Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…raditional Dancers. Kathy talked to the tribal elder about them. They come from Tot, about 50km from where we were recording. They had walked here the night before and had been practicing all night and morning before we arrived at noon. Most of their songs are about peace and unity between the Marakwet and Pokot tribes. They are also about important historical events and praising ceremonies such as weddings, births, circumcisions and funerals. The…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…ech. Click here to go to Song Translations Everything Else Everything else from today can be divided into three key events. First, we survived the drive. There were a few scary moments, the first being driving to the village for the shoot – straight up a very steep hill. This was not a hill for most humans and certainly wasn’t a hill for cars and certainly not cars filled with Ketebul folks and all our equipment. We got up and down, but we imagine…
Music of Northern Uganda News
…r Singing Wells when we arrive back in Kampala in December. Travelling to Gulu From Kampala, Steve and Patrick set off on the long, 340km drive to Gulu. The main tribe in the area is the Acholi whose instruments include a traditional harp, the ‘adungu’ and a wooden trumpet, the ‘agwara’. The Adungu, an instrument common among the tribes of northern Uganda While in Gulu, Steve and Patrick had two very useful meetings with Joyce Laker, the D…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…sted in first class audio equipment and can record using 8 mics directly into Pro Tools. But during the March Pilot programme, we realised that the visual experience was as important as the audio. So for our November trip we invested in two more digital cameras and worked out our new Camera 1-3 approach. Camera 1 is static group shot. Camera 2 focuses on instruments. Camera 3 is context. This worked extremely well but created a separate issue – lo…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…t will soon die out, leaving videos and songs in the archives. We also had to work to make this music relevant and important to contemporary artists. A key part of a field visit, therefore, is to bring contemporary African musicians with us to perform with the tribal groups and to write new music influenced by these sessions. Winyo, a wonderful singer/songwriter with Ketebul Music, is one of our Influences artists and has been with us on three Sin…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…Sigerer’. Kathy interviewed him about all his songs and this is a classic (to go to Kathy’s Blog on Songs from Day 1, click here). Sigerer tells the story of two bulls in Teriet’s family that we were stolen and taken to Uganda. The family dog was able to follow the scent and led a posse of 20 armed men 75kms to a butchers where sadly one bull had been killed. The surviving bull, Sigerer, was re-taken and brought back to Kitale. In celebration, the…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…to interview Pato about his background and his work with Ketebul Music. Pato is from the Luo tribe, from the village of Bondo (450 Km from Nairobi) , although he and his father were both born and raised in Nairobi. He is one of 6 children – he has one older sister and two older brothers and a younger brother and sister. He lives with his three brothers in an apartment in the Umoja district of Nairobi. Pato graduated from Pumwani High School in 19…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…then onto Iten and Kapsowar to record the Marakwet and Keiyo. The last day to go to L Baringo to record the Tugen. Tabu is not sure what to expect of the tribal music in the villages we are visiting but he is always surprised by the quality of music we discover with Singing Wells. “I didn’t really know what to expect of the Batwa of Uganda, and was blown away by the musicianship. I expect to be surprised again!” The last time he was there was abou…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…www.businessdailyafrica.com/Where+the+world+got+real+flavour+of+Kenya+in+London/-/1248928/1480860/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Photos from Kenya House …
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…will become clear later). The only way to make absolutely sure of that is to go into ArcMap and look at the attribute table of the shapefile (that’s basically the data that makes the shapefile look how it does), and check the names of the counties. To do this open the map, which is saved at C:\How To Map\How to Map 1, or wherever you put it. Then right-click on GBR_adm2 and select Open Attribute Table. This will open a box with the attribute tabl…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…tely stunned. Henry explains that this lady would need to make the journey to town 2 or 3 times a week, leaving her home one day, staying with another Batwa community overnight and returning the next. Extraordinary. Getting a lift in the van saved her half a day’s walk. The van pulls up on the track and Henry says we are there – or nearly there. The village is just up here he says, pointing to the top of the hill which looms high above us. We can…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…called How To Map 1, so the address where it is saved is C:\How To Map\How to Map 1. To get our country outline into ArcMap we need to Add Data. To do this either click File > Add Data > Add Data or select the Add Data icon. This will open a box; click this icon till you reach ‘Home – Documents/ArcGIS’: From here click on Folder Connections. This is where you will connect folders from elsewhere on your computer to ArcMap. Click on this icon: and s…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…Western Kenya, we made a decision to bring some of the Batwa singers back from Kisoro to Uganda. We spent Saturday and Sunday recording them and the results are fantastic. The whole way back from Kisoro to Kisumu we talked about the Batwa and how much we loved the singers. We thought about bringing them to Nairobi sometime in the future. We then decided the future is now and called Henry Neza to see if he would be willing to travel with a selecti…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…of the roots of Bob Dylan… https://youtu.be/iRQlHbyzoKM https://youtu.be/9Qx_vs2Uw-U https://youtu.be/bmFyePat-VY https://youtu.be/HRXyT1czwG8 https://youtu.be/4jnrLn92SxA And with the Jose recording, we officially finished our November field trip, which took us to Rwanda, Uganda and Lake Victoria. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi where we will be greeted by the Batwa singers and musicians we invited back to record in the studio. They have been tr…
Day 3: Homa Bay and the Kochia Dancers Story
…the studio we recording the visually spectacular Kochia Dancers. We drove from Kisumu to Homa Bay; we’re on Lake Victoria now at Homa Bay (still 1PM on your Lake Victoria dial) but a little more south and a little more west, on the south shore of the Winam Gulf. After a long drive, we set up at the hotel in a beautiful field against the lake – we’re surrounded by camels and pelicans, which is frankly a bit off putting. The pelicans are big enough…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…ight: Steve, Winyo (with Bone Guitar), Andy and Tabu. After this shameless tourist stop we head out towards Siaya. We’re still roughly 1 PM on the Lake Victoria clock, 90 minutes NW from Kisumu, but on a slightly different road than Rang’ala. We’re here to focus on the Nyatiti, the core Luo instrument – as played by the best players it is a bass, drum and rhythm guitar combined. And we saw some of the best players. We want to remind you first…