Ketebul Music presents Shades of Benga Online News
…de their book ‘Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya 1946 -2016’. You can watch the latest episode below, and also find out more at their website here. Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya delves into the foundations of modern Kenyan music, examining external influences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the it…
Singing Wells Approaches 5 Million Views News
…s and stories to the world. Keep an eye out on the Singing Wells Youtube channel for the footage and recordings from our field trip to Zanzibar and Pemba….
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…ul 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 focused on two things: 1) Discussing in detail some of our observations from our time exploring the royal instruments of the kingdoms of Uganda 2) Recording again Albert Ssempeke’s Buganda Music Ensemble. Given that we first decided to rediscover the Royal Drums after recording Albert’s gr…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 2 – Interviews with Musicians of Uganda’s Royal Palaces Story
…e proven wrong. Musisi is looking for more drummers and the ones we talked to today are desperate to find others that played with them. Richard Ssewannyana We first travelled about an hour from Mukono to the village of Bamusuta B Kizimula to meet with Richard Ssewannyana. As we believe Musisi is the ‘last surviving’ royal drummer, we believe Richard is the last surviving royal flutist. Please, let’s be wrong here. We first interviewed Richard: “I…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 1- Drum Making and Palace Players Story
…I can get them very tight. I then let these dry again. I may only leave it for 30 minutes or longer depending on the sun.” He is rolling the string along its length, much like you’d roll out dough between your hands to make it long and thin. But he does this by rolling about a foot of string against his leg round and round until the entire length is tightly twisted. 8. The second stage of stringing the drum “Now, I have to restring the drum, repla…
Support for the Elgon Ngoma Troupe News
…, which houses children from disadvantaged backgrounds through performance of traditional music, through breeding and meat production. Donate to Elgon Ngoma’s gofundme page here! And you can watch one of their brilliant performances, recorded on our 2014 field trip, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkyDtBXfunI Watch Julius, the leader of the group, explain who the Elgon Ngoma troupe is, and their mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Wk0…
Singing Wells Youtube Channel hits 2.5Million views News
…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…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11:An Interview with Gregg Story
…barely lets us scratch the surface. We did 5 songs per group, but they have 100. We could have had a dozen people come on influences. We could have rehearsed performances and help the groups reach a far higher level of performance. And in every location, we could have recorded another 20 groups. It is all out there and it is all amazing but fading fast, and we are two teams in two cars chasing after it, trying to capture as much as we can. But as…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…t African countries—Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania—covering an area of over 68,000 square kilometers. The Luo who live around its shores in Kenya speak a western Nilotic tongue distinctly different from their Bantu neighbours to the north and south, and their Kalenjin distant cousins to the east. The Luo comprise close to 3 million people. Their forefathers migrated south from the Bahr al Ghazal region in what is today know as Southern Sudan in a stea…
Latest Field Trip – Kenya 2018 News
…We’ve returned from our latest field trip, this time to western Kenya. Field reports coming soon….
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11: Ketebul Studios, Nairobi Story
…ro Osumba Rateng We first worked with Osumba during our trip to Nyanza in 2011; he is the founder of the Sega Sega band and ‘Flora’ remains a Singing Wells favourite. He is one of the most important musicians in Benga. I interviewed him on March 10th to learn more about his playing style. This is what he told me: “I started playing music in school and I had a cousin Aoka Meja, who had a guitar. We copied the style of Adero Onani who played traditi…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 4 – Nkubu to Mukuuni to Nairobi Story
…ales who all play drums except for their banner waver. They were formed in 1930 and have spawned so many imitations that they had to add the word ‘original’ to their name. They are Ameru, of Tharakanithi County. The group plays on all occasions, during harvests, births, weddings, marriages. The play the Mwinjira (Drums) and Biringi (Whistle). This was a tricky set to record because they are such vibrant performers, racing all over the place. When…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 3 – Nkubu to Mariene to Murungurune to Nkubu Story
…stream. The Music Groups Mariene Traditional Dancers This group formed in 2003 and is led by Simon Munuki. They are from the Ameru Ethnic Community. Their musical style is Kirarire and Authi. The lead singer wears Murungi, an ornament on both sides of the arms which is worn by the initiator/circumciser; it signifies a man of respect and authority. Their costumes include Lesos, necklaces, face painting, spears, fly whisks, gourds, and head gear, ca…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 2 – Muranga to Kangema to Nkubu Story
After a quick breakfast, we loaded up and departed at 09:00 for a 10:00 session in Kangema. Here’s our map: Our first joy was the site of Mount Kenya as we hit the road. We met our local contact, Jane Kagai, and then travelled to the KCC area, a lovely field about 100 meters below the road. While a lot easier than the hill we faced in Kisoro (SW Uganda), we nonetheless had to take our 44 bags down to the site. We set up under a tree and recording…
Tanzania 2017, Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo News
…We’ve just returned from our latest field trip discovering the music which took us to the eastern side of Tanzania. We witnessed an amazingly rich offering of music and met some extremely talented musicians. Read our field reports here to learn about our experiences with a snake dance, an amazing performance of a female initiation ceremony ,and recording members of the extraordinary Zawose family….
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 1 – Nairobi to Kiongwe to Muranga Story
We all met at the Fairview at 5:30 AM, packed and departed at 6:00AM, travelling from Nairobi to Kitui, on the Mombasa Road, arriving at 10:00AM. We picked up our local contact, Dominic Mukora, and drove to the Kiongwe Market to record our first group. Here’s our route: The site passed the first Singing Wells test, lots of chickens and children; we find their noises the perfect backing track for all our recordings. The market structures were beau…