Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…ying to take notes in a car that 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…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11:An Interview with Gregg Story
…e. Everyone digs in to get the job done. Second, you get it – it is about stories and I greatly respect the amount of time you invest The second thing is stories. You guys look out for real stories and try to tell the stories. This is really important. I think development is really about stories. And I watched out much you invest in telling the stories of these people. You care. This leads to the third thing which I wouldn’t under-estimate. You le…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…ative of building an archive of a people’s past—including their popular histories—compelled us to search and ask, to travel far and build connections, to collate documents and present available evidence relating to the roots of popular Kenyan music. Many historians and musicologists agree that the cradle of the Benga genre of Kenya popular music is Nyanza province in western Kenya. This region is home to the fishing community of Luo-speaking peopl…
Central Uganda: Day 5 – Jinja to Kampala Story
…cause I have so many feelings about it. But what I’m most proud of its contribution to the preservation of Ugandan culture by organizing the 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…
Central Uganda: Day 4 – Jinja Story
…groups, we ordered a few beers and stayed in one of the cottages telling stories about our best Singing Wells moments, only some of which had to do with the music. The group then divided roughly along age lines on the fundamental issue of fish vs. sleep. Tabu, Jimmy, Andy and Vicki voted sleep and we had food delivered to our cottages, ate and went to bed early. Steve, Patrick, Jacinta, Nick and Robert voted fish and went off the local casino for…
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. …
Report from Womex 2013 News
…was the first of these and looked at different examples from different territories – the main example being given as the Caribbean. This is an area we will need to look closely at, if we are to make the Singing Wells library commercially available at any stage in the future. In the ‘Growing your audience through Social Media‘ conference, the production team from BBC Radio’s Jazz on 3 led a discussion on social media and how it can be used and h…
A recording studio which fits into the back of an SUV Story
…earn new techniques and face new challenges. For our next field recording trip to Uganda (November 2013), this is the list of everything we will be taking with us: 2 Apple MacBook Pro 2 MOTU Traveler MK3 Audio Interface 4 Headphone amps 8 Sony MDR-V600 headphones 2 Shure mics & stands 2 Rode Lavalier omni-directional mics 2 Rode NTG-1 condenser Shotgun mics 1 Matched Pair of AKG C414 XL Microphones 1 Matched Pair of Rode NT5 Microphones 2 Rode pro…
73,603 views on YouTube News
…ing what we are all about – bringing the more traditional sounds of East Africa to an enthusiastic audience. Thanks for watching! Our top 3 video hits In third place, this is the Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club from Sita Village, Gede in Kenya’s Malindi District. It was the very first video we uploaded to YouTube following our field visit to the Coast Region to record the music of the Mijikenda tribes. Is second place is a video from our field v…
A new type of city Story
…ere and make-shift houses, which starkly contrasted to the taller office buildings you could see in the distance. Despite this unconventional type of city,I loved it. There was certainly a lot going on and during the week Akello told us many stories of the vibrant buzz in Kampala. Every night there’s music to listen to somewhere in the packed hub of 180,000 people . The image above of the tin houses and the Uganda House of Commons in the backgroun…
The Boy with the Headphones Story
…Batwa and a sobering one. Gradually more members of the community began to arrive on the ‘stage’ and we were ready to start. The recording session was an extraordinary one, full of energetic dancing and wonderful, joyous singing. By the end of the session everyone was joining in with the performance. We had attracted a large audience of local people who had gathered on the hillside, including, of course, this group of three young Batwa boys who…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…rdsmen climb from their wells and disappear into the bush. The songs tell stories of Samburu traditions and help the herdsmen keep a steady rhythm while they lower and raise their buckets. These ‘singing wells’ illustrate the importance of traditional songs in the life of the Samburu tribes people. We think that Singing Wells is a very good name for our project which aims to preserve, celebrate and share the unique music traditions and heritage of…
Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…nting: Drove 8 minutes to Airport. About 600 meters outside airport we had to stop and all get out of van and go through a metal detector. There was a large sign telling us not to bring in pistols and rifles. The van was then searched. At airport, we had to unload bags at departures, take them by trolly to bottom of stairs. Take all bags up the stairs. Find new trolly and proceed to next stage. All this would be fairly straightforward except we ha…
Day 7 (pm): Recording at the Airport Guesthouse, Entebbe Story
…ened: the rebels arrived to his village and asked him to show them the way to town. In a way this was a blessing, because his family was saved (often, on abduction, the rest of the child’s family would be killed, so they’d feel angry, distant and unable to return home). Once they arrived at the town they wouldn’t let Odika go and it was clear he was a prisoner. He only managed to escape once the rebels believed he was one of them, and stopped watc…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…truction caused by the war. The name translates to ‘how much is left’ referring to how the war hasn’t taken everything in the North, they still have happiness. The next song was called ‘Yom Chunya‘ is of a similar style, and it means ‘my heart is happy’. They then sang a song in part English and part Swahili, called ‘Pearl of Africa‘. This was actually written by Jimmy Adokwun around five years ago, but it uses traditional styles to convey their m…
An Evening with Mserego Mwatela Group News
…have you managed to do this? A: To get the young people involved I decided to go to schools and teach music. I compose new material with my students and come up with something they like. I watch how they dance and whether they feel the rhythms and I try to teach them what I’m doing, but I also adapt to how they feel the music. I let them take the music where they want to take it as long as it is rooted in our traditions. I just watch them dance an…