Interview with Fifty Cows – fixer for Singing Wells News
…It doesn’t make sense to have people in Nairobi deciding what the villages need. For example the Nairobi leaders may think a village need clean drinking water when in fact they need better medical care. He is now getting a Masters in International Relations at the U.S. International University in Nairobi. He is focusing on conflict resolution. He wants to be a peace ambassador in Kenya using his childhood experiences as examples. He feels like muc…
Kenya (Coast): Day 2 continued…. Story
…n… Katana bin Kalama, with beautiful costume of shells… The Group prepares for their performance… Sengenya The most energetic group by far, brought the house down, with wonderful dancing. Led by Munyaka Chimega, they danced in the style of Sengenya (which bears their name). Non-stop dancing, multiple songs and they didn’t want to stop (but we ran out of video!). Fantastic energetic dancers that we’ve only captured on video…. …and all the kids jo…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…probably two dozen little kids watching. At close of day we were invited to some coconuts to celebrate the music Winyo with Coconuts Maddo, Chairman of Ketebul during our coconut break That’s it for now. This is only Day 1 of recording… we look forward to the next two days, 6 more groups, 3 more villages and of course 600 kilometres back to Nairobi. Jimmy …
On the eve of our very first field recording trip….. Story
…ing studio to record most of the concert. We’ll post this later. In the meantime, a couple of pictures: Winyo warms up with the Swiss Bone Guitar The Legendary Ayub Ogado …and his legendary goatee …and his legendary Nyatiti From left to right, Joyce, Alfred and Tabu. Joyce is from the Ford Foundation and supports Ketebul. Alfred helped introduce Ketebul and Abubilla This was an evening to represent everything Ketebul is about – bringing new East A…
Nick Abonyo (the ‘clapper-man’) News
…2010 in Information Technology. In 2008, he moved down to Nairobi and therefore had to travel back and forth over next couple years to finish his degree in Information Technology. While in Nairobi his first job was a three month internship with AirTel. His goal was to get a white collar job in Nairobi but nothing materialised and he went back to Mirogi to live with his aunt. Nick really loves music – his favourite was a reggae group called Lucky D…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…for everyone involved.’ Steve’s objective is to record the music of all 10 performing groups. All the material will be taken back to the Ketebul Studios for archiving and editing for future use. We look forward to hearing back from the team about how they got on at the Festival so more news on this to follow……..
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…cribe this as one of my highlights. The team is set for go and there is no need for any overhaul of its composition except perhaps where some extra personnel may be required in future. The training aspect on this field trip was excellent. I don’t think it was the allure of a couple of cold beers at the end of each day that made the boys bring forth their best. Another beautiful occurrence at this stage of the project is that the Ketebul team laid…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…en we finally managed to get them to stop, they insisted on doing one last number for us to join them in dance. I was dragged into the dance and forced to expose my two left feet. Tabu and Winyo gave a good account of themselves with the shoulder shaking dance (which I must point out though is very similar to the dance style of the Lake Victoria region where both Tabu and Winyo hail from). Jimmy gave it his best shot while Andy and the rest of the…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
…roved that we are on to something very big here. First, there is an urgent need for what we are doing: the average age of the performers was about 60 and there were NO young adults or kids involved. This music, these traditions are dying fast. Moreover, on three different cases local young men from the villages approached us and said they also had some music for us to hear. In each case they were trying to imitate US artists from 50 Cent to Justin…
£25K donation from Abubilla Music Foundation News
…nical expert and sound engineer, Andy Patterson, has sourced everything we need and will be using it for the first session later this month. Here’s a visual of the basic set up of each mobile recording unit. The equipment list for each mobile set up is comprehensive and has been carefully costed. This is the budget we are working to. We are very grateful to our sponsor and to the trustees of The Abubilla Music Foundation for granting the money to…
Ketebul Music website launched News
…a Music and Ketebul Music first came together we decided the most pressing need was for a dynamic website which would show the work of the Ketebul artists 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 m…