With a new book and a new music album, a restless creative spirit, Matthew Simpa, has demonstrated once again that creativity has no boundaries.
There are dreams that die. There are dreams that merely go to sleep, he says.
Fland so for Mr. Simpa, the dream of making music belongs to the second category.
In 1987, as a young man with more dreams than resources, Matthew walked into Japex Studio in Anthony Village, Lagos, determined to make a record—a bold ambition at a time when recording an album was a serious undertaking and the opportunities available to aspiring musicians were limited. He paid for a few recording sessions and had the renowned Ed Jatto record some tracks.
But the dream did not take off.
The recordings disappeared, and with them seemed to go the young man’s musical ambition. He later wrote lyrics and sent them to the United States in the hope that they would be turned into songs.
That effort also came to nothing.
There was, however, one significant exception. In 1988, he sang a duet with another artiste on the soundtrack of Jagunlabi, a film produced by Meshfilms Ltd.
Then life happened.
For decades, music receded into the background as Matthew pursued other creative paths. He became a filmmaker, author and storyteller, building a career that would see him express himself through several artistic forms. The microphone gave way to the camera and the pen.
But perhaps the music had never really left him.
THE DREAM RETURNS
In 2024, after almost four decades, something remarkable happened: the old dream came knocking again.
This time, Matthew answered.
What began in 1987 as the youthful aspiration of a man who simply wanted to make a record has now matured into a body of music shaped by faith, experience and a deeper understanding of life.
The result is his album, Rivers of Transformation, a five-track collection distributed through DistroKid and available on major digital music platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music.
Four of the songs are firmly rooted in praise and worship. The fifth, Nigeria Shall Be Called Sought After, moves beyond personal worship into the realm of prophetic declaration—a faith-filled proclamation concerning the nation’s destiny.
In many ways, the album is more than a musical project. It is a testimony.
It tells the story of a man who discovered that a delayed dream is not necessarily a dead dream. Sometimes, life takes us through other roads before bringing us back to something that was planted in our hearts many years earlier.
For Matthew, the return to music is therefore not simply about becoming a recording artiste late in life. It is about discovering that creativity can evolve with experience and that one’s artistic voice can become richer, deeper and more purposeful with the passage of time.
The music is already attracting attention both within Nigeria and beyond.
A DOUBLE CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENT
And as though one creative milestone were not enough, Matthew Simpa has simultaneously produced another significant work: Unwavering Faith, his latest book, published by The Babcock University Press on Bold Scholars platform.
The book marks another dimension of his continuing creative journey.
Unwavering Faith is a gripping exploration of a family standing at a crossroads. At its heart are questions that confront many families and communities in an increasingly uncertain world:
Can the steadfast faith of parents survive the disillusionment of their children?
How does a father or mother hold on to deeply cherished convictions when the next generation appears to be moving in an entirely different direction?
And when the moral and spiritual values on which a family was built begin to shift, what does it really mean to remain faithful?
Written in 2024 and published only a few weeks ago, the book reflects the maturity of a writer who understands that faith is not merely an abstract religious idea but something that is tested in the crucible of relationships, disappointment, generational conflict and changing social values.
A CREATIVE JOURNEY WITHOUT BOUNDARIES
The simultaneous emergence of Unwavering Faith and Rivers of Transformation is significant because it reveals something fundamental about Matthew Simpa: he has never been content to confine himself to a single artistic medium.
For a man who began his creative journey in film, the pen and the microphone have become extensions of the same impulse—the desire to tell stories, communicate ideas and inspire people.
Film gave him images.
Writing gave him words.
Music has now given him another language through which to express his faith and convictions.
The three disciplines may appear different, but at their heart lies the same creative calling: to communicate.
Matthew Simpa is therefore not merely adding music to his résumé. He is continuing a four-decade journey of creative exploration.
A veteran filmmaker with forty years of experience behind him, he is also a prolific author and currently serves as General Secretary of the Ogun State chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors.
His latest twin offerings—Unwavering Faith and Rivers of Transformation—are thus more than a book and an album.
They are evidence of a creative life still unfolding.
And perhaps that is the most compelling part of the story.
The young man who walked into Japex Studio in 1987 with the dream of making a record could not have known that nearly forty years later, after a lifetime of filmmaking, writing and storytelling, he would return to music—not merely to complete an unfinished dream, but to begin a new chapter.
Some dreams take time.
Some dreams change shape.
And some dreams, when they finally come alive, discover that they were never really about the destination.
They were about becoming the person who was ready to fulfil them.
