Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…at the home of Josef Kokeyo. “Our fixer had accidently picked up the wrong group – they were terrible and didn’t care about the music and performed songs which are just performed for tourists. Not real music and not good. I knew the second it started. I was so glad it started raining and we could get out of there.” [Editor note: we did not include this group in any Singing Wells materials.] So here is Pato’s favourite Singing Wells track – Jovah f…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…bul and a music producer with 30 years experience. The plan tomorrow is to travel up the Great Rift Valley to Kitale, about 400 km northwest of Nairobi. In Kitale we’ll record the Sabaot. The next day we will drive to Kapenguira to record the Pokot. After that we go to Eldoret then onto Iten and Kapsowar to record the Marakwet and Keiyo. The last day to go to L Baringo to record the Tugen. Tabu is not sure what to expect of the tribal music in the…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
Bill Odidi travelled to London in August as part of Ketebul Music’s ‘Kenya @ 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.businessdailyaf…
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…
Song Translations: Music of the Kalenjin Story
…d 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 recording: 6th March, 2012 Recorded on location in: Kapenguria, Kenya Song translations: view PDF Lomuke Group of recording: 6th March, 2012 Recorded on location in: Kapenguria, Kenya Song translations: view PDF Kalomoywa Da…
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…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…a people who they are now enjoying listening to. This is the view from the Traveller’s Rest Hotel with the Virunga mountains in the distance – still the home of the mountain gorillas but not the Batwa…. We record Francis and his lead vocalists again, plus 2 groups from Alice’s community in the afternoon. Armed with my trusted 60D, I concentrate on taking photos of the different performers and the many children who accompany them. And make sure we…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
…re saved as. When you’re browsing files within ArcMap, a shapefile will appear like one tidy little file with a cute green icon. If you’re looking elsewhere in your computer, e.g. via the C: drive, the shapefile will be revealed in its true form: a group of six files which combine to make a shape or map. These six files will all have the same name but with a different suffix. These are: – .dbf – .prj – .sbn – .sbx – .shp – .shx Now we’ve got that…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…ble 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 of the 1st of December and arrived in Nairobi in the afternoon of the second. ‘They’ were five ladies and five babies and three men, plus Henry. 14 people drove for r…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…acho 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 Nyangile). Let us tell a bit more about…
Music of the Kalenjin: video playlist News
In March 2012 the Singing Wells team travelled to Kenya’s Great Rift Valley to record the music of the Kalenjin tribes people. The people from this highland ethnic group – the Nilotic – include eight culturally and linguistically related sub tribes – Kipsigis, Nandi, Tugen, Marakwet, Keiyo, Sabaot and Terik. They are perhaps most widely known as world class athletes as many of the legendary Kenyan long distance runners are Kalenjins, including Ki…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…https://youtu.be/BQYtWOBQyBQ https://youtu.be/MJcIi3aY9zI Aloka Ohangla Group Fantastic group featuring the Orutu, the second major instrument of Luo music. If played by a master it takes on the role of the ‘fiddle’ in Irish or US Country music. This band played it well…. but the highlight was the drum solo in the Ohangla style. Here’s the ‘Magic Moment Video’ of the performance: https://youtu.be/2FOs3TObydk What you need to know as you listen…
Day 1: The music of the Luo – starting at Rang’ala Village Story
…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 Ogoya Nengo. The group sings in the Do Do style. Ogoya has exremely strong vocals and there are four ‘shaker’ players and amazing drummer and a set of dancers. …
The Batwa Trail News
…ous people old home while partaking in nature walks and learning about the group’s cultural heritage. During this moving cultural encounter tour, the Batwa demonstrate hunting techniques; gather honey; point out medicinal plants and demonstrate bamboo cups. Guests are finally invited to the sacred Ngarama Cave, once home to the Batwa King, where the women of the community perform a sorrowful song which echoes eerily around the depths of the dark c…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…logs and post ‘excerpts’ on Soundcloud. We took the time to reflect on our travels so far. Ten observations: The Casket. We have travelled about 5,000 kilometres so far on African roads for Singing Wells. And we’ve observed Africans carry just about anything on their heads or their motorbikes – fruit of every type, doors, trees, chickens, etc… Our favourite, however, was to be greeted by a motor bike travelling directly towards us with a funeral c…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…: https://youtu.be/1et4E7lKojA https://youtu.be/1BvCwhX2ctM The Kabahena Group had arrived with the Gatera Group and due to the former’s extended performance, they had to wait quite a time to get ‘on stage’. This did not appear to be a problem – they watched and clapped the Gatera performance with enthusiasm, despite the onset of some spectacular rain (which did not subside until the early hours of the following morning causing the power cut whi…