Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…we know that there’s an army of locusts waiting for us in our rooms…. THURSDAY Today we all have a lie-in as we are recording at the hotel all day – the groups are coming to us. So breakfast is at 8 (much talk about the locust invasion – sounds like Jimmy suffered the biggest attack) and the studio is set-up for a 9.00am start. Things run a little late (we’re becoming accustomed to delays) as we wait for people to arrive and when they do we start…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…itar player and a lot of fun. He joined in all our group sessions over the weekend. Moses Nzikumua-Kamuntu (Tiny Moses) Jovah (and baby Jonain) We met Jovah our second day of recording in Kisoro; she was the lead singer of the Mperwa Dancers and we loved her voice. She has been a revelation this weekend, with the strongest lead vocals by far. She also happily does back-up vocals for a lot of the songs we’re recording. Jovah Nyiramajoro Jolly (and…
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…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…Rwanda, Uganda and Lake Victoria. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi where we will be greeted by the Batwa singers and musicians we invited back to record in the studio. They have been travelling since Tuesday, November 29th, by bus from Kisoro to Kampala to Nairobi. We will see them tomorrow night and begin to record them on Saturday, 3 December. The Singing Wells Team 1 December 2011…
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…
Day 3: Homa Bay and the Kochia Dancers Story
…nder the bar and the dancers ready to do their stuff… 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 h…
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…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…my 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’s Willie setting up a lapel mic for Okumu Korengo Thanks for listening. The Singing Wells Team 29th N…
Day 1: The music of the Luo – starting at Rang’ala Village Story
…ook at a map and think of Lake Victoria as a clock face, the village for today’s recording is at 1PM – it is the Rang’ala Village, home of the legendary Luo singer Ogoya Nengo. We’re about 90 minutes northeast of Kisumu, our ‘base’ for two days. We are here to record the Sega Sega Band (Benga Style) and the Do Do Band (Do Do), both Luo musical styles; the Luo are Kenya’s third largest tribe, making up about 13% of the population. The Sega Sega Ban…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…in mist. Power and Locusts and Rain: In Kisoro, we had a power cuts every day. The last day for about 18 hours. In general this is okay as we have a generator for recording. We also had an attack of locusts, however, which occupied our rooms like an invading force. All of us woke up in pitch dark to a massive racket in our rooms. As we fumbled to light our candles, we found ours nets covered in locusts – 100’s. They look bigger and meaner in cand…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…inyo. Here, they put down their track. Not at all phased by the use of headphones and mics, they take everything in there stride, performing a number of takes as the song develops. We start by giving them a simple click to follow the beat but quickly realised that their tempos are far more subtle than this. Francis comes back to set the rhythm with their natural clapping and it suddenly all came together again. Once we have the female vocals recor…
Day 5 (much later): The Micyingo Group – guitar and bass! Story
DAY 5 continued: Sunburned, exhausted, and ready to call it a day. Just in time to be shocked by the world’s best bassist.. We opened the ‘Hotel Studio’ for the Kisoro Hill Community who started with wonderful dance and song. But then, they switched gears and set up a smaller group of ‘bass’ and guitar and absolutely blew us away… They started as wonderful large group moving through a set of songs, including ‘Imparake Yagahinga’, the National Par…
The Batwa Trail News
We received a lovely email this week from Ivy Beccu from Belgium. I’m glad to see that news of the Singing Wells project is spreading far and wide! Ivy has made a great video about the Batwa Trail in Kisoro, Uganda. When the Singing Wells team visited Kisoro last year to record the music of the Batwa (click here to go to our field reports), we didn’t have enough time to do the Batwa Trail but we heard about how it is helping the Batwa people tell…
Day 5 (PM): The ‘Togetherness Group’ from Kanyabukunga Story
DAY 5 continued: A wonderful afternoon – lots of children, sunshine and a very important empty field.Our time on the hill was followed with an afternoon in an empty field. It was a delightfully empty field. The purpose of the field is as a UN evacuation and refugee centre if there are troubles in Rwanda or the Congo. The fact that it has no tents, has no refugees, is a wonderful thing and we felt it was a great location to record Kanyabukunga Twi…
Day 5: Recording the Mperwa Dancers Story
…5: Welcome to the most beautiful setting for a music recording session. Today we visit the Mperwa Community. The second day of recording – beautiful sunshine in morning and there’s a patten emerging. Morning sunshine, afternoon rain, then the power goes out. Then the locusts attack. But let’s focus on the morning. This morning we recorded the Mperwa Dancers – the lead singer had a beautiful voice and we did an ‘Influences’ sessions with her. Unti…
Day 4 (later): Recording for ‘Influences’ with the Birara Dancers Story
…el, just outside the bar. We were able to record there over the next three days, rain or shine, night or day. Which was good, because it rained a lot. https://youtu.be/c1XBVlNQL6E We continued to use this ‘hotel studio’ to record our ‘Influences’ sessions. A word on what we mean. We have multiple goals at Singing Wells. The first is to preserve the vast musical heritage of East Africa, capturing the diversity of music and dance throughout the regi…