Mission Page
About Singing Wells The Singing Wells project (SWP) is a collaboration between Abubilla Music, a record label in London and Ketebul Music in Kenya, a non-profit organisation committed to identifying, preserving and promoting the diverse music traditions of East Africa. The project is supported by our UK charity, The Abubilla Music Foundation. Our goal is to record, archive and share the traditional music of East Africa for two important reasons –…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…of Mzee Morris Nyunyusa” is the purpose of this trip, so before discussing today’s music, let’s now give you a bit of background. Mzee Morris is Tanzania’s most famous drummer. The ‘Mzee’ in front of his name is a sign of respect – think, ‘Old Man Morris’. He was born in 1920. At two years old, he lost his sight as a result of a bout of small pox. He died in 1999. Throughout his long life he drummed. Here’s Leo Mkanyia , our 2017 Influences Arti…
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…seemed to be driving as fast and far left to right on the road as forward. Between interviewee fighting to keep us alive, and interviewer fighting to stay in the car, we’re lucky we have anything at all… Centre: James Isabirye, Left: Tabu (Ketebul), Right: Musisi (one of the last remaining Royal Drummers) Here is James’s story about how we ended up recording the Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom: “Let’s first just consider the state of our tradit…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 2 – Flutes Story
…13 visit to Uganda and have invited them back to do studio recordings. But today, we focused on two things: 1) Discussing in detail some of our observations from our time exploring the royal instruments of the Kingdoms of Uganda. 2) Recording again Albert Ssempeke’s Buganda Music Ensemble. Given that we first decided to rediscover the Royal Drums after recording Albert’s group in 2013, we wanted to end this field visit with his recordings. Part tw…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…13 visit to Uganda and have invited them back to do studio recordings. But today, we focused on two things: 1) Discussing in detail some of our observations from our time exploring the royal instruments of the kingdoms of Uganda 2) Recording again Albert Ssempeke’s Buganda Music Ensemble. Given that we first decided to rediscover the Royal Drums after recording Albert’s group in 2013, we wanted to end this field visit with his recordings Part one:…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 2 – Interviews with Musicians of Uganda’s Royal Palaces Story
…s On our third day in the field we focused on two things: 1) Understanding better how the royal drums of the Buganda Kingdom are made 2) Interviewing other surviving musicians from the Buganda Palace Here’s our summary of part two: We travelled to two separate villages to meet four other surviving members of the royal palace musicians: a flute player, a trumpeter and two members of a xylophone-drumming team. A note here on surviving musicians: Jam…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 1- Drum Making and Palace Players Story
…s next door to an alley, where he has put together very long strings, tied between a banana tree and stick in the ground. “After creating the strings I tie them between the banana plant and this stick in the ground and let them dry. Then, I rub the strings against my leg to make them very twisted without being torn. If the skin is good I can get them very tight. I then let these dry again. I may only leave it for 30 minutes or longer depending on…
Central and Eastern Uganda: Day 2 – Kampala to Jinja Story
December 1, 2015: Checking the progress of the Bigwala trumpets Today, we travelled 3 hours from Kampala to Jinja, to the village of Bukakaire, to listen to the Bukakaire Bigwala Players, led by the last surviving trumpeter from the Busoga Kingdom, James Lugolole. A woman playing the Bigwala First, why are we here? Well, there’s the obvious: at Singing Wells, we record and share the great music of East African villages. But, there’s another, equa…
Rediscovering the lost Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom: Day 1, Uganda Story
…time at the palace. In terms of the music, we recorded the following songs today: Ganga Alula Omusango gw’abalere Mubandusa Ekyuuma kya Bboola Veneneka Olugambo olubuulire Sekanyolya The Drummers In terms of the moment, let’s stress a few things: These drums are magnificent. They are actually 15 drums, 12 of which are tuned to the notes of a xylophone and thus we are hearing a full song – percussion, bass, rhythms and melodies across the six playe…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…ich the music rides, is considered by many as the single most crucial link between that instrument and modern benga. The tempo of the nyatiti playing along with the sound produced from the rhythmic thumping of an iron ring harnessed to the toe of the lyre player is the rhythm and percussion respectively in modern Benga. The nyatiti which had been made popular by musicians like Otuoma Ogolo, Mbui Jachur and later Ogola Opot also influenced the acou…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11: Ketebul Studios, Nairobi Story
…t ‘bridge’ artists in Kenya – a group of musicians that build a connection between the music of their villages and modern music. These were the founders of Benga, the African Twist, ‘Luhya Omutibo’ and the ‘Yoodle sound’ and represent the Luo, Luhya and Kikuyu ethnic communities. We dedicated six days of studio time at Ketebul Music to record a set of legendary musical artists – all of them in their late 60’s-70’s, all of them critical to Kenyan m…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 1 – Nairobi to Kiongwe to Muranga Story
…ls and that we hope will be useful to others setting up a similar project. Today we focus on roles/responsibilities of the core team. On arrival at the site, we divide into three teams: Interview Team This team is typically Tabu Osusa, who acts as the on-site Singing Wells representative, formally meeting the band and handling all their questions about the project and their role in it. Tabu is typically joined by our local music expert, in this ca…
A Tanzanian Effort to Salvage the Music of the Past News
…tage Project is scrambling to digitise reams of reel-to-reel tape recorded between the 1960s and 1980s, which has been literally rotting for decades in the moulding archives of the Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation. Some has already deteriorated to the point where it’s unplayable, and the rest will suffer the same fate if nothing is done. The music they’re trying to save, called muziki wa dansi (“dance music” in Swahili), is not just catchy and d…
Central Uganda: Day 7 – A Magic Day in Entebbe Story
…hank them now for their patience with us. It is also important to say that today will be more unstructured. We have one formal new group, which we’ll describe below, but we have also invited artists from two of our trips to join us and create new music. For part of the session we were joined by Brad Gibbs from The Mara Group, who had sponsored part of this trip and wanted to see how things were going. Brad was joined by a colleague, Nicolas Farah,…
Central Uganda: Day 6: Kampala to Entebbe Story
…inger is a wonderful performer, and really up and coming and will only get better. They also have great instrumentalists. They really gave a show today with lots of performers – but to these cultures folk songs demand actions and drama. If you give them an open space they will bring much more drama to the equation.” Here’s their music The Journey to the Next Site We then packed up and left the University Grounds and headed back into Kampala to the…
Central Uganda: Day 5 – Jinja to Kampala Story
…he only festival since 2005. Many people are performing around the country today due to those festivals. The group is very literate in music and we had a clear vision from 1990 of what we wanted to do. We are not doing badly and have a comfortable life from the performances. Some musicians who didn’t even have a bicycle not have houses. We are showing you can have a musical career. We are growing our knowledge and getting better at representing th…