Thursday, December 03, 2015 On December 1, during the long ride to Jinja, Tabu and I had a chance to interview James Isabirye about how and why we found ourselves together. This is a summary of that conversation, roughly in James’ own words. I use the term roughly for two reasons: 1) These are African…
Dec 30th: the flutes and the closing of the circle with Albert Ssempeke This is our final day in the field in Uganda. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi to record in the Ketebul Studios: we identified a whole set of extraordinary musicians from our 2013 visit to Uganda and have invited them back to…
December 3rd: reflections at the Kampala museum This is our final day in the field in Uganda. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi to record in the Ketebul Studios: we identified a whole set of extraordinary musicians from our 2013 visit to Uganda and have invited them back to do studio recordings. But today, we…
Part Two: Interviews with other palace musicians On our third day in the field we focused on two things: 1) Understanding better how the royal drums of the Buganda Kingdom are made 2) Interviewing other surviving musicians from the Buganda Palace Here’s our summary of part two: We travelled to two separate villages to meet…
December 2: Drum making and palace players On our third day in the field we focused on two things: 1) Understanding better how the royal drums of the Buganda Kingdom are made 2) Interviewing other surviving musicians from the Buganda Palace Here’s our summary of part one: Part One: Drum Making The Singing Wells team…
December 1, 2015: Checking the progress of the Bigwala trumpets Today, we travelled 3 hours from Kampala to Jinja, to the village of Bukakaire, to listen to the Bukakaire Bigwala Players, led by the last surviving trumpeter from the Busoga Kingdom, James Lugolole. A woman playing the Bigwala First, why are we here? Well, there’s…
First, a caveat: this blog does not claim to be historically accurate and we can’t verify all the events told here. It reports on the memories of a former royal drummer, who is reflecting back on his time at the Buganda palace, on the night the palace was attacked and on the importance of seeing…
November 30: Meeting the professor and his students The Singing Wells team united in Nairobi on November 28th and flew together to Kampala on November 29th. We are: Tabu Osusa, Jimmy Allen, Steve Kivutia, Patrick Ondiek, Hunter Allen and Nick Abonyo. After a night at the Fairway Hotel, we met James Isabirye at his university,…
