Derrick Ashong

Derrick Ashong, known as DNA, played Buakei in Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997) after an open audition in New York. He went on to host shows on Oprah Radio, Al Jazeera English and Fusion.

Upbringing

He was born in Accra in 1975, in a house without running water, to a paediatrician father and a nurse mother. He went to school in Brooklyn, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and New Jersey; during the first Gulf War he wore a gas mask to school, and he says one scare, when he had to choose between his mask and a friend without one, shaped his social conscience. At Harvard he studied Afro-American studies and won the Hoopes Prize for his thesis. After becoming a US citizen he returned to Harvard on a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for a PhD in ethnomusicology, which he left to join Dave Stewart's company, Weapons of Mass Entertainment.

Music and media

At Harvard he produced the musical Songs We Can't Sing and formed the band Black Rose, later Soulfège, which he fronts as DNA; its work has aired on MTV Africa, M-Net and the BBC World Service. He has worked with Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson and Bobby McFerrin, appeared in a 2006 documentary about the Angola 3 prisoners, and set up the ASAFO Productions talent agency. As a broadcaster he has fronted DNAtv on Fusion, The Stream on Al Jazeera English, and his own programme on Oprah Radio. At Harvard he also founded the Black Men's Forum.