Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…o allow them to undertake the trip to this remote area of North West Kenya, 800 km from Nairobi and home to the Turkana and Samburu tribes and the original ‘singing wells’. When Steve Kivutia (Ketebul Music) presented the idea of recording music at the Festival to the AMF, it seemed a perfect fit with the objectives of the Singing Wells project and the trustees were happy to approve a grant to cover the costs of travelling to the Festival with the…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…71hours to Monday is the title of the song they are working on, am loving it. Makadem one of our celebrity artists signed to Ketebul Music also came through and laid a verse in the song. I was feeling sad knowing very well I would be beading my love [CANON 5D CAMERA] goodbye, so when the studio session was done I escorted her, and Jimmy and Andy too of course to the airport… I would like to personally thank Abubilla for all the support and assure…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Willie Bembe News
…e taken a back. He comes back full swing with jokes of he’s own and I say “Good One”. In The Car To Malindi Jimmy the boss checks in and Andy has to orientate me on protocols ASAP. I get the hang of it and I like it. Andy falls asleep a little later. My goodness…..he snores at +3db…”does he have a girlfriend?” I wonder. We get to talk a lot in the car and I realize that Jimmy is not such a stuck up guy after all….he’s alright. Journey is long and…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…She seemed relieved, skipping over to her ageing boyfriend to convey the “good news” – that we weren’t spying on them – in splattering Italian. Anyway, on our southern leg of the recordings, we booked into a fine hotel. Any field trip will come with its light moments. I never quite mentioned this to anyone, but a couple of times I felt apprehensive on how far away the power generator was situated, especially in the Mwishoroni area near Mombasa. S…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…mpromising on sound quality. Mzinga were accompanied by a small wooden xylophone, the marimba. Mzinga After four captivating numbers from Mzinga, we quickly pulled down the set and set off for our second location. The drive would take us to Mombasa,where we would end up in the most interesting set of all so far. Junda. We first drove in to what seemed to be a very busy township with a very steep and treacherous gravel road to drive on. Everyone…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
…s. There’s the odd cow, or screams of kids raising around the village, but goodness -that is what this is all about. We used a generator throughout and easily isolated it so no noise leaked on to the recordings. We also used three separate video recorders and all performed well. The Team: The Ketebul team were amazing and Andy did a great job of training folks quickly. The three sound engineers are all very experienced in the studio and quickly go…
£25K donation from Abubilla Music Foundation News
There’s good news to report about our fundraising goals. A donation from the The Abubilla Music Foundation of £25,000 has been allocated by the trustees to the Singing Wells project. This has meant that all expenditure on the development of the Ketebul Music website has been covered and we are now able to go ahead with the purchase of the all mobile recording equipment which will be needed for the village recording sessions. Our resident technica…
Ketebul Music website launched News
…tists in their full glory and we think we’ve succeeded in our goal. Take a good look around the site to see how Ketebul Music is working to combine the traditional sounds of East African tribal music with the best of contemporary artists. And through Bandcamp, listen to or download the inspirational music of Kenya from artists such as Ontiri Bikundo and Makadem, or the 4 piece women’s group Bismillahi Gargar, whose aim is to remind people of their…