From His Bedroom Studio to an Award-Winning Music Career

Charles Righa is an award-winning musician and producer from Kenya who goes by the name Rigga. He started his journey of producing music with an iPad recording in his closet. But he kept following his passion and now shares his music with thousands of people.

Charles shares, “When you find your unique gifting, or unique calling, or vocation, it’s something to celebrate and to be thankful for.”

Video Transcript

Meet Charles “Rigga” Righa: musician

Nairobi, Kenya

(Rigga on stage, singing)

Charles Righa: I always have this cold sweat fear where I’ll get up on stage and I’ll be like, “Yo, put your hands up,” and then crickets in the audience. It’s never been that extreme, but there have been times when I’ve gotten off stage and felt like I wasted mine and the audience’s time. (singing)

Rigga is an award-winning artist and music producer.

The reason I keep at it is because I love what I do, so I make a choice to do what I love. When I started producing music, the only tool that I had was my iPad. I would make my instrumentals on an app on the iPad called Garage Band. And I did not have a microphone, so I’d jump into my closet, surround myself with clothes and record onto the iPad microphone.

Just a few days ago, there was a BBC Africa feature, and they were highlighting a bunch of Kenyan songs. And one of my songs was on the playlist, and it was a song that I made on my iPad. It was crazy. I was like, “I made this in my bedroom.” (singing, recording in bedroom)

The overarching thing in my life is my faith. It’s like I look at the world with faith-colored glasses, so to speak. So everything I do is filtered through that lens. 

(compilation of music videos and live concerts)

There’s this prayer that my girlfriend, who became my wife, we used to pray. We to say, “Thank you, God, we did not die,” because every month, we’re like, “Okay, we’re still here.” It’s been a series of, “Yeah, we’re still here. We’re still here. We’re still here.” And a lot of what we were doing felt like foolishness. (singing)

When you find your unique gifting or your unique calling or vocation, it’s something to celebrate and to be thankful for. And it helps put the elves in perspective. When I look at where I am and some of the things that I’m aspiring to even now, I can admit that I was never this clever to be able to see this from the very beginning. I’m not in control. I’m a part of a much larger story that’s a beautiful one that’s still unfolding. (singing on stage)