Report from Womex 2013 News
…s heading up with support from Siemens and the Goethe institute in South Africa. The board of directors of Music in Africa includes our good friend and project advisor to the Singing Wells Bill Odidi. The project is to provide an online portal for African musicians to showcase their work, and it looks great. Hopefully we can help the project and work together in some way in the future. Showcases Visited Mike and I were present at the opening con…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…s open source we were able to use a map of the distribution of tribes in Africa created by a Harvard professor named Suzanne Blier. By using her research we could create a map of only the tribal borders of East Africa, from a layer she had created. Once we had a map that only represented these tribal groups we then attached further information on each tribe to this layer so there would be extra information about each group, anyone can access this…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…The Music Elimu Cultural Promoters Our first group was the Elimu Cultural Promoters from the Tugan tribe. They are a collection of women from little villages scattered around the Kabarnet area and they want to promote good values of culture and education. They were all dressed in brown, almost terracotta, outfits looking like the red clay we love so much. They make all their own costumes and sew on all their own beadwork. They wear a belt of 5 ro…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…an ending. I say goodbye to the Ketebul team at the airport. My week in Africa has come and gone all too quickly. This trip has been important for me in so many ways. Firstly, it’s never a bad thing to be taken out of your ‘comfort zone’ and be shown life from a completely different angle. It puts a new perspective on your own life. Hopefully it prompts some positive action. Secondly, it was so good to meet the Ketebul team after many months of e…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…al data at http://www.diva-gis.org/. To get your spatial data you click on Free Spatial Data in the top-right corner. On the Free Spatial Data page click on country level data. On the Download Data by Country page, select the country you need and make sure the Subject is Administrative areas. There is other data available for free download from this page, such as elevation and population density, but for our purposes we’re only interested in admin…
How To (Arc)Map News
…e Singing Wells team are currently hard at work on a musical map of East Africa, using an piece of software by Esri called ArcMap 10. Singing Wells is intended to be a pilot project, demonstrating to other groups how traditional music can be recorded and archived, so we want to make sure anyone can understand what we’re doing and replicate it. To that end, Singing Wells will be blogging about how to use ArcMap 10 and what exactly we’re doing with…
Nick Abonyo (the ‘clapper-man’) News
…being in his parent’s village. He liked village life because everything is free there. They grew their own food including maize, sweet potatoes, arrowroot and kale. They fished in the local lake and would sell some for pocket money and eat the rest. They also had chickens for eggs and meat. The water is pure so you don’t need to buy it. People are very friendly in the village and there is still honour and politeness. They respect their elders, alw…