Why I Gave Up Singing

My complicated relationship with my voice...

Hey guys! 

So it’s been a little while - three weeks to be exact - since my last upload and frankly speaking it has been a very interesting three weeks indeed. In my last writeup I stressed the importance of obedience, and now God has decided to put me to the test. For the past few weeks I’ve felt God continuously tell me to serve Him with my voice. Do you want me to speak, Lord? I’ll say anything you want me to. No. Do you want me to rap, Lord? I’m ready to make another one. No. Okay, then what is it you want from me Lord? I want you to sing for my glory. Now this isn’t how the conversation actually went down. It was more a series of convicting feelings and confirmations than a real audible voice (if you know you know), but I imagine if we’d had a conversation this is how it would have went down.

Honestly, given my history with singing I find it hard to believe that He’s actually asking me to do this. My relationship with my voice has been strained for years and I’ll be honest, to this day I’m not entirely sure when exactly the estrangement took place. However, I’m hoping that by the time I finish this write up I will remember. For an external thinker and forgetful individual like me, that’s the power of putting your thoughts on a page. Oftentimes, you find that there’s something in there waiting to be rediscovered. Something that you didn’t realize you’d forgotten somewhere along this hectic journey we call life. This week my friends asked me why I do these write ups and I honestly replied that I primarily write for me. I mean it’s right there in my bio:

“I wanted to write. If it helps you start off your week with a bang, even better!”

I write to reflect, I write to rediscover myself, I write to remember precious things I would otherwise forget. So join me today as I unpack this journey with my voice.

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“Shakira Baby”

I’m used to brushing off, downplaying, hiding and even lying about it, but I think it’s important that before I discuss anything else I finally just admit [publicly] that I can sing. It feels weird to say it out in the open like this after so long, but it’s true. Now don’t get me wrong, most of it is very raw talent and I lack a lot of training. If I actually wanted to take singing seriously I’d have a long way to go, but for the most part I can hold my own in a song. As a young girl I loved to sing,  I was a sassy little performer and soon became known as “Shakira Baby” amongst our family and friends. I remember my mother always found pride in asking me to sing for our guests. Afterwards the guests would always commend me, telling my mother I was sure to be a great singer one day. Here is a picture of me on my 2nd birthday, I was red carpet ready y’all!

Born to Perform

My friend Rae, author of Cut The Small Talk here on Substack (make sure you subscribe!), has a write up entitled “I was made… to worship” and after I read it I couldn’t help but wonder about what I was made to do? We’re all made with God’s perfect purpose in mind. For some it’s more obvious than others and for some it takes a bit longer to figure out exactly where you fit. However, if I were to take a stab at answering that question at this point in my life, I would say I was born to perform. That’s my worship, that’s what comes most naturally to me. Growing up it was my dream that most of my adult life would be lived out in front of a camera or on the stage. I was interested in a multitude of the performing arts: acting, singing, speaking, poetry and modelling. In the case of singing, I would write songs, perform for family/friends and partake in various talent shows. I often joke that my music career peaked in Grade 6. I was in Kampala International School (KISU) and participated in my biggest, Inter-school Talent Show ever. I performed the song “Almost There” from Princess and the Frog and ended up winning the Best Junior Music Act of the show! That night, in front of the roaring crowd, looking at my mom beaming in the audience and holding on to my trophy; it truly felt like I was at the edge of something great. It felt like I was “almost there”. Then soon after, almost of the blue, I decided to go into early retirement.

But the question that remains unanswered is,”Why? Where exactly did things go wrong?” 

I’ve alluded to the fact that I moved schools quite a lot as a child and so after one year of the sixth grade at KISU, my parents transferred me to Aga Khan High School (AKHS) where I stayed for two years before moving to Canada. If KISU was the pinnacle of my childhood singing career, I’d say AKHS was the start of it’s decline. While in KISU my parents had signed me up for private vocal lessons and it nurtured my gift, but those stopped when I left. I kept on singing but in transitioning from elementary school to secondary school I realized that the world was a lot bigger than I had initially thought, and that there were many singers out there far better than I was - and I didn’t have to look very far to find them.

Turning Point

In elementary school I had been a big fish in a small pond so I felt big and important, but as I traveled to larger bodies of water I realized that perhaps I wasn’t so special after all. This was also the time when I began to discover the limits of my voice. I had registered to sing “Hero” by Mariah Carey for another talent show at my school and no matter how much I practiced there was this high note that I could never seem to nail. It’s the part of the song that goes like this:

“Lord knows

Dreams are hard to follow

But don't let anyone

Tear them away, hey yeah

Hold on

There will be tomorrow

In time you'll find the way”

This. Was. The. Bane. Of. My. Existence. But I had already registered, so I had to perform. And just like I had in practice, I messed it up. My voice cracked, I couldn’t hit the note and I was mortified. I finished the performance, and while I didn’t get much negative feedback from others, inside my pride and my ego had been bruised. I had been so used to receiving only praises for my voice; I had put so much of my identity into my voice; so much so that an event that should have merely been a hiccup ended up dealing me a devastating blow.

Giving Up

More and more I found that there were parts of certain songs which I couldn’t hit and that made me more insecure and more uncomfortable with singing. I had not learned the concept of “making a song your own”, I believed that being great at imitation was the greatest display of mastery. So, when I failed at sounding like Whitney or Mariah or Queen Latifah I thought I had failed completely and only sang occasionally. Naturally, like the old saying goes, “if you don’t use it, you start to lose it”. Without practice my control and range became hindered over time and now I sometimes struggle to sing songs that I sang with ease as a child. Every once in a while someone around me would hear me sing and encourage me to do something with my voice, but I was content to put the whole singing thing behind me and focus on other forms of performance. I thought that perhaps singing was only ever meant to supplement my other talents. I would sing a little bit to add depth to my poetry, I would sing if I was playing a character in a musical, but that was pretty much it.

“God’s plan, God’s plan”

However, as I now know, God has other plans…

He has put me in a new place, an uncomfortable and inconvenient place; and although a part of me doesn’t want to do this, and showing up every week is a struggle - I must obey. I don’t know what He’s doing but I know God is teaching me that I cannot get to where He wants me to be by imitating others. God created me because He needed Elsie, not another Mariah.

Join me next week as I dive into exactly what God has asked me to do, and discuss the struggles that have resulted from this humbling process.

Love,

Elsie :)