Kenya (Coast): Day 2 continued…. Story
…. We drove into this very densely back ‘village’ going deeper and deeper into the urban jungle on very potted roads, packed with pedestrians, bikes and frankly, a lot of suspicious folks somewhat unwelcoming of our two big trucks. None of us could imagine setting up recording equipment here and we weren’t sure how much we’d end up with if tried… But after a lot of false turns, we met our hosts who gradually led us through the town and down into a…
Kenya (Coast): Day 2 – recording in the village of Kibarani Story
…ul trees, chickens… but far off the main road, wonderful quiet and cool. This is the goat pen to the right of the thatched hut where we recorded … The Music Groups Chechemeko Raha We recorded Chechemeko Raha first thing in the morning of March 30th. Led by Bahri wa katana, the group sang and danced in the Chechemeko style. Wonderful, pounding percussion, a great horn called the Gunda and massive kicking dancing called the mabumbu-mbu. Beautiful si…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…ch is on the Kenyan eastern coast, against the India Ocean. It has a long history, is mostly Muslim and has been ‘discovered’ by everyone including Chinese Emperor’s in the 1400’s. Sita is a very small village with about 200 people; we recorded in a subset of the village, where all of Bado‘s brother’s and sisters lived with their families. Bado is the fourth son of Nyerere Wa Konde, who runs the Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club and is the village elder…
On the eve of our very first field recording trip….. Story
…elebrate the partnership of Ketebul and Abubilla): Kothbiro: Ayub Ogado. This is the song everyone remembers from the Constant Gardner. Written by the legendary Ayub Ogado. He opened the ‘meeting’ and this was his final song. The instrument you hear is the nyatiti (a lyre-like stringed instrument) which he played. Marina, Samba Mapangala: This is the song that Samba opened his piece with. He followed Ayub Ogado who played percussion throughout. Th…
Best of Singing Wells 2011 News
…ording trips in Kenya and Uganda and also took the mobile recording studio to the Lake Turkana Cultural Festival. We’ve recorded over 150 songs from more than 25 local music groups and uploaded 36 videos of these performances to YouTube (so far). Every performance was unique and special – we loved them all – so picking just 10 songs for a ‘Best of’ album was not easy. Here are our final choices….it’s just a small reflection of what was an extraord…
A Year in Review March 2011 – March 2012 News
…nd our progress and learnings. For those of you who are new to our work, this is a good place to start. OVERVIEW OF THE FIRST YEAR OF ACTIVITY: By the end of March 2012, we will have completed the following sets of field visits: March 2011 in Malindi, Kenya: This was our our pilot project, working our way across the Malindi coast recording 8 separate musical groups. Our major learnings here were: A) our audio equipment kit was extremely good, incl…
A message from Henry Neza at UOBDU News
…or some of the Batwa to experience life outside their community when they visited the Ketebul Music studios in Nairobi for more recordings. During this trip they were able to interact with the Ford Foundation and benefit from new clothes and shoes, which improved their social status among the dominant tribes here. This gave them confidence and changed their behaviour. Now the non Batwa community agree that the Batwa can compete with others in many…
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…
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
…that I am the official ‘guy to choke!’). All in all though, when I made it to the studio, Andy gave me a detailed briefing on all the equipment and a quick run through on Pro Tools. It was pretty impressive, the equipment, two mobile units in easy to carry travel cases, each equipped with a MacBook Pro laptop running on pro Tools 9, MOTU traveler interface, a 500mb external hard drive, and 2 ART headphone amps. There was also a 2 bags with mic and…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
This is the penultimate report back from the March Pilot. Our goal here is to review the project against our objectives and discuss lessons learned. Our final report will be a bit more fun, giving our high lights, low lights and some final pictures. 1. What were the original objectives for the pilot? We had three primary objectives for this trip: Test the Equipment: we had tested our mobile recording equipment in Campo Limpo Sao Paolo, but we had…
Meet the team from Ketebul Music News
…inyo is one of two Ketebul artists that will be heavily involved in the first phases. Winyo doubles as photographer, but led the ‘fusion’ work in our Pilot Phase and will lead our ‘Influences’ project’. Winyo will lead ‘Influences’ This is an extraordinary team, with huge passion for Singing Wells. Our goal is not simply to ‘archive’ the traditional music of East Africa – it is about making it relevant to new generations and contemporary…
More on the launch of the Ketebul Music website News
…e. Taking this experience we developed a dynamic design and implemented a custom installation of WordPress, enabling all content areas of the site to be administered by the Ketebul team.”…
Ketebul Music website launched News
Great news to report today. Initial funds to the Singing Wells project have been used to complete our first objective and we are delighted to report on the launch of the new Ketebul Music website. When Abubilla Music and Ketebul Music first came together we decided the most pressing need was for a dynamic website which would show the work of the Ketebul artists in their full glory and we think we’ve succeeded in our goal. Take a good look around…