QUINCY A

About QUINCY A

Kafui, also known as Quincy; was born to two teenage parents in a city called Sekondi in Ghana West Africa in 1985. At age 2 his mother sent him to live with his grandmother while she went back to complete high school. As a boy, Quincy always loved singing, making up songs, acting in church plays and making musical instruments out of any recyclable material he could find around the house. At age 7 he wrote his first church play describing a biblical event which was performed at the Emmanuel Evangelical Presby church in a small town called Kwesimintsim. He was well known throughout the local churches for his singing and his plays.
At age 10, Quincy started competing in talent shows and organized events which made him quite popular in his town. Although he was popular in the town, he didn’t have many friends because he was born into a poor family and also looked down upon because he was born out of wedlock. Amidst all the popularity, he was always humble and kept to himself. Imagine being told as a child that you would never amount up to anything; that should have broken him but it didn’t because Quincy always knew who he was and where he was going. When he turned 15 he was sent to Fijai secondary school; a boarding school in Sekondi, where he studied visual and performing arts. While in boarding school he performed different genres of music at a weekly student entertainment night held at the school auditorium. People would always come from other boarding schools just to watch him perform. Although music and art was his life, Quincy joined the school cadet corps at age 16 because he often fantasized about being a soldier. That same year he watched in horror on CNN as America was attacked by terrorists. “I thought to myself, I wish I could go to America one day and become a soldier” he says; but little did he know that he would actually get that opportunity to join the world’s greatest army.
In April 2004, Quincy and his father had been awarded immigrant visas to join his grandmother who was living in Columbus Ohio. He completed his last year of high school at Brookhaven high school in Columbus Ohio, where he continued studying visual arts. He also wrote a play for his English literature class and performed some African dances for the ESL (English as Second language) class at the school auditorium. Before he graduated in 2005, his art teacher Kelly Zalenski got him a four year scholarship at the Columbus College of art and design. That same year, Quincy became a member of the international society of poets.
Quincy turned down the scholarship and joined the Army as a frontline soldier instead. He was deployed to Baghdad Iraq for 15 months during his four year service. Even in the army, he always wrote songs and recorded them whenever he had some free time. During his time in deployment, Quincy sustained quite a few injuries from terrorist attacks and was a victim of a terrible car accident in Washington State after he returned from deployment in September 2008. He was honorably discharged from service in august 2009.
Quincy started pursuing a BA in performing arts at the University of Akron in Akron Ohio. He also performed his first single “AFRICAN BOY”, at an annual African student association event in April 2010. The song also aired on This is Africa; an internet radio station. The song is a projection of where he comes from and his lifestyle; also his song “RACE FOR MY FUTURE”, gives listeners a look into his life. “I will always represent my country everywhere I go. I am proud to be African”, he says. Friends call him a lyrical gold mine. Quincy is the next Akon of our generation and it has been said many times over, Quincy is the present and future of music”.