…they’re driven by ego not professionalism

Vibe Fm’s Kwadwo Offe-Burobey was on air interacting with his listener’s when i got to the station’s premises at Pyramid House, Ring Road, Accra. Kwadwo or Zak, as he’s known by his listeners, is one of the brains behind the establishment of Vibe FM a little over ten years ago. “We were a team of presenters from UK,” he said with a British accent. “We came and set up and I left Vibe to its fate.” Zak presents the rush hour programme, Traffic Jam, from Monday through to Friday. When I got in, he was engaging his listeners via phone. He proposed the quesiton; do you believe in miracles?

The segment, ‘WHY-WHY’, illicit opinions from listeners on a wide range of issues. His producer, Joseph Ansah sat next to him, assisting with the calls. Some of the calls tripped and cut occasionally and Zak will empathise by simply saying “ooooh sorry about that, please call me back.” “Interactivity is the soul of the whole programme,” he said, speaking on the relevance of listener’s participation. Born in Britain to Ghanaian parents and christened Emmanuel Kwadwo Offe-Burobey, Zak said he dropped the name Emmanuel because “I don’t believe in it.” His father, he said, wanted him to do something more than radio; lawyer, accountant, medical doctor etc. “To him if you don’t have a Ph.D you didn’t exist,” he told me looking into the studio through the glass pane. But Zak said he was not the type to be easily cowed to follow the so-called bourgeoisie path to success by Ghanaian parents in the UK at the time. “I’m a non-conformist,” he chipped in. However, he said he did medicine, architecture and his father’s kind of dream job for a son but was still not convinced about seeing himself following his father’s chosen profession for him. “I didn’t buy into it,” he said. “I didn’t see any value digging somebody’s brain,” he explained why he abandoned medicine to follow his heart; radio. Zak said he started off as a child actor doing some stage plays in theatres in Britain. He gave that up as a result of poor attendance of his plays mainly because radio stations he advertised on would charge him exorbitant fees, but not air the adverts at the prime time he wanted. The frustration in always complaining to the managers of the station, Capital Radio finally set him on a journey into the world of radio. He started out at J.FM and Jazz Fm, honing his radio finese on the air. He moved on to set up LWR some twenty years ago. He described the station as personality based where, together with some of his colleagues, gave an alternative voice to radio listeners in Britain. According to him, he moved abroad-mainly strutting around some European countries and the United States in an attempt to become a global citizen. Speaking to Zak one gets the sense of a very humble but learned person who appears to have grown tired of the radio industry, especially here in Ghana. There is so much mediocrity in the industry today than the professionalism that should rather be the heatbeat of the profession, he says. “I don’t see any challenge,” he said with a straight face,” They got to step up their game.” According to him, they don’t inspire him because they are so much taken in by ego, making them achieve an imaginary iconic status from “sycophantic” elements in the society. He said there is no intimacy between the presenter and the listener because they feel every one should suck up. People with such minds, he said, are made up of no creativity and therefore do not see the wisdom in opening themsleves up to knowledge. He said presenting is an act, and each programme that radio presenters do should be able to fit into a different market other than their own. The conversation switched to the trend of LAFA (Locally Acquired Foreign Accent) which has become the day to day conversation style of most presenters. Zak is not one to be easily moved by such hypocrisy and self denial attitude by adherents of LAFA. According to him, they are seen by those who really appreciate the beauty of the English language as nothing more than waste stocks. “American is a bastardisation of English,” Zak told me. “I laugh at their LAFA,” he said in a typical British accent. He said the level of toxic waste in the name of presentation on the radio makes it hard for him to spend his time flipping his dial to any of the radio stations. “I listen to the BBC World Service and Voice of America.” Zak says the Karaoke segment on his show also provides him with the platform to have an intimacy with his listeners, and he loves every second of it. Different kinds of voices, he said, come through the programme- some sweet and some off the mark. But he loves the seemingly bad voices because they make the show thick.

A key supporter of English premiership club WestHam, Zak said he would have ended up as a footballer had it not been an injury he sustained back at the time. He likes Arsenal too. Zak almost had a TV job on the team’s network, but that was the time he had to come to Ghana so that didn’t happen.

He said he has been shuttling between the UK for the past four years. “I need my dose of Europe,” he said as he rushed to the studio to say a word or two after the long musical interlude.