For 17 years no gospel act could win Ghana’s biggest music award. Then Joe Mettle did

For 17 years, gospel musicians collected nominations at the Ghana Music Awards and watched secular artists walk away with the top prize. On 8 April 2017, Joe Mettle broke the pattern.

That night, at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards in Accra, Mettle was named Artiste of the Year, the first gospel musician ever to win it. He also won Gospel Artiste of the Year and Best Male Vocalist. The worship leader had beaten the biggest names in Ghanaian pop and hip-hop to the award every artist in the country wants.

Who Joe Mettle is

Joseph Nii Adjetey Mettle is a Ga, born in Accra, and many of his best-known songs are sung in Ga, Twi and English. He grew up singing in church and first came to national attention as a member of the gospel group Soul Winners before building a solo career.

His music sits at the meeting point of praise and worship. He can lead a slow, reflective worship set for an hour and then turn a stadium into a dance floor with a fast Ga praise song. That range is part of why his audience extends beyond church.

The year of “Bo Noo Ni”

The award year that ended in April 2017 was built on the success of “Bo Noo Ni”, a worship song in Ga whose title can be translated as “You Did It”. It spread through churches, radio and weddings across Ghana, and it gave Mettle the kind of year in which a gospel song was as familiar to secular listeners as the latest hiplife hit.

Mettle also held a strong live reputation. His annual concert, Praise Reloaded, had become one of the fixtures of the Accra gospel calendar, and his performances at church conventions and crusades had built a loyal following.

Why it mattered

Gospel music is one of the biggest-selling genres in Ghana. Churches fill every week, gospel dominates radio on Sunday mornings, and a hit worship song can be sung at every funeral and wedding in the country for years. Yet the award establishment had treated it as a separate category, recognised in its own section and overlooked at the top.

Mettle’s win changed that expectation. Four years later, in 2021, Diana Hamilton became the second gospel act, and the first woman gospel artist, to win Artiste of the Year. The idea that the top prize belonged only to pop and hip-hop no longer held.

What he said afterwards

In later interviews, Mettle has said the award opened doors for him, bringing invitations to events and audiences that had not considered booking a gospel artist before. He kept the same focus afterwards: worship-led music, performed live with a full band and choir.

The Artiste of the Year trophy sits on the same list as the names of Ghana’s biggest secular stars. The first gospel name on it belongs to a Ga worship leader from Accra, and the song that carried him there was a thank-you.