In Ghana, the talent and works of instrumentalists often go unappreciated. Music lovers easily heap praises and adulation on vocalists. But there are quite a number of people who are well-gifted with various instrument types.

Steve Bedi is one of them. Steve is a saxophonist who has worked behind the scenes with many artistes. You may have seen him on television doing a solo on the ‘Mentor’ stage, blowing out a saxophone version of ‘The storm is over’.

Steve, 30, grew up in Denu, a small town in the southern parts of the Volta Region and he was considered by some as an oddity. The last of eight children, he is the only one in the family who took to music.

Thus, his family was unsure of the direction he was headed. He started playing the trombone when he was just nine. He got attracted to the sounds of a brass band and decided to sneak out of home and listen. That was just the start of young Steve’s music career.

“I think I was born with music, I loved the sound of music”, he says. “Anywhere I hear that they were playing something, I quickly ran there and listened. And I had the urge to play something, some instrument.”
A slight chest problem nearly halted his progress. This resulted from playing the trombone constantly; his lungs were too young for the exertion required to play that instrument.

Despite a stern warning against playing the instrument, after a month he couldn’t hold back the temptation and promptly continued. He played the trombone for over a decade and moved to the saxophone when he joined the Navy somewhere in 1998.

He decided to change from the trombone to the saxophone because almost everyone on the band was playing the trombone. After a lady taught him a few keys, he just picked up from there.

After eight years of service, he felt he could not compromise his music career for the military. “My dad was in the military and I always looked up to him,” he says. “I felt I needed to get a feel of it as well. But I realized that music was what I wanted to get into.”

While in the military, his love for music was so strong that he actually skipped certain duties, just to play at a gig or do some quick studio recording and got punished for it.

The military’s music school taught Steve the theory of music and since then, he’s learnt a lot more for himself. “Now the instrument is my girlfriend,” he says. “I feel good when I touch her, I feel good when she makes good sounds. It’s like some kind of connection with the instrument. It’s almost spiritual.” That’s deep.

Steve’s love for the instrument has earned him gigs with Rex Omar, Kojo Antwi, Nat Brew, Hugh Masakella, Kwabena Kwabena, Kontihene, C-Zar, Noble Nketia and a lot more. Internationally, he’s played in France, South Africa’s Joy of Jazz Festival, on the same stage as Dave Koz, Diana Reese, and Jeffery Osbourn.

What he terms his “final point” in his career as a saxophonist is “to reach that height as a sax player where I can be on the same stage with the jazz musicians that I have learnt from over the years…to be a part of world history, not only Ghana history.”

Steve is currently recording an album that should be completed before the year ends. “I want to cut across borders,” he says.