'We Never Planned To Be A Group', Estar Opens Up About Resonance

Estar in the studio (Photo Credit: Austinaija)

Defunct gospel duo, Resonance ruled the airwaves in the early 2000s with songs like Chinwe ike, Lee Lee and Holy Ghost Fire. 

The group which was made up of singer, Estar and rapper, Gucheano were the darling of many until the duo surprisingly went separate ways few years later.

Estar is still making music as a solo artiste but little or nothing has been heard from Gucheano afterwards. 

In a recent exclusive interview with Austinaija, Estar spoke up about how she met Gucheano and how the group which was never planned was eventually formed,

"Well, we never planned to be a group. I met Gucheano on my street in Enugu when I lived with my parents and we were in the choir together. So, he noticed I had a unique voice and he was wowed by it. So, we both joined the choir. He wanted to learn how to sing but at that point he used to rap. So, he would rap and I would say it sounds good and stuff. So we were basically rubbing off on each other musically. He would tell me, 'this thing you sang here, I like it' and that kinda thing. At some point he just said to me, "let's do something together now, there is a studio down the road". 

"Dekumzy was running the studio but it was a guy called Obio that owned the studio , this was at Independence Layout. I was like yeah because the first time I was at a studio was at Okey Oku's studio. I needed to go and record but I was afraid to go to the studio where guys used to be all alone. I felt I needed someone who I could go with and who I could trust and he was someone I went for choir practice with. So, I built some level of trust for him and I said okay you know what? Let's go the studio and he took me to the studio and I was very excited to record. 

"It was Chinwe ike that I wanted to record then. We were like, you know what, we could do a collaboration. That was how the idea started, co-lla-bo-ra-tion (she emphasizes as she laughs). So at some point he said to me, "instead of doing a collaboration, let's just call it a name" and I said but we are doing a collaboration and he said let's just be a group and I said okay, fine, let's just be a group and that's why we were able to still put my songs. Ordinarily, he should be on every song in the album but songs like Chinwe ike and Lee Lee were the songs I was recording for myself. 

"So, because from collabo we now became a group we couldn't leave behind the songs that I had already recorded on my own. So we said, just pack it in the album and that's the thing. We never expected that Chinwe Ike or Lee Lee will become the ones that... because we had the ones we did together like Holy Ghost Fire and yea... So, that's how Resonance basically started. So we said let's give ourselves a name and that was it," she explained.