Ghanaian media personality Vanessa Gyan who is the daughter of the late keyboardist Kiki Gyan, has spoken about the relationship she had with her father when he was alive.
She has disclosed in the ‘If More, Let’s Divide podcast, hosted by Mutombo and Frederick, that her mother single-handedly raised her.
She said she only knew her father, Kiki Gyan, as a renowned keyboardist but did not have a close relationship with him.
“I think everyone knows that my mum raised me, she was a single man, but it didn’t mean that she kept me away from my dad, but a lot happened. When I came to Ghana, we did connect because he came to the family house. He still had relationships with my uncles and my aunties. It was just that I was in the states,” she said.
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“We did get the chance to communicate then. It wasn’t for long, but I think for him, he needed that because he hadn’t seen me since I was a baby. He was going through a lot.
Vanessa added that the last memory she holds of her father was when he came to their house at Kaneshie and demanded to see her. It was not until Kiki Gyan came on vacation to Ghana from the United States that she had a closer connection with him.
“I remember when my grandma passed…we were in Kaneshie. The parents were out, and he came knocking on the gate, he wanted to see me. I was actually scared, am not gonna lie. You are a young chil, no one is home so obviously, they didn’t let him in. He came at nine. That is the last memory in person… that was the last time.
Kiki Gyan was the keyboardist of the band Osibisa which was popular in the 1970s. He also recorded and produced a series of disco records. He was a prodigy who could play the keyboard exceptionally well.
He left Osibisa to go solo in 1979 and recorded the single “24 Hours in a Disco”, which hit the charts in the United States and the UK.
He was briefly married to Fela Kuti’s first daughter, before divorcing to marry a Ghanaian woman.
Gyan became addicted to hard drugs for some 21 years, to the detriment of his career. He died alone and impoverished in a church bathroom in Ghana in June 2004.
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By: Kwame Dadzie | Ghana Weekend
