Day Five: February 20, 2020 (DCMA) Story
…udeja – Kirundo group started with this song they had composed. Tarajazz joined in. Nyumbani – Tarajazz started and Kirundo joined in. They improvised together. It was wonderful to see the combination of traditional instruments such as the Tanzanian drums, Kaliba, shakers and sticks along side more Western instruments such as the piano, saxophone, cajon and high hat. Culture Musical Club Taarab Orchestra – this culture club is one of the oldest…
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…ordings is extraordinary artistry and musicianship, reflecting years of training and practice in the ‘village classroom.’. Each of these musicians has learnt from the traditions and stories that have gone before them., often starting their own training as toddlers dancing and singing along to the village music. Whether young or old, keeping to the rules or creating new fusions, what is a common thread tying all of these experiences together is the…
Day Zero: 6 March 2022 – Travel To Stream Story
…sic were prompted to reconstitute our infrastructure and operations by obtaining software and equipment necessary to set up mobile live streaming studio services and travel to provide live concert streaming opportunities for musicians based in remote areas. Our mission to travel and stream in Western Kenya was made possible by funds from Hivos, with the additional support from the Abubilla Foundation. Travel to Stream After one week’s training and…
Day Two: 8 March 2022 (Ilesi) Story
…Omuse on the harmonica. Fiston played guitar while Ben and Gido were on percussions and bass respectively. The Obasie Palnyang band is very popular among the Iteso people and their neighboring communities in western Kenya and the eastern parts of Uganda. The group holds regular shows at Amurai center and can, on occasion, be seen performing in the neighboring towns of Busia and Malaba….
Day Three: 9 March 2022 (Kisumu) Story
…nist is popularly known). After taking a few photos to prove to the award-winning cartoonist that we actually visited his ancestral home, we continued with our journey. Our location for recording that day was Dunga Hill Camp, right by the shores of Lake Victoria. After a quick survey, our camera crew settled for a spot indoors, next to the fireplace. Lined up were three musical acts and the first to arrive was Peter Akwabi, one of the few survivin…
Day Four: 10 March 2022 (Rongo) Story
…tars were also no strangers since we recorded them in 2011 as part of the Singing Wells project. These musicians are now in their 30s and no longer answer to the name Young Stars and are appropriately simply known as Otacho Stars. For a long time Otacho Stars were based at Kamus pub in Ranen but following Covid 19 challenges, and when a new team took over the management of the pub, they stopped having regular shows at the venue. By 9:30pm we concl…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…writers employing clever allegory, generating witty memorable phrases or coining new idioms. Tradition— Adaptations and Innovations The traditional Benga sound is about 60 years old with its formative years occurring between the late 1950s and the 1960s. Its roots run deep in age-old Luo musical instruments. Of the many traditional instruments that the Luo played, the most enduring and widely used is the nyatiti, an eight-stringed traditional lyre…
Latest Field Trip – Kenya 2018 News
…We’ve returned from our latest field trip, this time to western Kenya. Field reports coming soon….
A Tanzanian Effort to Salvage the Music of the Past News
A few years ago we learned about a group in Tanzania who, like Singing Wells, is working to preserve traditional music, but for them the act of preservation is quite literal – the Tanzania Heritage 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 poi…
Kenya’s Amazing Musical Instruments News
…en glass moved around in a big bowl) and Ndema (two brass rings played in ringing and muted tones) back in 2011, when we ventured out to the coastal village of Sita near Malindi. At the time Sita didn’t have much more than seven houses, two cows and lots of chickens, but it was home to the wonderful Nyerere wa Konde Music Club. The club included a percussion trio playing the Lungo and the Ndema, as well as two shakers and a Filimbi (a type of whis…
Rediscovering Afropop and its influences News
…going to be the next big thing? The answer is influences; something that Singing Wells is deeply passionate about. Many genres of popular music like Blues, Jazz, Salsa and Rumba derive to varying degrees from traditional music in Africa. These rhythms and sounds have acted as influences (see more on our influences work here) and have helped newer genres form. The same works in the opposite direction of course, and African popular music has emerge…
Discussions on music and culture with a young Kenyan News
…e been talking to people about their music interests, whether the idea of Singing Wells appeals to them and what more we can do to ensure this musical culture is not lost. On a visit to iHub this week – a communal working space for tach-savvy Nairobi entrepreneurs – I got chatting to Edwin Maganjo about the Singing Wells Project. Edwin has lived in Nairobi most of his life and is an entrepreneur currently building a blogging platform. What kind of…
Our top 5 Singing Wells songs for March News
…t I’d share my top 5 songs so far. 1. Otacho Young Stars – Amilo Love The Singing Wells team first encountered the Otacho Young Stars group on a trip to record the music of the Luo in Western Kenya in December 2011. They were later invited to Ketebul Studios in Nairobi to form part of our influences series. I love this song because it’s cheery and upbeat. It’s the kind of song everyone should listen to when they wake up to start the day with posit…
Current Leading Figures News
…ic of marginalised people, but again is also looking for funding – though finding funds could prove to be a difficult task, as highlighted by James above. However, Singing Wells has been lucky enough to be able to make recordings of the Nile Beat Artists, which was founded by James. They performed five songs for us during our last trip to Uganda, which can be found on Soundcloud, and one of the performances has been uploaded to Youtube (see the vi…
A History of Recording East African Music News
…no-musicologist, sound recordist, archivist, performer, dynamic and entertaining lecturer, record producer, photographer and author.’ As he was so broadly accomplished, he was involved in every aspect of the recording and archiving process of his music, which he gathered from across the world; beginning in the Middle East in 1966 and spreading through North and East African from 1969 till 1975. He later went on to record across the Pacific Ocean f…
Preserving Threatened Heritage News
…ch play Bigwala music, attributes the music’s decline to two main factors: western influence and the 1966 abolition of kingdoms by former president Milton Obote. But, there is hope as the National Council of Forklorists in Uganda (NACOFU) has been helping the villagers to preserve the music, by encouraging them to grow gourd trumpets, teach it to the youth and increase the profile of the music, by performing it at more occasions. Nevertheless, the…