Joe Jacquest Reconnects With His Ghanaian Roots After Discovering His Father’s Hidden Past

For the longest time, Joe Jacquest Oteng knew only one version of his father, Peter Oteng. It was an image of a straight-backed man who valued education and was devoted to his work. And like most African immigrant parents, Peter Oteng also valued respect over love and had a strong conviction of what success looked like. “He'd sacrificed so much to get to and make it in the UK. He dreamt for me what he dreamt for himself,” Joe says. This meant that although they didn’t have the closest relationship, Joe had come to know a man with a strong sense of self, a man who might not have a reason to lie.

But that image Joe had would splinter following his father’s death. The man Joe thought he knew happened to have an extensive, but largely secret life away from the one he led in the UK with Joe and his mother, Sue. Through a long and convoluted investigation spanning nearly five years, Joe would come to find, amongst many things, that his father had a secret wife named Irene, that he was 10 years older than he had claimed, and that he had a family in Ghana which included 12 siblings he had never mentioned.

Joe began documenting his journey to uncover his father’s past during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. It's captured in a series of YouTube videos entitled Hidden Roots. In the first episode, released over a year ago, the singer traced his father’s past, reviewing old documents — including a passport from 50 years ago, which carried one stamp into the UK from Ghana (which was then Gold Coast) with no return stamp into Ghana — speaking with old friends, connecting with a cousin who also lived in the UK and finally, in 2023, traveling to Ghana to find his father’s ancestry and the rest of his extended family.

“I went on a journey with my relationship with him because at the start, I was pretty angry with him,” Joe admits. For over a month now, Joe has been sharing episodes as part of the second season of Hidden Roots, which primarily follows his journey in Ghana. While the first season was filled with questions and the pursuit of them, the second season of the series is focused on a journey into those answers — specifically, a trip to his father’s home country, Ghana. It’s a journey, Joe says, that helped contextualize the heritage his father had hidden from him.

“I was angry that he had kept so much hidden and did not want to share that with me. I would love to have known my Ghanaian family growing up. I would love to have had more of a connection with my Ghanaian heritage and the culture because that's a big part of where we come from. And to know that he actually had connections with those people, but chose not to share them with me, was annoying.”

A weighty homecoming

For Joe, Ghana was a thrilling yet overwhelming experience. His return home carried several weights. It was the first time he would be meeting with any of the people who may have grown up with his father; it was also the first time he was connecting with his Ghanaian heritage. And in some way, Joe says, it felt like making a homecoming on behalf of his father, who left the country 50 years ago and never looked back.

“Ghana was an overwhelming experience for sure, but it was amazing,” he tells OkayAfrica. For the three weeks he was there, Joe says he got a chance to immerse himself in Ghanaian culture, with the highlight being a visit to his father’s hometown, Nsuta Kyebi, in the north of Kumasi. 

“I loved getting a chance to connect with the culture, the people, and with my family. There was a heaviness to it as well. He basically disappeared from the lives of all his family in Ghana, and as far as I've been able to find out, nobody knows why. They just stopped hearing from him,” Joe says, adding that most of them didn’t know his father, their long-lost relative, had passed away until years later. “I felt a weight of responsibility that I was not only going to Ghana to explore it for myself, but I was also there kind of representing him, making up for the fact that he disappeared from their lives and never returned.”

In Ghana, Joe left with more family members than he thought he had. His extended family threw him a homecoming ceremony, attended by hundreds of people who knew his father. “I didn't know any of that was going to happen, but it was a truly amazing experience. I will never forget that.”

The Hidden Roots series, which has garnered over 500,000 views collectively on YouTube, is an open, vulnerable exploration of loss and elusive personal history. Within the context of African lore, Hidden Roots is a brave display of vulnerability about a topic that might be well-known within many African communities but isn’t usually discussed with a certain level of openness. It’s not uncommon for many to be aware of African migrants who were forced to fashion new identities in strange lands, even when they have families back home. It’s a trope that has featured in African literature and films.

By examining his family history and the extent to which his father kept himself and his family from his true identity, Joe puts a face to a well-known lore. Feedback on the videos has been varied, split between the non-surprise from Africans and the unending consolations from non-African viewers.

As Joe puts it, “British people are like, ‘Oh my god, I can't believe your dad did this. This is betrayal. This is terrible.’ Whereas a lot of the people of African heritage are like, ‘This is so normal. This is not a big deal. You're just telling a story that we've heard a thousand times before.” However, Joe himself admits that he didn’t understand how common this experience was for many like himself, straddling multiple identities.

“That's been good for me because it's given me more perspective, and I appreciate people telling me about their own experiences. I think it's important because to move forward into the future, you need to look at your past and hold things up to the light. And you don't necessarily have to make any special comment on it. But if you're not even allowed to talk about it, then we don't progress.”

The best part of getting this story out for Joe has been the ability to reconcile with his dad posthumously. By tracing his father’s history and uncovering more of his own personal heritage, Joe says his understanding of the choices his father made has shifted. It has also deepened his artistry as a musician who found inspiration in his experience.

“I was open and vulnerable enough about my own story to give people the encouragement and the space to feel that they could be open and vulnerable about their own stories,” Joe says, adding that it’s always easier to confront these secrets when the people holding them are still alive. “It's much easier to do that with a parent that's alive than having to go on a five-year mission investigating people's lives once they've passed away.”