I received the gift of tongues at age 9- MOG details journey into gospel music

Ghanaian contemporary gospel singer, songwriter and Pastor, Nana Yaw Boakye better known by his stage name MOG Music has detailed his journey into the Gospel music fraternity.

Speaking on Joy News’ EVibes with Becky, the popular gospel musician detailed his beginnings as a gospel musician.

According to MOG, he received the direction his life was supposed to go in at a very young age, however, youthful exuberance and pleasures distracted him for what he was meant to do but after what he wanted to do kept failing it was like a wake-up call; it was then he realised he had to sit up and pay attention to God’s work.

“At the age of nine at a prayer meeting in one bush with my auntie, speaking in tongues and when I received it, I was, according to those who were around, I was writing Hebrew on the ground and unfortunately, there was nobody there to transcribe what I was writing. So, the pastor there spoke to my auntie and said this guy has God’s hand upon him, he’ll be very great and there’s nothing he can do apart from the work of God so try and keep him in church and he’ll be great,” he said.

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“So, growing up I didn’t  want to be a pastor or anything I just wanted to be you know be myself, have fun do all the things I need but I was walking home one day and this madman walked up to me and said “you’re going to do the work of God”, he mentioned my name, “Nana Yaw, you’re going to do the work of God so you better start now”. Around that time, I was contemplating should I focus on the things of God, or you know live the bad boy life? I started doing studio sessions before the single, I started recoding secular songs. There were two things, it’s either the song will come out without my voice, or the song won’t come out at all. So, every secular song that I did, every feature that I did, I started with features, every feature I did there were songs that I recorded with Sarkodie then on and they released the song. When I heard the song, I was waiting for my part and then somebody had my part, taken my voice out, somebody else had sang my part and the songs that had my voice on, never came on air,” he continued.

MOG states that the early influence of music in church; being in constant presence of the choir rehearsals, seeing instruments like the drum being played, influenced  decision to pursue music as a way of serving God.

“I grew up in the Methodist church you know. My mum was in the church literally every day. I grew up with rehearsals, listening to choir rehearsals and all that every time and that kind of had an effect on me. You know I’ll go, they’re playing the drums, I was like how does this thing work you know the legs, two legs and hands doing separate things at the same time. I was like I need to learn this thing. So, I’m at a young age I developed the heart for music, and I started learning and that’s how the journey begun,” he said.

His interest in music will become a reality after he received support from the likes of music producer, Kaawa and Pastor Nii Okai who he is tremendously grateful to for how far he has come in his career.

“I came into contact with Pastor Nii Okai who has had, you know he had an impact on my music like literally my whole musical foundation was built by Nii Okai. You know in terms of understanding music, scoring music, creating music you know and appreciating music. He’s the one that did all the work, so I’ll give the credit to him,” he said.

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After settling in the music journey, it was time for a sellable name, and according to him, he wanted a name that would stand out among his colleagues and finally settled on MOG.

“I wanted to be unique in my area and I realised that all my colleagues had their names as their brand: Ike Nanor, Joe Mettle, Nii Okai, Cwesi Oteng, Diana Hamilton so I was like I have to be unique you know. I initially wanted to use Nyame Nipa you know and Cwesi Oteng was like, “ah when you go to America and UK and they want to oh ‘help me welcome Nyame Nipa’ it won’t really sit down so go for Man of God, MOG” and I was like yeah that’s right”.

Watch full interview below;