Striving to be a Hymn-writer

A decade ago, I thought having a song played on the radio was as easy as ABC. I imagined that all I had to do was produce a song and the radio stations would compete to have it played over their airwaves. And soon afterwards, I would become rich and famous.

So when I produced my first song in 2015, I was over the moon. I was further elated when some friends, who listened to the song on the internet, commented on how magnificent it was. One friend remarked that it had potential to be a hit.

Encouraged by that positive feedback, I had the song burnt on several CDs. Then I spent a whole day visiting various radio stations in Nairobi to hand in copies of my song. At the end of that day, I felt tired but pleased with my efforts.

But alas! Several months passed by without me hearing my song played on any of the radio stations I presented it to. That discouraged me so much that I almost threw away the remaining copies of my song. Turns out having songs played on the radio isn't as easy as I had thought.

Perhaps my song wasn't played over the airwaves because the radio stations I presented it to don't play music of such genre to their audience. What genre was my song, you ask.

Well, I also didn't know what type of music the song was when I produced it in 2015. At first, I thought it was R & B but my friend Alenga Luvai corrected me that it wasn't in that category. The song, which is about my country Kenya, now sounds to me like a hymn, only that its lines don't rhyme the way hymns do.

Despite that frustrating effort to have the song played on the radio, I have never given up on my goal of becoming a successful musician. I have dreamt of producing an uplifting song that would make me a fortune.

That dream has kept me churning out songs at the rate of 12 in a year. And I have ended up focusing on composing hymns since they are the type of music that excite me most.

Discouragingly, none of the hymns I have produced so far has gone viral. (You can listen to them in the videos' section of this blog.) Probably my hymns have not been an instant hit because I haven't observed the rules of poetry writing.

You see, when I googled for information about writing hymns a few years ago, I learnt from one website that there is what is called "meter" in poetry. (And hymns are just poems set to music.) While explaining what "meter" means in poetry, the website threw in such confusing jargon as "metrical feet" and "iambic pentameter".

When I go through some of the greatest hymns of all time, I don't find anything complicated about them. Take for instance the wonderful, old hymn "Amazing Grace". There is not a single difficult word in it. Which makes me wonder what all that stuff about "metrical feet" and "iambic pentameter" is all about.

But then, coming up with such simple rhyming lines of "Amazing Grace" is not easy. That leads me to believe the composer of the hymn understood all the rules of poetry writing.

The thing is, composing songs in English is difficult. I think that's why I haven't heard of any Kenyan artist who writes their songs in that foreign language. If I succeed in composing beautiful hymns, I will be breaking new ground. So help me God.

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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on striving to be a hymn-writer, you might also enjoy another one on "My Favorite Hymns" which I wrote two years ago. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.