Diana Hamilton won four VGMAs in one night with a song called “Adom”. She was the first woman gospel artist to take the top prize
On 26 June 2021, Diana Hamilton won four awards at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, including the biggest one. No female gospel artist had won Artiste of the Year before.
The song that carried her there was “Adom”, Twi for grace. It won Gospel Song of the Year and Popular Song of the Year, and Hamilton also won Gospel Artiste of the Year. She was the top winner of the night, beating nominees including KiDi and Sarkodie for the main prize.
A song for a hard year
The award year covered 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Churches closed or moved online for months, concerts were cancelled, and many people spent the year with fear and loss close at hand. “Adom” was a song about grace: the idea that everything a person has, and every day survived, comes as a gift from God.
It was sung in homes, on church livestreams, on radio and at the small funerals that restrictions allowed. For a lot of listeners, it matched the mood of the year exactly. When restrictions eased, it was one of the songs congregations wanted to sing together first.
Who Diana Hamilton is
Diana Antwi Hamilton had been part of the Ghanaian gospel scene for years before “Adom”. Her earlier songs and albums had built a steady following in churches, and she had worked with other leading gospel voices. Her music is mostly in Twi and English, built on worship and testimony, and she is known for long, emotional live ministrations rather than short performances.
The second gospel winner
Hamilton’s win came four years after Joe Mettle became the first gospel artist to win Artiste of the Year in 2017. Between them, the two wins made it clear that gospel could take the top prize in Ghanaian music instead of staying in its own category.
Her win also carried weight because Ghanaian gospel is full of women. Many of the country’s most loved gospel voices, across generations, have been women, and their songs are sung in churches every week. Yet the top award had gone to men for years. Hamilton became the proof that the ceiling could be broken.
After the awards
The win brought her more exposure, as she has said in interviews since: more invitations, bigger stages and new listeners outside the church. She continued to release music and to hold worship concerts, and “Adom” remains one of the most requested songs at her events.
The song that won her the biggest prize in Ghanaian music has a one-word title. In Twi, it means grace, and it describes the year she won it better than any speech could.
