It is difficult to take Aziz Azion seriously when he claims he has been a practicing musician for eleven years, starting out in 1998. Especially when he goes on to say he was born July 27, 1984.

But there are enough people to back up his claims, right from the Makuge Kadongo Kamu group which gave him his first start out in 1999.

Aziz Azion right now is the toast of Kampala with his song Nkuumira Omukwano playing on every radio, TV station. In downtown Kampala malls, the promoters of every hit song, down to the taxi parks, Nkuumira Omukwano is inescapable.

Sleepy-eyed Azion surprisingly is taking it all in rather coolly.

Nkuumira Omukwano has made him a star, a must on every music poster advertising a concert, but this has not stopped Aziz from still going for his hair cut at Sara Salon in Majestic Plaza and mingling with ordinary people.

But staying grounded and focused is something Aziz has had to do for a long time because early on he knew, "I would not be able to go far in school because my mother Zainabu Atenyi split from my father Musa Rajab when I was young. She did not have enough money so I could not go far in school. I had to find a way to survive early in life."

Makuge group

Aziz is reluctant to delve much into his truncated academic history but his face lights up when he remembers how the entry of Makuge Kadongo Kamu group in Fort Portal always left him entranced.

"I'm someone who likes to learn. When someone knows something that I want to learn, I befriend them, and if they are good-hearted, they will teach me," Aziz said. "That is what happened with Makuge. I was a kid who was interested in learning to play the guitar and a man called Kibirige in Makuge took a liking to me and started teaching me.

I loved the guitar right away because it looked like the instrument for me. It looked so different from other instruments and I wanted to look different. I love the sound a guitar can produce. Everyone who could play the guitar was my teacher,"

Today, Aziz's most prized possessions are five guitars, one of which helped him compose Nkuumira Omukwano.

Aziz says, "I have five guitars now. Two acoustic, one electric and two electric-acoustic guitars. George Benson and Eric Clapton are my heroes."

"The first thing I ever bought when I made my first trip as part of Jeckaki band to escort Jose Chameleone on his tour in Denmark and Sweden was a traveler guitar which I still have. The guitar is short like a tennis racquet that you can't tell immediately it is a guitar. But it has fantastic sound. It cost me [about] Shs 800,000 then, which was around 2005/2006."

Jeckaki band

Though busier than he ever was as part of Makuge and then Jeckaki band, Aziz still finds time to practice for one or two hours a day.

"Rhythm and melody come easily to me. I write my own songs but words often come later. That is how I wrote Nkuumira Omukwano. I woke up one morning, sat on the verandah and to began to play the opening that became

Nkuumira, and I liked it. So I kept playing them over and over. When you play the right melody, you know it and I knew it that morning," the 25-year-old says.

It helps that Aziz no longer has to rely solely on his memory to keep a record of all the melodies he can strum out in his rehearsals.

"Most of the people I learned how to play the guitar from did not know how to read music and such terms like chords were strange. They concentrated on teaching you how to cram the rhythm and that was it. So I had a difficult time learning by myself. But I was lucky when I met Matu of Afrigo Band. He gave me a book on the guitar and it was that book which helped me to learn more about the guitar and music," he says. "A guitar is an instrument that includes other musical instruments if you know how to play it."

You have probably heard Aziz's guitar work in Juliana Kanyomozi's Kanyimbe or GNL's Zamba, Mowzey Radio and Weasel's Nyambura, Raga Dee's Kazeeke, Mesach Semakula's Njagala Bwendi or Geoffrey Lutaaya's Nice & Lovely.

It was Aziz's unique dexterity with the guitar that earned him that Japan gig with Ba Kika group. In his absence, his song Nkuumira Omukwano shot up the charts and even without a follow-up hit song, will keep him long in demand by other musicians who admire his guitar work.