Soul music singer Kenneth Mugabi has opened up about the creative process behind his music, revealing how random thoughts, personal experiences, research and storytelling often come together to shape his songs.
Speaking to media as he prepares for his upcoming concert, Mugabi explained that songwriting for him begins with observation. He takes in the world around him, gathers experiences and ideas, and sometimes conducts research before piecing everything together into a complete story.
“I sit alone and start writing random things, and then I put them together into a story,” Mugabi said.
For Mugabi, the process does not necessarily begin with a melody or a fully formed idea. Instead, scattered thoughts can eventually find their place in a song, creating stories that reflect his distinctive approach to soul music.
The singer also revealed that some of his songs were written while he was still at university, although he believes the music sounded far ahead of his age at the time.
“There are songs I wrote while at campus. The music was very old, yet I was very young,” he explained.
That contrast, he said, often influenced how people perceived him. Despite being a young musician, the mature themes and traditional storytelling techniques in his music sometimes made listeners assume he was considerably older.
Mugabi deliberately avoided spelling out everything he was experiencing or witnessing around him. Instead, he turned to riddles, legends and poetry as a way of expressing his thoughts without making his music a direct diary of his life.
“I didn’t want to show what I was going through or the things that were around, so I decided to use riddles, legends and poems. When you put such into the market where they don’t exist, people start thinking you’re very old,” he said.
That approach has become part of what makes Mugabi’s music stand out, allowing him to blend contemporary soul with Uganda’s rich tradition of oral storytelling and poetic expression.
As he prepares for his upcoming concert, Mugabi’s reflections offer a glimpse into the mind behind some of his most thoughtful music an artist who found inspiration not only in his experiences, but also in the stories, language and traditions surrounding him.