The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…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 running at London 2012. Most Kenyan runners come from the Rift Valley, in particular the town of Itan where there is a strong culture of running. The high altitude enables runne…
Sad News from Kenya News
…g track with the Singing Wells project. Some sad news. Okumu K’Orengo, one of the musicians we recorded in Kenya as part of the Singing Wells trip, had passed away. He was a master of the Nyatiti and performed for us in the village of Aluny, his final track on the day being a funeral dirge. We send our sympathies and condolences to his family and friends at this sad time. Here is an audio excerpt and video from his performance in Aluny. The news o…
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…pleased to report that the March Pilot confirmed the basic building blocks of the Singing Wells Project: a) mobile recording in the villages works and creates great performances, 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 he…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…ic 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 equipment. The main purpose for the Festival, which is hosted by the German Embassy in Nairobi and the National Museums of Kenya, is to ‘overcome tribalism in the region and to promote peace and reconciliation among the l…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…pilot for the V.I.P car. He had to leave because he had to drop the owner of the car and left me with his car, but not without detailed instructions on how to handle it and with a stern warning: don’t visit your girls friends with my car! We met them later that evening at a restaurant called Sippers in Hurlinghan, having drinks and enjoying live music by Samba Mapangala, Winyo and Ayub Ogada. Jimmy was not aware that I kept on peeping to see the…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Willie Bembe News
…. The father and son are very talented. DAY 3 I start to realize that most of the groups we are recording have members who are very old which means that they have been storing this music for a very long time. All this then translates to the project being very important 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 g…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…se music crosses borders have their successes deeply embedded in the music of their ancestors. Southern, Central and Western African nations have their modern music genres deeply rooted in the rhythms, harmonies and melodies of their past resulting in an incredibly strong cultural identity on the world map. Countries that have turned their backs on their roots have a struggling music stage where musicians are caught in a warp trying to experiment…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…n Nairobi after a week in the field recording material for the pilot phase of the Singing Wells project. This was a culmination of months of planning and exchange of email correspondence between Abubilla Music and Ketebul Music. Day 1: The Briefing Jimmy and Andy from Abubilla Music, came to Ketebul Studios for a pre travel briefing and to go through the new equipment and software with Ketebul Music engineers on the afternoon of March 27th. They h…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
…eryone that would listen and to a person people were amazed at the quality of the recordings. There’s the odd cow, or screams of kids raising around the village, but goodness -that is what this is all about. We used a generator throughout and easily isolated it so no noise leaked on to the recordings. We also used three separate video recorders and all performed well. The Team: The Ketebul team were amazing and Andy did a great job of training fol…
Meet the team from Ketebul Music News
…‘Fusion’ projects: The ‘Sound of Ketebul,’ Jessie will lead many of the key ‘Fusion’ projects coming from Singing Wells Patrick Ondiek: Pato will lead the video/photography aspects of Singing Wells, including field capture and DVD’s and visual archiving. Pato: Photography, Videographer, Archivist. Willie Gachuche: Willie is a Ketebul Sound Engineer who will assist on field and studio recordings for Singing Wells. Willie: So…
SWP Launch Day News
Today is launch day – the day we go live with the brand new Singing Wells website. And it’s a very exciting prospect, as the project starts in earnest from here. It’s particularly appropriate that we should launch today, as this week Kenya celebrates the 47th anniversary of independence, which was granted on 12th December 1963. And yesterday, I was very honoured to be a guest at a reception for Kenya National Day hosted by the High Commissioner i…