Nana Opoku Kwarteng, father of the late Ebony Reigns
We have said enough about the young lady and that should be enough: her name must rest now.
When the sun sets and life takes a new chapter, it is important to focus on today because indeed, only today can go wrong. Dead people have left this world of troubles and deserve their peace of mind wherever they find themselves.
Unfortunately, once a person becomes a celebrity, his life and death is given so much attention that it appears the rest of us don’t really matter. But such is the price and reward for being a star, they pay more for their mistakes than we do and deserve more sympathy than we do in times of tragedy. I call it balance.
The truth though is, once they are buried, everyone moves to the next day.
Unfortunately, Ebony’s dad is keeping the young lady name needlessly trending and wrongly so for nearly 20 days after her burial.
I think the man should cut off the celebrity status he has assumed since his daughter’s death and live his life behind the cameras like it always was until the day we heard the bad news. If he sees an opportunity to be something popular, he has the right to do so but he appears to be taking undue advantage of Ebony’s death and that is to me appalling. I will come to this.
Even after presenting himself as a father who offered unflinching support to his daughter career-wise, it appears that the man had no idea whatsoever about Ebony’s working relationship with Bullet and even the details of the contract she signed with Ruff Town Records. It was after all this has taken place that Ebony brought Bullet home to meet him.
This is strange to be because the man creates the impression that he was all involved in her career. A father who supported her in the way he purports would have played a role in her first ever professional contract.
If he invested directly in Ebony’s career prior to her meeting Bullet, he’d have at least been a witness to her contract or played a part in the negotiation. I am saying this because I have heard him in several interviews outlining his unprecedented support for his daughter's career. Clearly, his support was by allowing her to chase her dreams without hindrance.
That is not a bad thing because it is rare to find parents in Ghana who’d agree to let their daughters quit SHS at form three to pursue a music career and it arguably paid off. People unfairly attribute her death to her upbringing but that to me is unfair and an unintelligent argument to make.
Nothing shows that she’d have lived longer if she was brought up like the way people wanted him to raise her. She probably would have died even earlier.
But that is not the point of this post, this is it:
In an interview with Kwesi Aboagye of Peace FM recently and another on Hit FM, he sought to suggest that Ebony was abused by her Manager Bullet. He further accused Bullet of being mute about Ebony’s royalties and earnings from iTunes, Youtube and what have you.
Also, he accused Bullet of not doing his job properly as a manager and leaving a 21-year-old under his management to be all alone on the day of her death. According to him, as a manager, he should be concerned about the very movement of his artist and be in control of virtually every aspect of her life. In short, Bullet was a bad manager and inferably may have led to Ebony’s death.
My Take
For a father who didn’t bother about his 21 year old daughter’s private life, for a father who could not stop his 21 year old daughter from leaving his house to rent and live alone, he has no moral authority to blame a manager whose relationship with Ebony was just based on a signature on a piece of paper.
Being a father comes with managerial responsibilities that far eclipse those of career managers. A father cannot blame a professional manager where he himself failed woefully. Of the problems Ebony had, parental related problems may have ranked high on the order of gravity. But we can’t dwell much on this since no one has the perfect blueprint for quality parenting. Even the best effort of a parent can still fail.
The same can be said of Artists Management. Managing Artists after they have become successful is one of the most difficult tasks. Most of them stop listening to their managers and live as they please.
Also, the image of a father talking about his late daughter’s money less than a month after burial on radio is disgusting. If anything at all, it should be handled privately and not on radio.
Whoever knows the man personally should point him to this article and let him know that he is losing the sympathy people had for him and looking more like one who benefited from the death. The talk about money money money on radio is petty and shameful. Fathers don’t inherit their children so handling such things behind the scene makes more sense than making it a media campaign.
Finally on VGMA, dead or alive, Ebony deserved the Artist of the Year Award. If she was alive and didn’t win it, some of the people who claim she won based on sympathy would have raised issues of she being discriminated against based on gender.
I was questioning the contribution Mr Kwarteng made towards Ebony’s career between the sixth and ninth paragraph of this article not to belittle his efforts but to the self-seeking approach, he adopted from the first day of her death. When he speaks about Ebony’s career, he gives himself more credit than he gives to Bullet, the man who arguably made the musician Ebony.
Bullet practically kept his own singing career in the safe so that he can attend to Ebony. He deserves better from a man who could easily have lost his daughter to any of the countless managers who sleep with talented musicians with the promise of advancing their careers and finally leave them without a single. Many young ladies have fallen victim to such people but Bullet kept his promise and made Ebony arguably bigger than himself.
Whatever went wrong between them is part of every human relationship. Every working relationship has its own issues. Ebony’s dad should know this
Conclusion: Ebony's dad should keep his doors shut to the media: we’ve already had enough of him. It is not smart to be media friendly in matters that should be treated as confidential.
By: isaackyeiandoh@yahoo.com
