Dubai: A Dubai-based mother is on a quest to compose and sing 1,000 songs in 1,000 days — and hopes to bag a world record in doing so.
Award-winning singer and songwriter Swapna Abraham began her World Record Challenge on April 8 and plans to record her last song to coincide with the launch of Expo2020.
Since she embarked on the challenge, the Keralite gospel singer has been dedicating 2-4 hours every day to come up with her own original tunes and lyrics, most of which carry inspirational messages of hope, love, relationships and many more.
“Constructing one song every day from scratch is not an easy task,” she says. “A lot of people ask me whether I pre-work the songs, but I don’t and that’s the reason why it’s a challenge.”
The new world record attempt in partnership with HSI Events Management, a Dubai-based company, is being monitored by the World Record Academy, which assesses her work after it is recorded through a live Facebook video every day.
“The idea of the challenge came to me last year when I thought to myself that I need to do something far more than my 22 albums. 1,000 was a number that just came to my mind, it could have been 500,” said the single mother of two college students, who has recorded hundreds of songs in a career spanning 24 years.
Apart from the record she wants to break in the next 33 months, Abraham is completing a parallel challenge to sing 1,000 children songs in as many days. For both challenges, the songs will be in English.
“I wanted to make it more difficult than a song a day. I’m doing one additional song for children, but it won’t be part of the record attempt. The children’s song is not any easier. It’s another fully produced song, and while it used to take me four hours to finish both songs, now I’m surprised I can finish both in only two hours.”
Choosing the start of Expo2020 as the last day of the challenge she said was because she wanted it “to be special for Dubai.”
“The UAE means a lot to me and my family, who came here in 1968. We are Indians but we owe what we are to the land. My parents lived and worked here and it was nice to incorporate it with something big I was doing.”
Finding a balance in the new routine
Abraham, who works for a management consulting firm, has a five-day work week, but still manages to write, compose, produce and sing the two songs.
“My company has been supporting me a lot and decided to revise my work timings so I can manage everything. I have been allowed special work timings from 8am to 3pm for the initiative, but still during work days it can be difficult because there’s not enough time for everything.”
One of her toughest challenges, she says, was producing the songs without the help of music professionals. “I’m only a songwriter not a music producer, so I had to learn audio engineering basics to be able to produce the songs myself,” said Abraham.
She added that she will possibly publish an album with the 12 best songs from the record challenge.
Abraham is hoping to find sponsorship to achieve her quest. Her challenge can be followed on www.1000songsin1000days.com
