Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…: James Isabirye, Left: Tabu (Ketebul), Right: Musisi (one of the last remaining Royal Drummers) Here is James’s story about how we ended up recording the Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom: “Let’s first just consider the state of our traditional music. From a government perspective, it is the music you roll out for foreigners, like the Pope, or on some special occasion. But otherwise you ignore it and don’t value it. We don’t support it and we ar…
Singing Wells Approaches 5 Million Views News
We are so excited to see that our hard work is paying off – in the last few months we have almost doubled our views on our Youtube channel and are now approaching 5 million total views across our videos. When we started Singing Wells almost ten years ago, we set an aim to bring the traditional music of East Africa to a wider audience. It amazing to see the Youtube algorithm agreeing that this is a project worth showing people! We can’t wait to b…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 2 – Flutes Story
…s and the closing of the circle with Albert Ssempeke This is our final day in the field in Uganda. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi to record in the Ketebul 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…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…villages that focused on instrument making or villages that focused on training potential musicians for the palaces. This patronage was not free, however, and the resources to fund the palaces and their music ultimately came from the same villages, through taxation and food contributions. Moreover, these musicians were not empowered to create, to lead rich musical lives, to become artists, to use the palace as a stepping stone to develop their ar…
Recce to Tanzania for our 2020 Field Visit News
The Singing Wells team has been travelling through Tanzania in search of the best groups to record during our upcoming field visit in February. We are struck once again by the amazing talent this country has to offer, and can’t wait to capture some amazing moments with these artists when we visit again with the full team in a few weeks time. Thanks to the good people at Dhow Countries Music Academy for helping us with the information and contact…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 2 – Interviews with Musicians of Uganda’s Royal Palaces Story
…he good news is that there are some. The bad news is that the group is declining rapidly. In some cases, we refer to musicians as the ‘last surviving’ musician. This is based on James’ best reckoning, having tried for years to find others. Neither James nor the musician involved wants the title of ‘last surviving’ and we would love to be proven wrong. Musisi is looking for more drummers and the ones we talked to today are desperate to find others…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 1- Drum Making and Palace Players Story
…ing. For this step, the re-stringing, he stopped after a few strings, explaining that he was ruining his drum by showing us. Here, you saw the real skill levels of the drum maker. With his hands moving very fast, he was taking out the stitch of nylon string, cutting off the former holes, creating new holes and re-lacing the drum skins together with leather strings. Very fast. 9. Tuning The final stage is tuning. He showed us in detail how he uses…
Singing Wells Youtube Channel hits 2.5Million views News
We are thrilled to announce that in the past year, the Singing Wells Youtube channel has doubled its view count, and we are now 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 supporti…
Central and Eastern Uganda: Day 2 – Kampala to Jinja Story
…playing the Bigwala First, why are we here? Well, there’s the obvious: at Singing Wells, we record and share the great music of East African villages. But, there’s another, equally important reason: the revival of the Bigwala trumpets was the model we used for the restoration of the Royal Drums. We felt it was critical to check in on their progress. We focused on three main things on this visit: Interviewing James about the instruments themselves…
Musisi’s Story, Part 1: The Fall of the Buganda Kingdom Story
…rtance of seeing his craft revived. And there is something quite beautiful in the way he remembers his own story. Musisi being recorded on camera telling his story We are in Uganda to revive the Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom, the Entenga. This project was the result of the work of a very large team, but at its center is Musisi, the last surviving drummer that we know of. Here is his story, in roughly his words: “My father was the leader of th…
Rediscovering the lost Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom: Day 1, Uganda Story
…rofessor and his students https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpG0HLNxVQA The Singing Wells team united in Nairobi on November 28th and flew together to Kampala on November 29th. We are: Tabu Osusa, Jimmy Allen, Steve Kivutia, Patrick Ondiek, Hunter Allen and Nick Abonyo. After a night at the Fairway Hotel, we met James Isabirye at his university, Kyambogo University, to record the Entenga. Centre: James Isabirye We have been working closely with Jame…
The Return of Bigwala News
…s of this unique gourd, which were thought to have been lost, to be rediscovered and grown. Now over 100 students have been trained in building the instruments, and have played at two royal celebrations. There seems to be a promising future for this important thread in the tapestry of Uganda’s cultural history. Sources: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ugandan-music-bigwalahttps://ich.unesco.org/en/news/uganda-young-ugandans-mobilized-for-saf…
Entenga drums perform with Akadinda Xylophone News
A year ago we brought you the news of Entenga players performing in front of King Ronald Metebi at the 25th anniversary of his coronation (available here). At this event they also performed a piece with the Akadinda xylophone in front of the Asantehene (the monarch) of the Asante people from Ghana. A recording of this performance has just become available, and is posted below https://youtu.be/CCQ72al2pEo Fore more information about the Entenga dr…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11:An Interview with Gregg Story
…thing about the trip? GT: To know that this tribal music is available out in the villages. There were people singing and dancing to preserve the music – this is real life and largely in Nairobi we are cut off from the reality of real life, the soul. To still realize that it is available in its authentic format was great. SW: What was your favourite moment on the trip? GT : Day 3, when we recorded the Mariene Traditional Dancers: To see this group…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…writers employing clever allegory, generating witty memorable phrases or coining new idioms. Tradition— Adaptations and Innovations The traditional Benga sound is about 60 years old with its formative years occurring between the late 1950s and the 1960s. Its roots run deep in age-old Luo musical instruments. Of the many traditional instruments that the Luo played, the most enduring and widely used is the nyatiti, an eight-stringed traditional lyre…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11: Ketebul Studios, Nairobi Story
…nal Luo music. Nelly worked with his Congolese mentor for a while before joining The Ogara Boys Band in 1962. The Ogara Boys Band also consisted of founding members John Ogara Odondi and Aketch Oyosi. Together the trio started and developed a unique sound that got the name Benga, in 1963. In 1966, Nelly left Ogara Boys Band to pursue his career elsewhere. He briefly collaborated with another Benga legend, George Ramogi. He has a very intricate way…