Letters from the Diaspora (Diaspora Stories) is a newsletter series by Send App where we chat with Africans in the diaspora and explore what life abroad really feels like, from the wins, the adjustments, and the quiet ways people stay connected to home. This month, we spoke with Biqo.
Long before he became an Atlanta-based Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist, before the shows in Switzerland, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Brazil and beyond, there was a younger version of him in Accra who believed that music could take him somewhere.
“I don’t think it was a childhood dream,” he says about moving abroad. “It was more of a teenage dream. After chasing music for some time, I just knew that music would take me off the shores of where I come from, which is Ghana.”
And in many ways, it did.
Biqo has now spent seven years in the US, five of them living there more consistently. He is currently based in Atlanta, after previously living in New York. But like many Africans in the diaspora, his story is about learning how to move through different cities without losing their roots.
“I used to live in the Bronx,” he says. “It’s mostly populated with Spanish people and they have their music playing loud during the summertime. You pick up reggaeton. It opens your mind to what can be.”
Brooklyn added something else. The Jamaican influence, the artist communities, the parties, the creative circles. All of it found its way into the way he heard music, and later, into his contribution to Super Jazz Club, the alternative music collective he co-founded with friends and university colleagues in Accra.
“Accra is where I come from. That’s the root,” he says. “So everything I do will definitely sound like that.”
Biqo records music from his home in Atlanta, where he currently resides. Other members of Super Jazz Club are in Accra. Beats, and ideas move between themselves across the internet, it’s not always glamorous, but it works.
“Before the year starts, we have our meetings and we schedule what time in the year we’re going to meet and what the deliverables are,” he explains. “It’s a lot of communication over the internet. I have my setup here. I record at home. I send stuff back home. They send me beats.”
Back to Ghana where it all started. In 2016, music took him to Nigeria for Project Fame. He auditioned in Accra, got selected as one of three people to represent Ghana, and travelled to Nigeria by bus.
“Over 12 hours travelling to chase my dream,” he remembers. “As a 20-year-old, when I look back, I’m like, yeah man, it makes so much sense why I love what I do and why I’m still doing what I do.” Years later, another full-circle moment arrived in Switzerland.
In 2017, Biqo had applied to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival as a solo artist. He was denied. In 2024, he returned to that same festival with Super Jazz Club.
“I found myself back in the same place I was denied at, eight years after,” he says. “My cousins were in the auditorium. My uncle had taken me there eight years ago. It just felt like a full-circle moment.”
Living abroad has also taught Biqo about resilience. The US, he says, has shown him how much he can adapt. It has also shown him how different life can feel when certain basic systems.
“The country is set up in a way that you don’t get to sit at home and just be an artist,” he says. “You’re going to have to work and manage being an artist at the same time.”
His advice to anyone moving abroad to “Put yourself where the action is,” he says. “Iron sharpens iron.”
For him, New York gave him that. He was around Nigerian creatives who were making music, shooting videos, editing their own content, and moving with speed. Seeing that sharpened him.
“The work ethic, just seeing my Naija boys hustle, is something that also drives me to go harder,” he says.
This summer, with the world turning its attention to football, Biqo is also thinking about how Africans gather around big moments. As for the team he is supporting, there was no hesitation. “Black Stars.” the Ghana football team.
Today, Biqo continues to create. His five-track EP, Smoke Show B, released in September 2024, captures parts of his essence and story. He is also preparing to release his first single of the year. For first-time listeners, he recommends M’afe wo and Pretty Skin.
Biqo was named by his father after Steve Biko, the South African freedom fighter and writer. Later, he changed the spelling from Biko to Biqo, partly to make the name his own, and partly so people could find him online.
Biqo’s story is a reminder that the diaspora journey is not only about leaving. Sometimes, it is about discovering how much of home you carried with you all along, and what you've created with it.
Finding Your Sound Far From Home is the latest feature in our "Letters from the Diaspora" (Diaspora stories) newsletter. It's our sixth published story, and you can catch our most recent story here. It’s about Femi and how he moved to Turkey to start something new.