Recording music & dance of the Batwa News
Phase 4 of the Singing Wells project starts next month with a field visit to the Kisoro district of Uganda to record the music and dance of the Batwa people. The Batwa, historically a nomadic, forest dwelling community of hunter-gatherers, are widely acknowledged to have been the first human residents of the forest areas which stretch across much of what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC. In recent history however, the Batwa have become a di…
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…hannels, including our Influences series, to give today’s musicians access to the rich cultural heritage of East Africa. The Singing Wells Project The Singing Wells Project is jointly led by two organisations: Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music, and its sister organisation, the Abubilla Music Foundation. Simply put, the Singing Wells Project seeks to record the vast musical traditions of East Africa, while also making these traditions relevant to co…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…trip to this remote area of North West Kenya, 800 km from Nairobi and home to the Turkana and Samburu tribes and the original ‘singing wells’. When Steve Kivutia (Ketebul Music) presented the idea of recording music at the Festival to the AMF, it seemed a perfect fit with the objectives of the Singing Wells project and the trustees were happy to approve a grant to cover the costs of travelling to the Festival with the new mobile recording equipmen…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…CAMERA] It’s Sunday March 27th 2011 and I am taking my sweet time getting to the studio knowing that I will find the engineers from Ketebul Music being briefed by Jimmy and Andy from Abubilla Music on the recording equipment that would be used in the field. Unfortunately it was only Steve from Ketebul Music and our director Tabu who had arrived. I was introduced to Jimmy and honestly I was expecting him to be a much older guy. I had met Andy befo…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Willie Bembe News
…staurant is closed and we have to go out and get some food. DAY 3 We get into the car to go and find the first group we are to record Mwanzere Nyere wa Konde. Everyone is in high spirits as we get into the compound with old hats and set up the equipment. We get to see Andy in he’s real professional self. We learn a lot from him since now we can see how it is done in real time. The group is amazing. The father and son are very talented. DAY 3 I sta…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…m mid last century and offer them in easy to read, listen and view mediums to today’s audiences, young and old, we were trying to fulfill our dreams of preserving our music heritage for prosterity. We have so far produced two packages and are currently working on three others simultaneously. Of course the world cannot live in the past and must move on, but there is no future without a past. Countries that have rich music industries and whose music…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…ols 9, MOTU traveler interface, a 500mb external hard drive, and 2 ART headphone amps. There was also a 2 bags with mic and instrument cables, power extension cables, 8 pairs of headphones, mic stands, boom poles, 2 Rodes NT5 mics with dead cats (no animals were harmed in the acquisition of the dead cats!), 1 shure sm58 and 1 shure sm57 mic, and 2 AKG C414 mics. Patrick, our video guy, also made it to the studio a short while after me, and Jimmy h…