift and “message which many people heard, obeyed and prayed with, experiencing and testifying to us of great things that followed”.

The award-winning Waye Me Yie (He's Prospered Me) is Piesie Esther's biggest song. It has a remix with Gospel stars like MOG Music, Ohemaa Mercy and Cece Twum.