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…
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/-/…
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…
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…
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…
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…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
…d the like, so we make it easy for the old guy by saving all our GIS files to the C: drive, i.e. to hard disk. Continuing the ArcMap-as-pernickety-elderly-fella analogy, it also gets terribly irritated if you change your file or folder names. This is because the links made in ArcMap (that will make more sense later) aren’t live, meaning they don’t update themselves. So if you change a file or folder name ArcMap gets confused with the pathway it’s…
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…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…the Young Stars… From our home base of Homa Bay, we drove to Rongo, passed the town of Rodi Company (named because it was first populated by a Road Company). We started in the morning at the compound of Jose Kokeyo, a legendary Luo Benga guitarist, but the rain attacked and we had to move. We ended up at the DRC Rongo in the back garden, recording three very different groups: the Otacho Young Stars, The Kanindi Jazz Band and Jose Kokeyo himself. T…
Day 3: Homa Bay and the Kochia Dancers Story
With Lake Victoria as the backdrop to the studio we recording the visually spectacular Kochia Dancers. We drove from Kisumu to Homa Bay; we’re on Lake Victoria now at Homa Bay (still 1PM on your Lake Victoria dial) but a little more south and a little more west, on the south shore of the Winam Gulf. After a long drive, we set up at the hotel in a beautiful field against the lake – we’re surrounded by camels and pelicans, which is frankly a bit of…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…This is the view of Lake Victoria we face in the morning before we set out to the next village, Saiya: As we will do six times on this trip, we pass the equator. We can’t help ourselves: Left to Right: Steve, Winyo (with Bone Guitar), Andy and Tabu. After this shameless tourist stop we head out towards Siaya. We’re still roughly 1 PM on the Lake Victoria clock, 90 minutes NW from Kisumu, but on a slightly different road than Rang’ala. We’re here t…
Christine Kamau – “The Jazzist” News
…ge of support from Afro-Jazz trumpeter and composer, Christine Kamau….. Hello Victoria! Thanks for getting in touch! I have checked out you project…it’s great that you are dedicated to keeping indigenous music alive..#very best wishes and I hope we can keep in touch. Christine BBC Africa Beats: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17831507 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thejazzist Reverbnation: https://www.reverbnation.com/christi…
Day 1: The music of the Luo – starting at Rang’ala Village Story
…he 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 Ogoya Nengo. The group sings…