JOURNALIST, author, musician and songwriter Admire Kudita, affectionately known as King Kay has reached the finals in the UK song-writing contest.
King Kay is in the finals after the submission of his project Breakthrough in the RnB/Soul category in June, last year.
The UK Song-writing contest is one of the world's longest running and most well-known and successful international song-writing events. It was launched in London in 2002 in association with prestigious music bodies including The BRIT Trust, The BRIT Studio, The BRIT School (Adele and Amy Winehouse are graduates), Music Aid International, The GISC, Roland UK and top British producers and industry professionals "to discover and encourage new song writing talent and promote the craft of song writing".
It has been supported by BBC Radio since the very beginning with radio plays of song entries across the UK, and many finalists and winners have also been featured on BBC TV. It has grown into an international event with entries from over 80 countries, with UKSC winners and finalists appearing on major TV shows worldwide.
King Kay has entered the competition before and had two of his songs, Stand Up for Love and Strengthen My Hands making the finals in 2005 and 2011 respectively.
"I am thrilled to have made the finals, but this competition thing is honestly something that I could have done years ago to check myself against world standards. Now making the finals and getting the five-star rating from Grammy-affiliated judges is just perfect and huge and I hope to win top honours.
“Another thing worth mentioning is that although I wrote and arranged it, the first recording of it was co-produced with Just Percy, a very talented musician and producer. He is like a nephew to me and one person able to read my musical vision and interpret it so well. So music is a very collaborative venture and we are going to be doing more projects together. My forte is composition and arrangement, in short my core gift is writing," he said.
To date King Kay has written and produced four albums — Victory, The Emancipation Project, Soul Revival and The Black Love Project Vol. 1.
"I do inspirational music, whether it's a song about love or making it, it’s got to have a life-affirming quality. For example , one of my original songs 'Stand Up For Love' on which I featured Idols East And Southern 2008 Winner Eric Moyo was written against the backdrop of the Xenophobic and ethnic violence in South Africa and Kenya. There is always something we can do about the state of the world as writers. Chasing fame is vacuous and vain,” he said.
