Latest Field Trip – Kenya 2018
We’ve returned from our latest field trip, this time to western Kenya. Field reports coming soon.
We’ve returned from our latest field trip, this time to western Kenya. Field reports coming soon.
This June we were contacted by long time Singing Wells partner Prof. James Isabirye about an exciting new project he was hoping to undertake – the revival of the naizungwe drums of the Basoga people in Uganda. James led our revival of the entenga royal drums of the Buganda kingdom starting in 2015 and contacted Singing…
We’ve just returned from our latest field trip discovering the music which took us to the eastern side of Tanzania. We witnessed an amazingly rich offering of music and met some extremely talented musicians. Read our field reports here to learn about our experiences with a snake dance, an amazing performance of a female initiation ceremony ,and recording…
During our recording trips around Kenya – which have taken us over the years to the coast, the west and the central regions – we’ve come across a broad range of fascinating musical instruments played with impressive confidence and mastery by the communities that created them. Since many of these instruments are all but unknown…
We’re currently in the field discovering and recording the lost music of the Ugandan Kingdoms. Our journey so far has taken us to the capital of Uganda – Kampala, over to Jinja in the east and back in search of musicians who haven’t played in the royal palaces since they were children. We’ve been posting…
In March 2014, Ketebul Music and The Abubilla Music Foundation came together to record a very special album for Singing Wells. Our goal was to record some of the most important ‘bridge’ artists in Kenya – a group of musicians who have built a connection between the music of their villages and modern music. They…
The International Library of African Music (ILAM) has very kindly shared with us their instrument collection, enabling us to give you a wider insight into the traditional instruments used in Ugandan folk music. Here at Singing Wells, we have already began building up our own collection, purchasing and bringing them back to our studio in…
While we were in Nairobi recording the old guard of Benga/African twist, we had our latest in a series of conversations with the Director of ILAM (International Library of African Music), Diane Thram. ILAM was founded in 1954 by the late Hugh Tracey, the legendary ethno-musicologist, who conducted ground breaking village recordings from the 1920’s to…