Before he became one of Uganda’s most respected songwriters, Mozy Wryta wanted to make his name as a singer.
The brain behind Cindy‘s “Sunset” and “See You Tonight,” as well as Karole Kasita‘s “Obuwomi,” has revealed that he initially struggled to accept advice from people who believed his future lay in writing songs, not performing them.
Speaking on KFM, Mozy Wryta said many people found his singing ambitions difficult to understand when his identity, and even his name, already pointed toward songwriting.
I was an artiste but being called Moze Wryta. You can imagine. Some people would ask, “You are already Mozy Wryta, so why are you singing?” Eventually, I told myself maybe I needed to get that out of the way. There is something called specialisation. You focus on what you can do absolutely best.
The advice was easy to hear but much harder to accept.
For a while, he treated those comments as proof that people had already decided he could never succeed as a singer.
At first, I got pissed. I will be honest. I kept asking myself, “Why are they doubting me? Why do they think I cannot make it?” But then I sat down in my single room that cost UGX 150,000 a month and thought, “You know what, Moses? Leave this and focus on writing.”
Eventually, the debate stopped being about belief and became a question of practicality.
Every shilling he earned from songwriting seemed to find its way back into a music career that was still struggling to take off.
I love money, so I was doing both songwriting and singing at the same time. The money I earned from writing kept going back into my music, and I started asking myself when I would ever reach where I wanted to be. In the end, I decided to focus on songwriting and invest that money elsewhere.
Looking back, Mozy Wryta believes the decision paid off.
When asked whether songwriting is a rewarding profession, his response left little room for doubt.
I make the kind of money I love from songwriting, and there is no job you can offer me that would make me quit writing songs.