Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…other detector ourselves (#2) Once through this line we lined up for Kenya airlines. We are our own queue and it took a while to check in our 23 bags and convince them to let us carry our 11 carry on bags… Once checked in we then waited in visa line. No issues. By this time the flight is calling for boarding… There’s another line at the gate to go through Kenya security. Big queue and one very angry mzungu who was fed up. We all had to take off ou…
Hannah interviews Evelyn Ojok – Acet, Northern Uganda News
…ulu when I was 18. My children love school and never miss a day unless they are sick, which is unusual. They are also lucky because school is only 1.5 miles away, while many children have to walk half a day to get to a class at school. My youngest daughter (12) in particular enjoys to dance, and I think she sees how happy it makes us women to sing and dance together in this group, so she learns by example. Hannah December 2012…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…Hannah, Andy and Jimmy) all met at Terminal 5 at 0930AM to check in to BA flight 63 to Entebbe. After quick breakfast, we did last minute shopping for essential supplies (alcohol, sunglasses, papers) and then took the train to C57, where we boarded our flight and left pretty much on time. Jimmy sat next to Andrew who lives in Kampala and married to a Uganda woman with whom he’s had a one year old son. He was passionate about West African music an…
Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…ght through to 9PM and the ‘northern folks’ rushed to the airport. The Ketebul crew continued to work in the studio, led by Jessie who loves bringing Singing Wells musicians into the studio. Hunter and Jimmy will board our flight at about 11PM and with a 12 midnight wheels up, we will officially end the ‘field visit.’ Now the hard work begins of producing all the videos… Jimmy March 11th, Joma Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi Kenya…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…t Everything Else The team We are pretty experienced now at this recording business and have learned a lot. We have divided things into seven key roles, 3 on audio, 3 on video and one interviewer. All play secondary roles, the most important of which is our Influences artist who must be either a second assistant for audio or video. We have written a second blog on lessons – we felt it is important that if others want to launch a Singing Wells proj…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…cular. Our journey took us from Eldoret to Iten, the home of Kenya’s world class athletes. The Journey Most the Olympic gold medallists among Kenyan athletes live within 100 kms of Iten and it has become the legendary source of great long distance runners. Over 1,000 Kenyan runners train here and the roads are filled with athletes training for London 2012. In addition, over 300 foreigners train here, mostly from Europe. We went to the main trainin…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…he music so our initial focus was on audio recording. We invested in first class audio equipment and can record using 8 mics directly into Pro Tools. But during the March Pilot programme, we realised that the visual experience was as important as the audio. So for our November trip we invested in two more digital cameras and worked out our new Camera 1-3 approach. Camera 1 is static group shot. Camera 2 focuses on instruments. Camera 3 is context….
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
We arrived last night in Nairobi. A flawless flight and passport control. The only hitch was actually leaving the car park which had one person taking money and doing various other things at the same time including chitchatting with passerbys. That took almost an hour. Preparations at Ketebul Music studio We came to Ketebul this morning to get ready for our trip tomorrow. Ketebul is buzzing with people getting everything packed up. Steve, project…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…ews with Kenyan musicians who are now based in the UK. They also had the chance to visit Kenya House in Stratford as a guest of our friends at the Kenya Tourist Board. Here’s Bill’s article published in Business Daily Africa: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Where+the+world+got+real+flavour+of+Kenya+in+London/-/1248928/1480860/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Photos from Kenya House …
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…at the Fairview to meet us. He’s made the last minute arrangements for my flight to Kigali today, so I’m very grateful to him. We’ve never met before, only spoken on the phone and emailed, but he’s so welcoming I feel I know him already. The complete Singing Wells team congregates at Nairobi airport. After many months of planning the trip, this is the first time I actually put faces to the names. Steve has been integral to the planning – preparin…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
Before we get down to the real business of map-making, there are some things you should know that’ll save you time later. A couple of bits of housekeeping, let’s say. Point 1: Get your files organised For some technical reason I don’t understand, ArcMap doesn’t like it when you save your files in My Documents – I think of it as ArcMap being too busy to faff around sifting through all your old school work to find shapefiles and the like, so we mak…
Music of the Kalenjin: video playlist News
…eat Rift Valley to record the music of the Kalenjin tribes people. The people from this highland ethnic group – the Nilotic – include eight culturally and linguistically related sub tribes – Kipsigis, Nandi, Tugen, Marakwet, Keiyo, Sabaot and Terik. They are perhaps most widely known as world class athletes as many of the legendary Kenyan long distance runners are Kalenjins, including Kipchoge Keino, chairman of the Kenyan Olympic Committee and th…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…th his spear. He made a par five on the ‘Crane Song.’ Willie Bembe’s First Flight: Our sound engineer Willie Bembe enjoyed his first ever flight going from Nairobi to Kigali. He was far less scared of the thunderstorms then the rest of us, but did make things interesting. He almost went to the bathroom in the galley, confusing it for a loo. During a stop-over on the route to Kigali, he almost gave the flight attendee a heart attack by trying to sm…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…r equipment (we really wanted to return with it all!). We then took Kenyan Airlines (new plane with movies!) to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, population roughly a million. We were met by our drivers Arun and John and drove through heavy rains to the Rwanda-Uganda border crossing near Kisoro. After a rather lengthy crossing, we then drove on to our final desitination – the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro. Five quick things: Rwanda: Beautiful country kn…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…oject and met the Ketebul team in the studios for a day . Day 1: 11.11.19, Flight to Nairobi: Jimmy and Andy, Founder and Sound Engineer of Abubilla Music respectively, set out to Nairobi on Saturday for Nairobi. All good with flights, visas, bags and customs and we were greated by Tabu Osusa. Checked into Fairview, had the obligatory fries in a chip basket and crashed. Day 2: 11.11.20 Day in Ketebul Studio: Jimmy and Andy meet the SWP team at Ket…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…nted to go to. He wanted to get his to do list out of the way. He was very business like. Then in the evening we went to slippers to watch Winyo. We pumped some Tuskers into Andy and then relaxed a bit. He opened up more and we liked him. Andy now jumps in with a little more detail… AP: To be clear, that was the first time I’d been out of Europe and I was definitely nervous. The first night in the hotel, I practically curled myself up in the corne…