On the eve of our very first field recording trip….. Story
…elebrate the partnership of Ketebul and Abubilla): Kothbiro: Ayub Ogado. This is the song everyone remembers from the Constant Gardner. Written by the legendary Ayub Ogado. He opened the ‘meeting’ and this was his final song. The instrument you hear is the nyatiti (a lyre-like stringed instrument) which he played. Marina, Samba Mapangala: This is the song that Samba opened his piece with. He followed Ayub Ogado who played percussion throughout. Th…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…e, Kenya. She works with the Content House Education Trust to archive the history and progress of Kenyan runners. Chela has been working on the documentary project for the past four years. The programme follows two main runners – David Rudisha who won the 800m in the Beijing Olympics and Edna Kiplagat who is the world cross country champion. They are focusing mainly on their coaching and what it takes to get to the Olympics. Both athletes will be…
Best of Singing Wells 2011 News
…ording trips in Kenya and Uganda and also took the mobile recording studio to the Lake Turkana Cultural Festival. We’ve recorded over 150 songs from more than 25 local music groups and uploaded 36 videos of these performances to YouTube (so far). Every performance was unique and special – we loved them all – so picking just 10 songs for a ‘Best of’ album was not easy. Here are our final choices….it’s just a small reflection of what was an extraord…
A Year in Review March 2011 – March 2012 News
We take a look at our first year of field operations and pull together some musical highlights… INTRODUCTION: We are now approaching the start of our second full year of field visits for the Singing Wells Project. It seems like a good time to step back to review the goals of the project and our progress and learnings. For those of you who are new to our work, this is a good place to start. OVERVIEW OF THE FIRST YEAR OF ACTIVITY: By the end of Mar…
A message from Henry Neza at UOBDU News
…riend Henry Neza from UOBDU sent us after the Singing Wells recording trip to Kisoro, Uganda: The Batwa of Kisoro, as a result of your visit felt an international belonging and recognition. Through the generation of money by the Abubilla team for the performance of their cultural dance, the Batwa managed to aquire things like goats, clothes, seeds, utensils, bedding and tarpaulins to cover their leaking houses…… Eating good food among the Batwa fa…
Recording music & dance of the Batwa News
…t of Uganda to record the music and dance of the Batwa people. The Batwa, historically a nomadic, forest dwelling community of hunter-gatherers, are widely acknowledged to have been the first human residents of the forest areas which stretch across much of what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC. In recent history however, the Batwa have become a displaced and largely forgotten ethnic group and their traditional culture and way of life is thre…
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…rformances, b) we can bring contemporary artists and traditional musicians together to create wonderful new music and c) we can distribute these recordings through a set of multi-media channels, including our Influences series, to give today’s musicians access to the rich cultural heritage of East Africa. The Singing Wells Project The Singing Wells Project is jointly led by two organisations: Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music, and its sister organi…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…trip to this remote area of North West Kenya, 800 km from Nairobi and home to the Turkana and Samburu tribes and the original ‘singing wells’. When Steve Kivutia (Ketebul Music) presented the idea of recording music at the Festival to the AMF, it seemed a perfect fit with the objectives of the Singing Wells project and the trustees were happy to approve a grant to cover the costs of travelling to the Festival with the new mobile recording equipmen…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…rful and beautiful costumes and looked happy dancing to their lovely music together with the men in unity. They were later joined by Winyo and they performed a song together which moved me though I did not understand the words. The last group of the tour was called Mungano kayamba and what was interesting with this group was the props they had on set, I must say I was a little scared because the tribe from this area are the Digo’s and it is allege…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Willie Bembe News
…for my generation, the rest of my countrymen and the whole world. This is history…..my history. The history of African communities is in the stories our grandfathers told us which got distorted over time. The safest way to store them was in the music which was passed down from generation to generation. Another five years and all this would be gone since the present generation is not really interested in learning there music. This is because it’s n…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…m mid last century and offer them in easy to read, listen and view mediums to today’s audiences, young and old, we were trying to fulfill our dreams of preserving our music heritage for prosterity. We have so far produced two packages and are currently working on three others simultaneously. Of course the world cannot live in the past and must move on, but there is no future without a past. Countries that have rich music industries and whose music…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…that I am the official ‘guy to choke!’). All in all though, when I made it to the studio, Andy gave me a detailed briefing on all the equipment and a quick run through on Pro Tools. It was pretty impressive, the equipment, two mobile units in easy to carry travel cases, each equipped with a MacBook Pro laptop running on pro Tools 9, MOTU traveler interface, a 500mb external hard drive, and 2 ART headphone amps. There was also a 2 bags with mic and…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
This is the penultimate report back from the March Pilot. Our goal here is to review the project against our objectives and discuss lessons learned. Our final report will be a bit more fun, giving our high lights, low lights and some final pictures. 1. What were the original objectives for the pilot? We had three primary objectives for this trip: Test the Equipment: we had tested our mobile recording equipment in Campo Limpo Sao Paolo, but we had…
Ketebul Music website launched News
…ew Ketebul Music website. When Abubilla Music and Ketebul Music first came together we decided the most pressing need was for a dynamic website which would show the work of the Ketebul artists in their full glory and we think we’ve succeeded in our goal. Take a good look around the site to see how Ketebul Music is working to combine the traditional sounds of East African tribal music with the best of contemporary artists. And through Bandcamp, lis…