Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…ite a small town, population 12,000. On a map we are about as far west and south in Uganda as you can go. Traveller’s Rest: We stayed at the Traveller’s Rest, a hotel famed for being a meeting place for gorilla observers. They write about this on their website: “In 1955 Travellers Rest was bought by Walter Baumgartel, and quickly became a meeting place for people interested in the mountain gorilla. Amongst them was ‘gorilla-woman” Dian Fossey, who…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…p in the corner with a chair barring the door! I’m from the North and came south in 2001 and spend four years at Uni, one year of which was in industry. After graduation, I worked as technical engineer and got more into engineering the audio side of sounds, vs. the technical side. Someone I had been working with passed on an email from Jimmy. So I went and met Jimmy and Martyn at Jimmy’s office in London. We had a chat and I started I was more exc…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…ssion then is to help create an East African musical identity to rival the South and West African successes. We had a taste of what this could be on March 29th in Sati, when Winyo joined Bado and his father, Nyerere wa Konde, to do a new song. Bado participates in his dad’s group, but separately records his own music. Bado’s music is great, propelled by his wonderful voice, but it’s American-sounding and could have been produced in LA. We asked hi…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…ish took Laikipia, his ancestors were chased out of the Rift Valley to the south of Kenya. In the 1920s they eventually made an agreement with the British to allow their cows to graze in the Rift Valley again. After World War II, the British allowed war veterans to buy land in the Rift Valley and the Maasai were pushed out again. In the 1960s, after Independence, Jackie’s father moved back to the Rift Valley once again. He was a career soldier and…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…gy not witnessed in all the previous groups recorded before. DAY 5: Kwale, South Coast We woke up to a beautiful surrounding of the Indian Ocean Beach Resort, it turned to be as beautiful as we had seen on the internet, pictures can sometimes deceive you. Breakfast was so good and we took our time especially Willy Bembe, I think by this time he had added like five kilos to his body. The distance between the hotel which was in Diani, and our set in…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…d them the opportunity to check if their hi-tech equipment would work well south of the Equator. Blow by blow accounts of the field recordings starting Tuesday March 29 to Thursday March 31 are available elsewhere at this site, so I will just fling you here and there instead (see graphic below). For the material-gathering first step on the Singing Wells Project, which shall eventually cover the whole country, the Kenyan Coastal region was selected…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…wn the set and set off to catch the ferry in Likoni, and cross over to the south coast. It would have been a short drive to Likoni, but Tabu missed a turn and we were forced to take a longer route to avoid getting caught up in the traffic. After a brief stop to refuel the cars, we finally made it to Likoni ferry, and joined a long queue of cars waiting to board the next ferry for the short crossing to the mainland. The drive to Diani on the south…
More on the launch of the Ketebul Music website News
…vered a great site right on brief and within a tight budget which is a big bonus for the Singing Wells funds. Here are a few words from Wesley Burden about the challenge we gave them…… “Ketebul Music required a website design that delivered a strong sense of the colourful music of East Africa and the traditions that their non-profit organisation aims to help preserve. Using our experience from working with Abubilla Music and Sideways Recordings we…