Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…ging Wells 2012 shirt! He also got one of our Polaroid pictures. This is a new innovation for us – every group gets to listen to their song back during their performance and we take a Polaroid photo of each person so they can take a photo home. Then a quick 50 kilometer ride back to Gulu (smile) taking photos the whole way home of great road scenes. We then bought some Ugandan instruments in Gulu and William, Akello and Hannah feasted on some gras…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…spend time doing work experience in preparation. I was introduced to this new way of displaying data when working for the Virtue Foundation in 2011. They were keen on this new technique and trained me to use it for mapping health data in Ghana (example shown below). This was in collaboration with Harvard University. Following on that I spent some time working with the GIS department at Harvard in Boston specifically learning how to use the mappin…
African Strings: The Nyatiti and The Adungu News
…f the Singing Wells project is to introduce tribal East African music to a new generation of musicians and fans who might not consider it relevant today, through The Influences Series. Some of my favourite prominent Benga musicians of today are Ogwang Lelo Okoth, Musa Juma (below) and Dola Kabarry (below). Instrument: The nyatiti has 8 strings and is usually played sitting down on a three-legged stool known as the ‘Orindi’, it can be as low as shi…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…Hannah, Andy and Jimmy) all met at Terminal 5 at 0930AM to check in to BA flight 63 to Entebbe. After quick breakfast, we did last minute shopping for essential supplies (alcohol, sunglasses, papers) and then took the train to C57, where we boarded our flight and left pretty much on time. Jimmy sat next to Andrew who lives in Kampala and married to a Uganda woman with whom he’s had a one year old son. He was passionate about West African music an…
Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…We had Prasad Velankar, a wonderful Indian percussionist join us to put on new percussion. He plays the Tabla at the speed of light and transformed the song. He was so good, we decided to put together a magic moment. Watch this space for videos. We recorded right through to 9PM and the ‘northern folks’ rushed to the airport. The Ketebul crew continued to work in the studio, led by Jessie who loves bringing Singing Wells musicians into the studio….
Day 7: In Nairobi – sponsors, blogs and strategy Story
…ting with contemporary studio musicians and sound engineers ready to bring new arrangements. The sponsors discussed that these missions are sometimes in conflict. If we spend too much of our time showing videos of more traditional tribes singing traditional songs, we might turn off the young audience we are trying to attract. Like kids everywhere, they tend to reject their parents’ and grandparents’ music, hoping to discover new music they can uni…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…s to six the total Singing Wells Equator crossings in the last 12 weeks. Arrival We arrived in Nairobi safe and sound at about 10pm, having survived the wonderful horrors of the road. We actually breezed through a traffic free Nairobi, although Tabu was at war with the GPS and decided to go his own way. The GPS, which had served us well for 1,000Kms, was not happy and yelled at us for the last 6 kms. Singing Wells team 8th March 2012 …
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…bumped and jostled for about 80 kms. The land is tilled now, waiting for a new planting season, so we are surrounded by red. The red roads, the red tilled soil on either side, the red dust filling our eyes and lungs as cars pass us. We have the opportunity to interview Tabu in detail about his ancestry. The only issue was, the more animated he became, the slower we went. So we knew that the more interesting the trip the longer it would take and tr…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…that same year he met Tabu through a friend who sang with Tabu’s band, He knew of Tabu because of his legendary status within Kenyan music. Tabu invited Steve into a meeting where he brought some songs he had worked on. Steve was still a big Hip Hop fan and loved R Kelley. He also liked Salif Keita, an afro-pop singer/songwriter from Mali, his only ‘African music’ influence. Steve’s first job at Ketebul was as an intern working with Jesse and Gabr…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…– clearly taken from 50 Cent, but taking the Kalenjin love of cattle to a new level. 50 Cows is a local journalist and student at United States International University (USIU). The Music Groups Ben Kisinja First up for recording was Ben Kisinja, a wonderful guitarist in the typical Kalenjin style. Tabu describes this style as very traditional and the way of singing is very unique to the Sabaot clan of the Kalenjin. The guitar is called a burkandi…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…a few Skype calls, we agreed to start the Singing Wells project. We both knew we wanted to do something to preserve the music but it took us a while to define exactly what to do. Finally there was a eureka moment – the best thing we could do was to go the musicians, to their villages, to their homes and record them with their families. We would record them singing their songs to their children, three generations dancing together in their village….
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…011 Jovah – Ye Warararaye by singingwells We asked Pato whether he always knew he would be involved in music. “No, but from high school I knew I was going to be working on videos. And music is my life. I started listening to Joseph Kamaru when I was growing up in the Ngara Estate, another part of Nairobi. He was the biggest Kikuyu artist around and would walk around our area with a guitar and play to all the little kids. My brothers all love salsa…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…racking the whip. Pato, head of Video, was quickly learning how to use the new lighting kit (SW 4), but he was constantly distracted by the new Singing Wells Flip Camera. Nick focused on learning the Clapperboard. And Willie joined Jimmy in the studio with Johnnie, the guitarist, to lay down some guitar tracks for the new fund raising song, Missing – Global Remix. An interview with Tabu The the midst of all the packing chaos, Hunter and I had a ch…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…med up with Andy Patterson while he was here and together they conducted a number of interviews with Kenyan musicians who are now based in the UK. They also had the chance to visit Kenya House in Stratford as a guest of our friends at the Kenya Tourist Board. Here’s Bill’s article published in Business Daily Africa: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Where+the+world+got+real+flavour+of+Kenya+in+London/-/1248928/1480860/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Phot…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…Prepare the data To demonstrate I’ll be using some nonsense data about the number of unicorns in each county of Britain, but if you’ve been following along using a different country and your own data then carry on with that. If you want to make your own nonsense data then this site will generate you some random data. Select CSV (basically Excel) as your Result Type and number range as your Data Type. When we downloaded the country outline of the U…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…ood time, which means we can visit the Genocide Memorial Centre before the flight back to Nairobi. We all remember watching the news at the time but nothing we saw on our TV screens portrayed the full extent of what happened in Rwanda in 1994. The exhibition was harrowing. The chain of events difficult to take in. Impossible to understand. Images too graphic to dwell upon. Stories from survivors too upsetting to hear. We were all left numbed by th…