Music of Northern Uganda News
…nsforming a former colonial golf club to a place for training and exchange and to promote and celebrate local cultural achievements. Joyce and David aim to engage people in post-conflict Northern Uganda in the creative arts; resuscitate local arts, crafts and arts education and recover, heal and develop local cultural traditions. With Joyce Laker Director TAKS Centre in Gulu Although Steve and Patrick were not able to meet any local music grou…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…g contemporary African musicians with us to perform with the tribal groups and to write new music influenced by these sessions. Winyo, a wonderful singer/songwriter with Ketebul Music, is one of our Influences artists and has been with us on three Singing Wells field visits. His first album ‘Benga Blues’ (released by Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music in September 2012) is rooted in traditional music. Of Singing Wells, he says, ‘What we find in thes…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…ls the story of two bulls in Teriet’s family that we were stolen and taken to Uganda. The family dog was able to follow the scent and led a posse of 20 armed men 75kms to a butchers where sadly one bull had been killed. The surviving bull, Sigerer, was re-taken and brought back to Kitale. In celebration, the owner slaughtered poor Sigerer to feed the posse. As Kathy pointed out to Teriet, the real hero of the song was the dog, not poor Sigerer, wh…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…all love the music I bring home – it is so different from what they listen to and so much like ‘home.’ In Kenya, no matter where you live, your village is always ‘home.’ I was never raised there, but it is where I will retire. And the focus of Singing Wells is village music. It is about home. And my friends love that.” We asked Pato his favourite Singing Wells moment and he said it was Jovah singing Ye Warararaye with Jessie at the studio last Dec…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…50’ music documentary. He teamed 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/-/1248928/148086…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…a lot of effort into finding the true traditional music. He feels politics and tourism have affected the music we usually hear from the tribes. He wants to hear how they really are at their most natural, where their roots are. Sometimes it is difficult to convince the tribes that this is what we really want 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…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…ate 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 i…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…tely stunned. Henry explains that this lady would need to make the journey to town 2 or 3 times a week, leaving her home one day, staying with another Batwa community overnight and returning the next. Extraordinary. Getting a lift in the van saved her half a day’s walk. The van pulls up on the track and Henry says we are there – or nearly there. The village is just up here he says, pointing to the top of the hill which looms high above us. We can…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…d it’s always good to keep things tidy. I have entitled this map HTM1 (How To Map 1) and have saved it in a folder called How To Map 1, so the address where it is saved is C:\How To Map\How to Map 1. To get our country outline into ArcMap we need to Add Data. To do this either click File > Add Data > Add Data or select the Add Data icon. This will open a box; click this icon till you reach ‘Home – Documents/ArcGIS’: From here click on Folder Conne…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…ya, we made a decision to bring some of the Batwa singers back from Kisoro to Uganda. We spent Saturday and Sunday recording them and the results are fantastic. The whole way back from Kisoro to Kisumu we talked about the Batwa and how much we loved the singers. We thought about bringing them to Nairobi sometime in the future. We then decided the future is now and called Henry Neza to see if he would be willing to travel with a selection of singer…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…ing three very different groups: the Otacho Young Stars, The Kanindi Jazz Band and Jose Kokeyo himself. The Music Groups The Otacho Young Stars The first group were four young men, playing in the Orutu style. First, let’s introduce them: from left to right, they were playing the Sanduku (Luo: Nyangile, which literally means ‘box’) Orutu, the metal ring (Kengele in Swahili and Ongeng’ in Luo) and a very happy backing vocalist (who also played the N…
Day 3: Homa Bay and the Kochia Dancers Story
…e a lot of other things by this time – there aren’t a lot of opportunities to wash and you’ll notice a lot shots of us in the same Singing Wells t-shirt – but luckily not yet fish. Fish would turn their noses at us. Our set, below, with recording equipment set up under 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…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…, dancing and wonderful backing vocals. We took a while to set up and the band took a nice break in the sunshine in front of the mud and straw hut. And here’s a close up of Organda: Now, let’s hear and watch him play: https://youtu.be/6Ayrekb9Qm0 https://youtu.be/Mqj8LYmbEJw https://youtu.be/B60npf2yLqU https://youtu.be/BQYtWOBQyBQ https://youtu.be/MJcIi3aY9zI Aloka Ohangla Group Fantastic group featuring the Orutu, the second major instrument o…
Day 1: The music of the Luo – starting at Rang’ala Village Story
…Owino Misiani who developed the style in the 60’s. A big reason to return to Luo-lands is to trace back to the origins of Benga, understanding in more detail the core instruments. Here, we almost start at the end, recording Osumba Rateng’s band, the Sega Sega Band: 5-6 vocalists and a couple of guitarists. https://youtu.be/pp_O-MYVbjg https://youtu.be/BUttehOfnKk https://youtu.be/-uRDY4G3_mo https://youtu.be/Z8N3nkdSB5g The Dodo Group Featuring…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…late Friday night and had an incredibly quick 20 minute drive from airport to hotel, entirely due to the police closing all the other roads for the Presidential convoy which had travelled from the airport just ahead of us. We like the Kenyan President a lot. We waved the Ketebul team off on Friday and the Abubilla team used Saturday to backup drives, write blogs and post ‘excerpts’ on Soundcloud. We took the time to reflect on our travels so far….
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…