pinnaclegh.com

Gospel music in Ghana has seen a lot of changes over the years and one of the main artistes who have helped effect this change is Celestine Donkor.

Celestine released her first album, an 11- track album titled ‘Gye wo deε’ in 2007 and had since known no bounds.

A year later she released a single, ‘Supernatural’ which has given her three nominations; Gospel Song of the year, Gospel Artist of the year, Best Female Vocal Performance in this year’s Ghana Music Awards.

Expectations for her second album have been at a crescendo, especially with her profound contributions to hit gospel songs like; ‘Go high’ by Philipa Baafi and ‘Hena ne wadamfo pa’ by Rev Prince Nyarko. She has also worked with Isaiah Ampong, Cee, Lenny Akpadi among others.

Her latest work which hits the market by the end of the week is ‘Restoration’ which she said has biblical implications; “restoration came to me as a prophetic message because Biblically, after every 'Supernatural' encounter, ‘man’ needs to be Restored.”

The 11-track album has easy to adapt songs like He lives, Faithful, Emere Pa, Up 2 Something, Edem, ‘Supernatural’ and many more good songs. Strangely enough, the album features only one artiste, Ishmael Koranteng who featured in her ‘Supernatural’ single. Ismael is a product of Stars of the Future reality show Season 2.

Asked why she will gamble on a lesser known artiste to appear in about 90 per cent of the songs in the album, she simply said, “I believe so much in what he has. Personally, I am somebody people featured a lot and they gave me the opportunity for people to know what I have in me...so i thought I should also give him the opportunity for the world to also know how good he is.”

Celestine tags the album as being very different and bigger than what she has done so far, adding that the album has a lot of variety with good beats and languages all in a bid to make the album appealing to the international market and audience.

“This album has a combination of beats and languages. I did some songs in Yoruba, I did some songs in English, Ewe, Twi and I have reggae, country, highlife beats on it.”

The album will commercially be released this week but will be formally launched first week of July.

Celestine will embark on a massive campaign for the album and video in Togo and Nigeria. The July launch will be followed by series of tours which will take her to an invitational concert in Spain, Germany, Holland, France and Italy for promotional concerts.

Touching on her nomination in this year’s Ghana Music Awards, she said she expected more nominations but hopes to win at least one award from the three nominations.

“I will feel disappointed if I don’t get one award at all but if I don’t, life goes on. I will still do my best,” she added.