How Bethel Revival Choir Became a Household Name

It started as a group of five members confined to the grounds of the World Evangelical Church’s Trinity Parish in Kotobabi. As a group that has been around for over two decades, its consistency cannot be overstated.

After their gradual rise to fame, they captured the nation’s attention due to their ability to “modernize” old traditional songs with their incredible vocal delivery.

The Bethel Revival Choir has become the toast of many music lovers, especially with its scintillating Ewe medleys that have contributed to its fame.

He has won several awards at the 3Music Awards and the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards.

But there were misrepresentations, misconceptions, and other accounts that didn’t quite tell how the band became a household name. For example, some believed that they were only singing Ewe songs.

“I believe that most churches grew out of certain areas and ours [the Evangelical Presbyterian Church] came from this side [Volta Region] so you got a lot of sheep in there, but there’s other people too. In fact, Bethel generally teaches more English than Ewe does in church,” said the choir’s music director and producer, Henry Datsomor.

Speaking in an interview with Fifi Folson on Closea new personality-focused segment on Joy FM’s “The Reason Is Jesus” on Sunday, he explained that because the Church originated in the Volta region, most of its members speak Ewe.

After graduating from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in 2002, Mr. Datsomor and his friends took on the intrinsic challenge of transforming the “church” choir that sang the same old songs.

So what happened? Henry Datsomor explains:

“I and others have been thinking about how we can transform the choir and it was just for church music. We started to transport the whole choir to the programs, just taking them by bus to go see everything was going on and come back.

“The idea was just to start giving them a vision, something to look forward to. We started introducing annual gigs here and there and it generated a lot of excitement.

“From then on, we started bringing in a lot of friends. People always wonder why Joe Mettle, Pastor Edwin and others are still with us – we’ve had all these friends for a long time. Every week there’s has someone around us, who teaches us something, leads us to something,” he told Fifi Folson.

The choir had its first studio production in 2007 to give members a different experience from the usual church ministries.

“We made the Hallelujah album – now they realize it wasn’t just about church ministry but they needed to produce proper, well-planned music and that was another really good one. thing.”

Since 2009 the choir has held mini-concerts on the first Sunday of each month – the non-stop praise and worship sessions have featured renowned ministers like Joe Mettle, Uncle Ato, Nii Okai, Edwin Dadson, Elliott Lamptey, Calvis Hammond , Eugene Zuta, Danny Nettey and others.

According to Mr. Datsomor, these programs and concerts made the choir look far beyond what it was doing then.

“With these annual programs, we started to attract a crowd of people who were too hungry for excellence and trying to improve themselves – the learning curve started to steepen, and then we introduced this praise and worship the first Sunday of each month, starting in 2009.

“We were on stage and honing ourselves throughout those years. When we came to 2018, we decided to have a proper recording or production – it went so well. It was a choir that had gotten so used to all of these things through the buildup,” he added.

Bethel Revival Choir gained more recognition after releasing their second album titled “Akpe” in 2018.

“Agbadza Gospel Medley” and “Vovome” featuring Joe Mettle are two standout songs that people know the choir for.

What role did the mother church play in this success?

Mr. Henry Datsomor commended the church for their support and giving them the opportunity to improve their skills and talents.

“You have a church that saw what we were doing. Usually nobody knew there was so much more than we were doing at the time – maybe they weren’t really on display.

“A good thing was that they were ready to support us in any way, I felt they could still have held back and probably stopped us from all these things, but they allowed us.”

While waiting for the next Bethel Revival Choir, you can always lend your help and support to this group.

The revival is here!