Acholi Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…erent purposes. The top left image is of the Bwola royal dance which we will record during the Music of Northern Uganda Field trip of December 2012. For more information about the tribes of Uganda, this website is useful….
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…s such as weddings, births, circumcisions and funerals. They are also used for passing information on from generation to generation. The younger generation also sing but they did not come today. They mainly have older members in their group. The group have never been recorded before today and they were very excited about others hearing their traditional music. Kathy spoke to them about their dress and its significance. The white paint in lines and…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…terviews with Eddie and Nick. There are separate blogs here, which provide some more observations on what Ketebul Music and and now Singing Wells has done to the team’s view of modern music and more importantly, African music. For the record, the Ketebul crew all reported that the meal at the Eldoret Club, where we are staying, was the first great meal they had on the trip. Singing Wells team 6th March 2012…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…e with Iwdi Aching, a lovely female vocalist who, he says, showed him that African tribal music didn’t need to be ‘old.’ He feels that Singing Wells is the next part of his musical journey. He talks about it as ‘discovering the source’ and ‘training his ears.’ He pointed out that Francis Sembagare from the Birara Dancers (Music of the Batwa) was closer to Hip Hop than much of today’s music. And he also points out the Joginda Boys (recorded for Sin…
Music of Northern Uganda News
…ist and singer from the Baganda tribe who we first came across when she performed for the BBC series ‘Africa Beats’, and then with Jackie Akello from the Acholi tribe who has just started out on a solo career after having been a backing vocalist for Susan Keronnen, a popular Ugandan singer. Tshila and Steve Jackie and Patrick Lira and Soroti Our field visit to Uganda in December will include the areas surrounding Lira and Soroti. In Lira we…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…h some wonderful dancing using shields and spears. Again, Eddie stepped in for an Influences session with a subgroup to record. Please click here to read the meaning behind the songs of the Chebonet group: Song translations of Chebonet Teriet We then recorded Teriet, a guitarist with a wonderful acoustic guitar with a lot of miles. His best song was ‘Sigerer’. Kathy interviewed him about all his songs and this is a classic (to go to Kathy’s Blog o…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…Tanzania and Burundi in 2013, returning to Nairobi in Autumn 2013 in time for the celebrations for Kenya’s 50 years since independence. In addition to our field visits, we have developed an online Music Map of East Africa that charts the tribes of the region, their music, their instruments and influences. The map also shows where we have travelled with the Singing Wells project and features audio tracks and videos of the songs and dances that we…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…ible and didn’t care about the music and performed songs which are just performed for tourists. Not real music and not good. I knew the second it started. I was so glad it started raining and we could get out of there.” [Editor note: we did not include this group in any Singing Wells materials.] So here is Pato’s favourite Singing Wells track – Jovah from the Mperwa Batwa community in Kisoro performing with Jesse on piano at the Ketebul Music stud…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…ns 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 Photos from Kenya House …
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…nt to hear. The tribes often think we want to hear gospel, rap or songs performed for tourists. He wants to archive the traditional music because otherwise it will be lost. Young Kenyans in the cities are ignorant of the traditional music and are surprised when they hear quality and uniqueness of the tribal music. In addition to archiving the music, Tabu feels Ketebul’s role is to make the music widely accessible and to empower the tribes. If the…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…ke sure the Subject is Administrative areas. There is other data available for free download from this page, such as elevation and population density, but for our purposes we’re only interested in administrative areas, i.e. the regions and districts of a country (though these may have other names, such as aimags in Mongolia). Clicking OK will take you to a page which displays the data you are about to download – an outline of the United Kingdom. C…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…accompany them. And make sure we have plenty of group shots of our star performers before we say goodbye for the last time (little do I know that there will be a reunion at the Ketebul Music studios in Nairobi the following week, but that’s another story…) After recording is over I sit down with Alice to make sure I have all the names of the songs and their meanings. It’s been raining heavily since about 4pm and the power has cut out. There’s no b…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…ording on the hill tops near Kisoro. He played kid golf during his live performances, gently knocking the kids from the ‘stage’ with his spear. He is an amazing visual performer, especially in his songs about cranes where he does the Batwa ‘Bird Dance.’ He is the leader of the Kisoro Batwa in terms of music and we could not have recorded further without him at the heart of our sessions. Francis Sembagare Tiny Moses Tiny Moses blew us away at the h…
How To (Arc)Map News
…ind out more here. You can also check out their non-profit organisations’ scheme, which allows registered charities access to software for free. CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE FIRST POST…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…e the Kanindi Jazz Band, great dancers who also introduced us to our first Africa venture with the Vuvuzelas. They also had 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 fantas…
Day 3: Homa Bay and the Kochia Dancers Story
…… The Kochia Dancers Today is all about dances, so our videos will be much better than still photographs. Let us introduce you to the dancers; here in full glory are the Kochia Dancers who dance in the Ramogi style of dance (ref: for a great article on the Ramogi dance of the Luo, by Helen Odwar, click here): https://youtu.be/_qVuMFLJ9-M https://youtu.be/pwVlHnpw8Io https://youtu.be/B_M_OFRzDoU https://youtu.be/6AjxDKLPLkg https://youtu.be/2iGUcQR…