Serufusa’s biggest live performance to date was in front of approximately 30 000 people at the Qingzhou International Festival in China. He has performed to millions on TV, following his 2nd place position on China national TV at an ‘American Idol-like’ talent competition. After two years of tours and more performances, he retired to focus on being a full-time medical doctor.

In the last few years, he has come out of retirement intermittently to collaborate with other musicians - with music appearing on the BBC and other forums - and to advocate for change in society. For this, he was chosen as one of 2019 Uganda’s Top 40 Under 40 and is a Senior Fellow at the prestigious Washington DC-based Aspen Institute New Voices Fellowship Program. He is now officially back from his ‘music retirement’. And still at his full-time job.

It is no surprise that Serufusa has ‘unretired’. He has been performing since he was 11, at national verse-speaking, spoken word and poetry competitions.

“When I was a kid, I was always inventing little songs and playing with words. Songs about what I had for breakfast, or about the birds I would watch out my window. When I first went to China not knowing a word of Mandarin Chinese, I learnt the language in class but music helped me master the nuances of the language”

He has gone on to use the power of words to published op-eds and other thought-leadership pieces in media such as CNN.com, Project Syndicate, the World Economic Forum, the Guardian and others.

Will Serufusa retire again from music? He actually never did. And he is here to stay.

“No, I will never retire. Music is my life. I have always put my heart and soul into my music. In that sense, it is a very demanding experience both intellectually, emotionally and creatively. I may take a hiatus here and there, which I’ve wrongly called ‘retirement’ in the past, but I now realize those were periods to recoup my intellectual, emotional and creative energies and then come back with a bang. I’m back.”