We are thrilled to announce that in the past year, the Singing Wells Youtube channel has doubled its view count, and we are now on a staggering 2.6million views across our videos on the channel! Since 2011, we’ve been sharing our work discovering, recording, archiving and celebrating the traditional music of East Africa, and its…
Here’s a reminder of our first influences session in 2011, when Winyo performed with Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club, the family of legend of mwanzele Nyerere Wa Konde. Nyerere’s son Mr Bado did a great job of leading as his family and Winyo performed this great improvised session. Stay tuned for exciting announcements about the…
We really enjoyed this recent article on Atlas Obscura, which highlights the importance of preserving traditional Ugandan music, but also gives an optimistic and uplifting insight into the work being done on the ground to achieve this. Bigwala is the name of a monotone trumpet, carved very simply from a long natural gourd that is…
A year ago we brought you the news of Entenga players performing in front of King Ronald Metebi at the 25th anniversary of his coronation (available here). At this event they also performed a piece with the Akadinda xylophone in front of the Asantehene (the monarch) of the Asante people from Ghana. A recording of this performance has…
We’ve returned from our latest field trip, this time to western Kenya. Field reports coming soon.
Following on from the recent performances by the Entenga drums, Prof. James Isabirye has informed us that the Bigwala trumpets performed last Wednesday (13th September) at the coronation anniversary of Kyabazinga William Gabula Nadiope IV of the Busoga kingdom. The trumpets can be seen here performing at Budhumbula in front of the Kyabazinga (the elected ruler…
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 have received wonderful news from Singing Wells partner Prof. James Isabirye that he and the rest of the Entenga players performed for the second time at the coronation anniversary of King Ronald Mutebi. We were first introduced to the Entenga drums in 2015 and have since been supporting James in an initiative to revive…
