Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…(we run a very tight shop, thanks to Steve’s leadership), we welcome Ben into the studio to record. The Otacho Young Stars stayed the morning as well. We had a full crew to support Ben – Johnnie and Bishop on guitar, Nina and Winyo on vocals. Watch this space. We also continued our work to capture new artists for Missing – Global Remix, our 2012 fund raising song. We had Prasad Velankar, a wonderful Indian percussionist join us to put on new percu…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…cians we were discovering were often so good, we needed to bring them back to the Nairobi studio. That led to 10 Batwa musicians and 5 Batwa babies travelling from Kisoro to Kampala to Nairobi and recording some great songs over the course of four days. We now want to repeat this for every field visit and decided to invite the Otacho Young Stars, the great find of our field visit to record the Luo, and Ben Kisinja, the great Kalenjin musician we r…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…two hotels (Eldoret Club and Pine Tree) from 8am to about 9.30am. The tyre had a damaged tube that just wore out. We reassembled and headed off for a spectacular trip from an altitude of 2,800m down to 1,114m at one of the floors of the Great Rift Valley. The roads were more winding and steeper than on our trip to Rwanda last November but there was no rain and there were guard rails on the roadside which made it all feel safer….
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…. In addition, over 300 foreigners train here, mostly from Europe. We went to the main training centre and interviewed a project manager about why so many people travel all this way to train on the red dirt roads around Iten. She answered: “First, the altitude (roughly 2300 meters) is perfect – right at the peak of natural altitude where you can still train hard, but so high that the lungs are pushed to the limit. Second, for such high altitudes,…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…the location picked by 50 Cows, the fixer, but we decided it was too close to the road and asked to be taken to a more secluded spot near a village or homestead. We got what we asked for and were rewarded with a 4 km drive straight up one of the hills through homestead after homestead until we arrived at the top of hill with 360 views. The little homestead had a lovely round house with thatched roof, a rectangular hour and a couple hen houses. Cow…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…lls in Kisumu, Lake Victoria) were amazing and more modern than most music today. The Clapperboard Today was the first day we used the ‘clapperboard’. First a little background to this…… Singing Wells has always been about the music so our initial focus was on audio recording. We invested in first class audio equipment and can record using 8 mics directly into Pro Tools. But during the March Pilot programme, we realised that the visual experience…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…groups’. At Ketebul Music, Tabu recruits and develops musicians committed to the rich musical cultures of East Africa. His goal is not simply to preserve this music, but bring it back to life with contemporary musicians putting a modern stamp on traditional music. A few thousand miles north of Nairobi, our band of musicians at Abubilla Music in London had similar concerns. Some of us had travelled through East Africa and we were astounded by the…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…hoot of the trip – Kapsokwony Kenya, 56 kilometers from Kitale. We drove onto the athletic grounds of Chesamis High School to record four groups. Our fixer was ’50 Cows’ – clearly taken from 50 Cent, but taking the Kalenjin love of cattle to a new level. 50 Cows is a local journalist and student at United States International University (USIU). The Music Groups Ben Kisinja First up for recording was Ben Kisinja, a wonderful guitarist in the typica…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…2006 and built up the video department there. While there, he was exposed to the Spotlight Series. He began to really love tribal music and so when we started developing the Singing Wells project he jumped on it, keen to head up the video recording department . We asked him what he liked most about the project and he gave two answers: “First, I love the exposure to different cultures – even my own. I have never heard a lot of the tribal music, ev…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…ican music before it is lost forever. Tabu came up with the idea of ‘going to the tribes’ rather than dragging the tribes to studios” He describes the Singing Wells approach to mobile recording: “Recording the tribes in their home villages is very different than recording them in the studio. In the villages the people are confident. They have their families and friends there who they feel comfortable and proud to perform in front of. Studios don’t…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…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/-/1248928/1480860/-/…
Song Translations: Music of the Kalenjin Story
…As part of the Singing Wells project we are documenting the meaning behind the songs of the artists we record. Here are translations of the songs of the Kalenjin tribes. Ben Kisinja Date of recording: 5th March, 2012 Recorded on location in: Kapsokwony, Kenya Song translations: view PDF Chebonet group Date of recording: 5th March, 2012 Recorded on location in: Kapsokwony, Kenya Song translations: view PDF Lomut Traditional Dancers Date of reco…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…s worth sorting that out first. Import the data into ArcMap. Join the data to the country outline shapefile. Export the joined data and shapefile as a new shapefile. Display the data. Prepare the data To demonstrate I’ll be using some nonsense data about the number of unicorns in each county of Britain, but if you’ve been following along using a different country and your own data then carry on with that. If you want to make your own nonsense data…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…older Connections. This is where you will connect folders from elsewhere on your computer to ArcMap. Click on this icon: and select the folder where all of your GIS files are to be saved, in this case C:\How To Map. The folder will appear under Folder Connections. You can now go into the folder to add the map outline shapefile to ArcMap. Go into C:\How To Map\Country Outlines\UK. Select the three shapefiles: GBR_adm0, GBR_adm1 and GBR_adm2. The ma…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…y months of planning the trip, this is the first time I actually put faces to the names. Steve has been integral to the planning – preparing the budget down to the last shilling and organizing the logistics of taking a team of 10 to Kisoro and beyond. We have spoken on the phone and emailed many times. It’s good to meet at last. The flight to Kigali makes a stop-over in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. I suddenly realize that by the end of the d…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…o Nairobi by the 2nd of December. It is a sign of Henry’s amazing devotion to the Batwa cause that he said yes to such a request. First, their travel story. He was able to contact all the singers on the 29th of November and he arranged all travel papers by the 30th. They then left the morning of the 30th and travelled by private van from Kisoro to Kampala, arriving in Kampala the same evening. They spent the night in Kampala and left the morning o…