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 an amazing reward to see the impact our work is having.
We want to take this opportunity to thank you all for supporting us over the last few years, and for creating such a thriving community in the comments below. As we build towards our ten year anniversary in 2021, we are thrilled to know that we have the support of such an engaged audience.
Here’s a few of the highlights from our channel. First place on the view count – at 272,000 views, goes to our awesome session with Otieno Aloka in his Luo village. Performing with a traditional band, this video of the famous singer of ‘Kanungo Eteko’ is a great example of the Singing Wells project in action; a modern artist connecting to his musical heritage as he plays the traditional orutu, whilst also inflecting it with his own contemporary style.
Also at the top of the list is the legend of Mwanzele, Nyerere Wa Konde, performing with his family as the Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club. This was filmed back in 2011, on the very first day of the Singing Wells pilot trip to Kenya. Seeing the generations of Nyerere’s family performing together was a special moment (his son Mr Bado is also a musician). We captured a great fusion of old and new
You also need to check out the Elgon Ngoma Troupe, performing a traditional circumcision ritual dance. Please keep following our channel – with new videos going up there’s always something exciting to discover and share.