Music of Northern Uganda News
…ferent tribal communities we are planning to visit in December – the Langi from Lira, Iteso from Soroti, Lugbara from Arua and the Acholi from Gulu. Ndere Troupe While in Kampala, Steve and Patrick watched a performance by the Ndere Troupe at their centre in Ntinda, just outside the city centre. The group perform music from all the major tribes of Uganda during a very energetic performance which includes a historical narrative in between songs g…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…d arrived at our first shoot of the trip – Kapsokwony Kenya, 56 kilometers from Kitale. We drove onto the athletic grounds of Chesamis High School to record four groups. Our fixer was ’50 Cows’ – 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…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…neer, Patrick Ondiek, adds, ‘I love producing the final videos and getting phone calls from my friends asking me ‘how did you find these musicians?’ I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection of important tribal musicians in East Africa. We are recording music in Northern Uganda in Autumn 2012 and then we will travel to Tan…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…terview 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 1999 whe…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…mainly affected the poor areas of Nairobi. One of the artists, Uncle Subu, from the Art Centre took corrugated iron from the slums after they burned and has made life size cut outs of people in various happy and natural poses. He wants to be sure we are reminded of this terrible time so it won’t happen again. After a busy day of packing, meeting the whole team and getting organised we headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep before tom…
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
…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 UK, we downloaded three shapefiles of different administrative levels, called 0, 1 and 2. Administrative level 0 is the outline of the whole of the UK. Administrative level 1 is the outline of the countries within the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Administrative level 2 is th…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…l early morning. All good conditions for field recordings. Here’s the view from my bedroom window…the view from the Traveller’s Rest (the following night) was more dramatic: After breakfast and the loading of the vans we head off to the offices of UOBDU where we meet Henry and Alice who are to be our guides and translators for the next three days. Henry has made all the arrangements for our visits to the Batwa communities in advance and his presen…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…ase, GBR_adm.zip. Open it up and take a look. What you will see is a crazy number of files, none of which your computer seems to really recognise. Don’t panic. What you’re seeing is just a few shapefiles (remember shapefiles? No? Let me jog your memory). As we’re looking at the shapefiles in the C: drive rather than in ArcMap itself, you can see the six individual files which make up the one shapefile. In fact, in this case you’re looking at 18 fi…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…30th. They then left the morning of the 30th and travelled by private van from Kisoro to Kampala, arriving in Kampala the same evening. They spent the night in Kampala and left the morning of the 1st of December and arrived in Nairobi in the afternoon of the second. ‘They’ were five ladies and five babies and three men, plus Henry. 14 people drove for roughly 48 hours to sing. Second, let’s introduce the team. Each of the ladies brought their bab…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…d a wonderful Teng’ (the horn): Here’s the full band. The leader is second from right. The two lead dancers are third from the right and far right sitting. https://youtu.be/YT7fEQn7u5o https://youtu.be/F_iuv9uwlRo https://youtu.be/ZLRh1szBXoI https://youtu.be/NLstJmXsKTU https://youtu.be/-fgeskbFbow Jose Kokeyo Jose is a fantastic benga player. Interestingly, as a young student in the early ’60s he went to university in Moscow. So he and Jimmy had…
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
…quipment far left against back of truck, video guys in middle). And a view from the field showing Jimmy on Camera 2 filming Organda Joginda: Andy resting after setting up microphones: And Steve working as chief engineer on this session (Macbook Pro and two Motu audio interfaces on top of our trusted Pelicase, which acts as storage for all equipment, chair and table….in the back of the truck that will see us throughout Western Kenya: Finally, here’…
Day 1: The music of the Luo – starting at Rang’ala Village Story
…The Sega Sega Band Led by Osumba Rateng. This is Benga style, originating from the Luo tribes, as they gradually built on the percussive/bass sounds of the Nytati to form something more bluesy; it morphs later into Rumba, which combines Benga and also Congolese music which is in turn heavily influenced by Cuban music. The big guy in Luo Benga was Daniel Owino Misiani who developed the style in the 60’s. A big reason to return to Luo-lands is to t…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…out the Rwandan genocide than we did, but here were some of our ‘we didn’t really know that’ conclusions: From launch to peak, a million people were slaughtered in about four weeks while the UN, the Belgian and French forces stood by. They had been warned on the specifics but did nothing. This wasn’t gas chamber horror – this was one child at a time, one machete at a time horror. Blood was all over everyone’s hands. The genocide was primarily the…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…e amazing, high energy performance… As always, the babies are not excluded from the show. They learn the traditional Batwa songs and dances from the earliest age… Kamunto Moses The return of the guitar and magic bass. This is Kisoro Hill who had a couple hours to work with Winyo and Jessie on an ‘Influences’ session. You’ll remember our beat boxer in a pot (bassist): And you’ll remember our guitarist…….who was happy to be back performing with us!…