UK-based Ghanaian singer and dancer Slim Buster has opened about his formative years in the creative arts industry, explaining it all began in the church, and crescendoed with Highlife icon Gee Man. 

Drums

"I started playing music in the church because my mother is a prophetess," he told Summy Brown on Accra 100.5 FM, via a phone call.

He said as he played the drums and percussions, he never thought he would become a career musician and entertainer.

He indicated he had no choice than to play for the church because his mother would not tolerate him going anywhere else on Sunday. It seemed it was not a dreary time, however.

"So I was playing [in the church] and having fun," he remarked.

Sports

In school, the man born Ebenezer Asare, who would grow up to captivate the nation with his dance and music, said he was keen on sports and quite versatile.

"I played football, table tennis, lawn tennis, volley - so I was very active in sports," he noted. 

Dance

Slim Buster recalled it was in secondary school that he discovered he could dance.

"It was during a fun fair when one guy came to dance. The whole school went crazy [with excitement]. And I stood back and said, 'I can do better than this guy'. I said it to my friend in Ga, who laughed till he fell to the ground," he narrated.

Buster said he was undeterred by his friends pessimism, and so when he went home, he began to "design my own dances in the mirror".

He said video tapes his UK-based brother used to send to him greatly spurred him on, as he watched Shalamar member Jeffery Daniel present the UK version of the US hit TV show Soul Train.

"It was a programme called Soul Train done in the UK every weekend. There was a dancer in it called Jeffery Daniel. He was the originator of backsliding [moonwalk]. I started learning from him and Soul Train, and adding my own spin to it," he explained. 

It is said Jeffery Daniel introduced the moonwalk to the United Kingdom, long before teaching it to Michael Jackson who would later transform it into a global phenomenon.

Slim Buster said the opportunity came for him to publicly demonstrate that he could dance during school midterms. 

"I didn't even dance for 30 seconds, before they came to lift me up [in jubilation]," he underlined, adding that the very people who mocked him initially proceeded to promoting him in different colleges, boasting he was the best dancer, and indeed "we'd go compete and I'd win".

When Slim Buster was about to complete secondary school - as a form-five student, he contested in the national dance competition called Embassy Double Do, he went on.

"Reggie Rockstone was part of it. I won as the [19]86 dance champion, and I was taken to the UK to represent Ghana," he expatiated.

Due to some "problems" in the UK, which he chose not to detail, he said he returned to Ghana, where he made the acquaintance of Highlife superstar Gee Man.

Music

He said the singer and dancer Gee Man, often called Ghana's Michael Jackson, invited him to play a show, after which he suggested Slim Buster consider composing his own songs.

Slim Buster said he confessed to Gee Man that although he could sing, he did not know how to compose songs.

"So it was Gee Man who taught me how to write and compose songs," he revealed.

Slim Buster highlighted how musically talented, unique and charismatic the dance champion Gee Man, who had come from the diaspora, was among his contemporaries in Ghana. 

"He was unlike anything else in Ghana. He was the hardest... When he was spotted outside... " Slim Buster excitedly noted. 

He said they travelled together to countries all over Africa, including going to Nigeria and meeting Afrobeat originator Fela Kuti. 

"Gee Man was all over Africa. So it was during these times that I picked up how to compose music, and I recorded my first demo with a guy called Eric Bobo, and there was Hackman, and others," Buster remembered.

The Masan Aba hitmaker emphasised he learned so much from Gee Man and "everywhere I go, I must say thank you to that man".