Joseph Quashie’s walk through the Party in the Park

Readers may remember that in December 2010, I allowed one of my readers from the UK who was visiting Ghana for holidays to write about his experience at the ‘December to Remember’ event organized by Accra-based radio station, Citi FM.  Well Joseph Quashie has since returned to the UK and since last Saturday’s ‘Ghana Party in the Park’ event was right in his backyard, who better to be my eyes and ears in London than my emerging roving reporter himself?

The Party in the Park event  is one of the annual summer jams that Ghanaians based in London and its suburbs look forward to especially if they are blessed with  a nice weather as they had on Saturday, August 6.  With a hugely popular Twitter hash tag launch (#GhanaPartyInThePark ) the night before the actual function, expectations were high for this year’s event. Well, ‘Joey’ gives us the rundown on the event as follows:

The organizers, Akwaaba UK and Active Promo, decided to change the venue from what ‘everyone’ knew in the past years and sadly initial posters that came out for the event this year had the venue of the previous years on them. Some people reportedly turned up at the usual venue only to realize it had been changed. But to show how much the event meant to them, most of them found their way to the right venue to the join the fun like the rest of us.

I got to the venue about 3:30pm and the atmosphere was so electrifying. The park was well mapped out with two main stages for performances. Stage 1 which had a live band, cultural dances and a durbar attracted mostly the more mature and elderly crowd.  While the second stage (I am sure you guessed right) had the DJs, the fashion show and artistes performances for the young and young at heart!

The performances were mostly by up and coming artists who needed a crowd of that magnitude to launch themselves to the Ghanaian community. The musical performances were inter-spaced with fashion shows from Mefri Ghana and ODF Clothing, as well as some mixes from DJs on deck. One of my favorite performances was by Flava and Kwamz of the ‘All types of bread’ Fame. Almost everyone in the crowd was singing along to their underground hit song.

Then came the show-stopper, hiplife group VIP. This came as a pleasant surprise to many who didn’t know the award winning trio was in town for the show, since they were not advertised on posters. Their set was as usual very energetic. They started with some of their old hits and brought it home with some of the more recent hits.  At a point, the crowd started screaming, ‘AWAY, AWAY’ not because they wanted them to leave but because they want to hear VIP’s award winning hit song, ‘Away’.

Sadly, just as VIP decided to give the crowd what they had demanded, the PA system decided to ‘take a break’.  Although VIP members, Promzy and Prodigal are known to be loud, there was no snow ball’s chance in hell that the crowd could hear them perform the song that most of them had been waiting for all evening. VIP tried their very best to finish the song without the PA system, but well it was a mess!

To sum up, I would say that, yes the Party in The Park is a good family day out.  For those who turned up for the food and drinks, hoping to bump into old friends, I’m sure it was a wonderful day in the park for them. For those who attended the event solely for the music performance, hmmm perhaps they were expecting too much – although the DJs saved the day!