Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…efore dark. We were chased back to Soroti with a broken right wheel spring on one of our vans. Some fast welding and we set out at 1530 promised an hour and a half of night driving. The road was rougher than predicted and arrived on the Nairobi road at about 1845. At 1930, the same van has the back left tire go. We are now off and running again at 2000, with about three hours to go. Frightfully, this encourages passing… Back to repeatable models (…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Obuell-Lira to Soroti Story
…had gathered the whole village into the band, dancing or banging some percussion instrument. He convinced the rebels that the whole village was the band. And the whole village was spared. Sadly, as Joshua went on, he said that the only way this could happen was for some of the leaders of the rebels to convince the ‘hot heads’ to spare the village was to let them satisfy their blood lust against the next village where 20 men were slaughtered. For…
Northern Uganda: Day 5 – from Pakwach to Soroti (a road trip) Story
…t of blankets with eggs, but sometimes sunglasses, nails, electic sockets, rusty tools, clay pots, cutting boards or meal grinding tools, etc… Behind the blankets are stacks of wood, bed frames, gates and other big objects, including massive pipes. Dogs, goats and pigs are everywhere rooting in the piles of garbage left over from yesterday’s market. God help you if yesterday was cabbage day (very pungent).. And then there’s the mud. We love Uganda…
Northern Uganda: Day 4 – night recording at Fort Murchison Story
…– our friend was a musician in a band, not some studio session guy ‘mailing in his over-dub.’ Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. https://youtu.be/IktMw1iNcq4 https://youtu.be/Hk5DlFHa8Lg And with that, brushed the bugs from our hair and clothes, pulled some beetles from the camera bags and had dinner. Tomorrow is a driving day as we head to our next location… Jimmy (Fort Murchison, near Pakwach)…
ATTA is following Singing Wells News
…igel Vere Nicoll, Chief Executive of the African Travel & Tourism Association and explained a little about Singing Wells and our aims to record and celebrate the cultural music heritage of East Africa. It seems Nigel liked what I told him! Operations Manager Lina Vaiksnoriene has been in touch and ATTA are now following our progress on our website and Facebook. We are delighted that Singing Wells is featured on the front page of their website unde…
Northern Uganda: Day 4 – Pakwach to Widiang’a, Nebbi Story
…l who doesn’t want to marry early. Here they are, dancing in glory: The second song was magnificent, called Oramba, the name of a hunter, in the style ‘Aliku’. This style is traditionally performed around the fire, as a celebration of the hunter’s coming back from a successful kill. The whole story is about the village not sure if the brave hunter will come back, but he does and he frightens everyone around the fire with his stories. Really fun. T…
Northern Uganda: Day 3 – from Gulu to Awach to Pakwach Story
…who will also pound the tub for the kick drum and then use a little metal brush as a tom. There are then lots of men with big sticks with metal on them which sound like a snare. All the men sing back up and become a beautiful chorus. 20 folks playing Likembe give you the soft rhythms of Calypso, but as Tabu pointed out, it is more accurate to say Calypso sounds like the soft rhythms of a good Likembe band. Here’s a quick sound clip of the band… He…
Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…Samba drumming, in this case a tortoise sized shell that they hit with a brush of wire). In addition, one of the groups featured the Uvure, a wonderful horn. The Uvure in action… Omee Odokomit Our first group was Omee Odokomit, who played Apiri style. The group is led by Evelyn Ojok and was formed in 1981, disbanded for the war and reformed in 1999. The leader summons the band to practice by playing drums… They are all female dancers, with whistl…
UOBDU report on Singing Wells visit to the Batwa, Kisoro Uganda News
…This week UOBDU Coordinator Zaninka Penninah sent a detailed report to us with feedback about all the music groups who performed for the Singing Wells project. The good news is that being involved in the project seems to have given the groups a new and added pride for their music and has inspired them to practice their dances so that they can confidently perform to more audiences. It is also clear that the financial contribution made to UOBDU by…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…and passing was generally safe. Still, each of the cars counted about 5 ‘brushes with death’, any one of which would be a lifetime of stories for London. We drove. We ate our packed lunch. We drove. We drove. And we raced faster and faster to make it to Gulu before DARK, our true horrible enemy on drives. Darkness just fell as we hit Gulu, which was fine, as we slowed right down and joined the chaos of the Gulu city center. We pulled into our hot…
African Strings: The Nyatiti and The Adungu News
…s become the world’s first female nyatiti player, performing infront of thousands at the 2007 STOP AIDS Concert in Kenya. She speaks native Luo and has become famous for her originality all over Kenya.. The Adungu: Origins: The bow-harp is an outstanding example of good Ugandan craftsmanship. Like the Nyatiti, the Adungu came from the traditional bow-harp or ‘lyre’ from the Egyptians. Michael Levy, a specialist in music of the ancient world, was p…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…e year old son. He was passionate about West African music and did a paper on drumming in Ghana. So Vicki switched seats with Jimmy and talked to Andrew about the Singing Wells project for an hour. We then all settled down to watch Ted before landing about 8 hours later in Entebbe. All bags were gratefully recovered and we took a taxi for an 8 minute journey to the Airport Guesthouse Entebbe, where we were greeted by our old friends, Jan Willem Va…
Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…pace for videos. We recorded right through to 9PM and the ‘northern folks’ rushed to the airport. The Ketebul crew continued to work in the studio, led by Jessie who loves bringing Singing Wells musicians into the studio. Hunter and Jimmy will board our flight at about 11PM and with a 12 midnight wheels up, we will officially end the ‘field visit.’ Now the hard work begins of producing all the videos… Jimmy March 11th, Joma Kenyatta International…
Background on the Music of Northern Uganda News
…ertainment. It is performed to train the male youths during tribal protection and instils courage in the men when going to fight and during actual tribal conflict that occurred according to Acholi history. 3. The next style we will record is the Larakarak courtship dance in Pawili. This is one for the youth, and, lucky for us, is usually performed in the dry months of December and January. When the young people in a particular village are ready fo…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…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 recorded earlier this week. Saturday was all a…
Day 7: In Nairobi – sponsors, blogs and strategy Story
…twin mission of Singing Wells and the conflict inherent in our two goals. On one hand, we are scientists, collecting fossils to be stored and re-discovered. Here our obligation is to be systematic in our field visits, to represent the breadth of East African styles, to record fairly, and to not judge whether any particular group or style is likely to be relevant to today’s generation of listeners. On the other hand, we are artists, seeking musici…