I won’t claim that my life has ever revolved around music, but there are some elements of music that have really resonated by my perceptions and views that I hold. I believe that music is the key not only for entertainment or breaking the monotony, but is instrumental in educating us on different moral aspects as well as helping us preserve our culture while at the same time enabling us to coexist harmoniously.
My music career started while I was still a young boy. I loved attending the church and it is here where my career took its stand. I really loved the guitar and the thus by the time I was eleven one of the churches guitarist was not only a friend that I held dear but a good mentor. I loved watching Greg playing the guitar. I admired him and loved him so much. He could see al, that and that why he opted to teach me how to play the guitar.
Being a quick learner, I was able to play the guitar efficiently within the next eight months. This was a great advancement because I was able to convince my mum to buy me a guitar, a dream which saw its fruition a year later. Quite belated I think, actually not.
I kept practicing a lot and trying to compose some songs on my own as well as playing to the tunes of other artistes, but I realized that my vocals were poor. I had this hoarse voice that I sounded too funny to be a good singer.
By the time I finished high school, I was playing guitar for the churches choir. As much as it was fun, I felt that I was missing something. It wasn’t inspiring. I felt that the secular world had better to offer for guitarists and I was wasting myself.
I contemplated this for about a month and that is when I decided to join a secular local band. The band team welcomed me well and for the next two years we were having some good time together. Their pay wasn’t good, but since I was in college by then and just, I felt good to enjoy the exposure that I was getting especially the adventures of going top places as well as mingling with some popular artistes.
After the two years, things swiftly changed and the band disbanded. It happened that the two lead artistes of the band had some disagreements and they both decided to-do-it-alone. I became lost in the crowd. Although either of them wanted to have me in their teams, I realized that they all wanted to use me for their selfish interests because no one was offering a better pay check, yet they were getting good payments for their gigs as well as the music they produced. Apart from that the royalties that they were to receive form the already produced albums had none of the band members included to benefit anything.
I thus decided to try something new. Knowing various producers in the fields, I went out to try to find something meaningful that I could do. Most of whom I contacted offered some promises to me but six months later, I was out there in the cold with nothing to be proud of. Those who contacted me offered so little or short contracts and none was appealing to me.
After some deliberations, I decided to become a music promoter. It wasn’t an easy task because I was still in college and had saved little cash for such an establishment. However, I had a plus because in the short time that I had been in the field, I had been exposed to many artistes as well I had had a clear knowledge of how the entertainment industry was run.
It was in 2006 that I started my music promotional agency. It wasn’t that easy as I had earlier thought. After launching the small company, I had to wait for almost 4 months to get a good client. No matter how I tried, only the small players in the industry came to me because of some cheap charges. What I was earning was barely enough to sustain the expenses that I was incurring. There are times that I had to do other jobs to foot my bills.
I however never gave up. I stood firm because there wasn’t any better alternative. It was in my third month that I got a better client who was satisfied by how I managed his affair. The artistes loved the way I sourced gigs for him as well as how I arranged everything including his payments.
That marked the start of a successful journey. Soon, I got another client and other kept coming. I did all my best to retain them and to date my company has enormously grown and I feel grateful to God for giving me the courage to soldier on.