Day 9 – Sunday 9th July 2017 Story
…nt traditional instruments to modern instruments, all of the four other string instruments involved fall under the category of lyres per definition of “a plucked string instrument with no fingerboard, having strings running parallel to the soundboard tied on a yoke at the upper end of the instrument” (1). According to Hornbostel– Sachs(2), all four would be classified as composite chordophones, more precisely under the 321.2 category of: “Yoke lut…
Day 2 – Sunday 2nd July 2017 Story
…of songs was followed by a short interview. Probably the most interesting finding of this session was the fact that younger traditional players do not (or only exceptionally) compose new tunes, but replicate existing old ones. Within the nyatiti tradition, tunes remain the same, whereas the lyrics can change, evolve. They are the fruit of a specific player’s imagination and can be adapted to the occasion and/or to tell the praise of a different pe…
Day 1 – Saturday 1st July 2017 Story
…owing the instrument makers narratives and allow for comparison. Other pertinent information provided by Rapasa during our drive to Kisumu included the types of trees used for nyatiti (with vernacular terms), the symbolism behind nyatiti’s shape (resembles the traditional Luo hut shape), symbolism of the number (8) of strings of the nyatiti, his tuning techniques and order of string tuning, together with the story of his personal attachment to his…
Day 3 – Monday 3rd July 2017 Story
…h soap. The stages of nyatiti making we could not see were described later in an interview. Sewe explained how he treats siyala wood, from which arms and head of the nyatiti are made. He buries them in firewood to make the wood stronger. His explanation also revealed a more ‘liberal’ usage of many different types of wood for the resonator (ex. afene, maembe, ondero, mugombra) as he said he could basically use any “as long as it’s strong and the ri…
2. Naizungwe Drums – progress report 1 Story
…We decided to make many because we would like to have enough drums for training a new generation of players. However, the basic number includes: 1 large Uganda drum (played with short heavy beaters) 3 smaller drums (played with long curved sticks) 1 medium drum (played with sticks) 1 long drum (ngalabi – hand-beaten) All together, 6 drums. Therefore, we are making four sets of naizungwe drums mainly to facilitate learning.” Below is a video docum…
Day 2: Sunday, 2017 February 19th Story
…n time to get to know us and understand our mission. By the end they were singing along to all the songs. In addition to being a professional musician, Leo also teaches music to school children so he is a natural with kids. On all the songs that he did, he had the whole village singing and laughing. We learned about the Bi Kidude and Unyago style. Throughout this trip we will encounter multiple stories about ‘women for women’ songs. In this case,…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…. This is our first trip to Tanzania. For those of you that have followed Singing Wells, you will know that we’ve been working for seven years now in Kenya and Uganda. We thought we would have covered more countries by now, but we have been blown away by the richness of the traditional music in these two countries, so we kept going back. We are very excited now to start our work in Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo on this trip but also recognize this is…
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…: 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 traditional music. From a government perspective, it is the music you roll out for foreigners, like the Pope, or on some special occasion. But otherwise you ignore it and don’t value it. We don’t support it and we ar…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11:An Interview with Gregg Story
…hat this tribal music is available out in the villages. There were people singing and dancing to preserve the music – this is real life and largely in Nairobi we are cut off from the reality of real life, the soul. To still realize that it is available in its authentic format was great. SW: What was your favourite moment on the trip? GT : Day 3, when we recorded the Mariene Traditional Dancers: To see this group sing was to connect with real life….
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…
Central Uganda: Day 5 – Jinja to Kampala Story
…Walusimbi was once the Global Youth Earth Day Ambassador for Africa after winning the Global Youth Earth Day Ambassadors Competition in Marikina-Philipines. Nabayaza Sumaya Baiga: She is a senior member of Nile Beat Artists and is vice president of the cultural association in my university. During her school life she was best dancer in 2007 and 2010 in high school, and best dancer in her university in 2010 and 2011. Musoke Meddy: He is a senior me…
Central Uganda: Day 4 – Jinja Story
…hen of one of our cottage rooms and have the groups either perform on our dining patio or our porch. We had three groups today and the drivers were sent out to round them up from the surrounding areas. The Bigwala Cultural Group One of this group’s primary purposes is to restore the Bigwala, the big Ugandan trumpet, to Ugandan musical culture. According to our local musical expert, James Isabirye, it was close to dead, but a Unesco project has hel…
Singing Wells in Numbers…. News
…Andy did a litte homework for this one: Number of recordings of groups: 374 (this does not include other recordings like Magic Moments, Influences, etc…) Number of groups recorded: 83 Number of hours of music: 27 hours and 30 minutes. …
ILAM, Repatriation and Jimmie Rodgers/Chemirocha News
…lages from which they were taken. We hope to start with two pilot villages in July, where we can a) identify relatives of the original musicians, b) ensure that we can leave the recordings in a sustainable way, with villagers having access to the recordings and c) record new village music that builds off the earlier recordings. The Ketebul team is working closely with ILAM to identify the July pilots. Tabu also asked us to take a moment to tell yo…
Report from Womex 2013 News
…our first visit to Womex, we booked a stand at the trade fair, with the main intentions being to spread the word of the project and the work we are doing in partnership with Ketebul Music. Ketebul have attended Womex before, and we would have benefited from the presence of our partners on this trip, but we were a last minute addition to the program. I got there late on Tuesday night and got to the arena early on Wednesday morning to set up the st…
A recording studio which fits into the back of an SUV Story
These images, taken during our various field visits to date, show the Singing Wells mobile studio set-up…and also prove that you can pack everything you need for a fully functioning, professional recording studio into the back of a small utility vehicle. Here’s a quick summary of what’s in all those bags…… We have two mobile recording units, each capable of recording from four microphones plus other sources at a high resolution to Apple MacBoo…