Central Uganda: Day 6: Kampala to Entebbe Story
…ch more drama to the equation.” Here’s their music The Journey to the Next Site We then packed up and left the University Grounds and headed back into Kampala to the Uganda Museum. The Recording Site We set up directly in the Museum grounds and were surrounded by an open air museum which was a collection of traditional grass thatched huts from throughout Uganda. Fairly surprised museum guests stopped to watch us. A slightly miffed grass cutter pol…
Central Uganda: Day 5 – Jinja to Kampala Story
…azi Ow’omwano Tanoba: Tamenha Ibuga Nalufuka: This was an incredible dance number that ended with all the Singing Wells crew, and many of the hotel staff, jumping up and dancing with the group. Here is their music: James Isabirye says, “It is a challenge for me to talk about Nile Beat because 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 20…
Central Uganda: Day 4 – Jinja Story
…r mother, dancing and singing these songs. He is at the top and we need to translate their songs. If you give me a copy of the songs I will translate – I want them myself.” Here’s their music: After we said goodbye to the 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…
Central Uganda: Day 3 – From Mbale to Iganga to Jinja Story
…oir with alternating lead vocals. Their style is Embaire, which is the xylophone. Their instruments were: Embaire, Xylophone Endigidi, tube fiddle Enkwanzi, pan pipes The performance was simply spectacular. Our search for the best xylophone players in Uganda is declared over! What a group. Obutasoma (Education), with lead singer Muniru Ayubu Obwiire Bukyeire (The Time Has Come), with lead singer Kisubi Eliasa Magic Moment: We loved the xylophone a…
Central Uganda: Day 2 – Kampala to Budaka Story
…unty, to a small village near the Budaka Progressive School. The Recording Site: Given our early departure we arrived before our groups were ready to perform so we had plenty of time to set up, interview the group leaders, the school head master, etc… The site was on two levels. Our ‘stage’ was on the lower level, with two small brick single story homes and a little kitchen cleaning area. On the second level to the right of the houses was a hill,…
Central Uganda: Day 1 – From Entebbe to Kidinda Story
…lometers into the fields, to a small village called Kidinda. The Recording Site: The village had one cement single story home, one stable (with a small and very loud cow tucked in the back) and one angry bull tethered to the middle of the grounds. Chickens hung about ready to provide backing vocals. Children began to gather as we un-loaded equipment. Most of them smile widely when our cameras turned toward them. Most came running to us to see thei…
Our top 5 Singing Wells songs for March News
…d I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to pretty much every song on the site, getting to know the amazing traditional music of East Africa! It was tough to pick, but for my first blog post I thought I’d share my top 5 songs so far. 1. Otacho Young Stars – Amilo Love The Singing Wells team first encountered the Otacho Young Stars group on a trip to record the music of the Luo in Western Kenya in December 2011. They were later invited to Ketebul…
Music Depositories and Archives around the World News
…facility, it achieves this aim by allowing public access to the archive onsite and online. It states that the GMA tries to be inclusive, rather than exclusive, with material and will look at origin, idiom, transmission, and style of performance when debating whether it is relevant to their collection. It has 10 principal concerns – which can be found here – but the themes of preservation, digitisation and access seem to be three key goals that un…
A History of Recording East African Music News
…es that gave hope for the archiving of East African music, in Africa; ‘I visited the Ethiopian archives while stranded in Khartoum for four days (by Ethiopian Airways in 1988 I believe) and found […] local scholars, some of them trained in the UK, were doing good work with minimal resources and doing some fine fieldwork with video-cameras.’ He ends with ‘There are plenty of Ugandans who understand the value of a good archives. They need to be able…
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. …
James Isabirye and Tabu Osusa Discuss East African Music News
…and who they are. For almost every festival, I am told by some government official that they want to open the show and talk about culture. I say no. I tell them that the people don’t need to hear from some politician about their culture. To learn about culture, you need to hear from people that live the culture. So I ask the musicians to speak not the politicians. And our audiences love it. They learn what it really means to be Ugandan. Tabu: Yes…
Report from Womex 2013 News
…p members from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We were pleased to be sited next to New Zealand across the way and next door were South Africa! Podcast Andy recorded a few snippets of audio for an upcoming podcast – which will feature on the site soon. The Team A big thanks to Mike and Louise who were marvellous evangelists for the project over the course of the 4 days. Here is a picture of us all at our stand: And Finally… We were intrig…
A recording studio which fits into the back of an SUV Story
…ing 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 professional boom pole 1 K&M telescopic mic stand/boom 1 Canon EOS 7D 1 Canon EOS 60D 1 Canon EOS 5D 1 LED video camera lights 1 Flip HD video camera Thin…
The New Singing Wells website News
…recognise that a lot of our visitors may be viewing the device on iPads, iPhones, tablets, netbooks, Samsung phones etc, so a lot of work has gone into making our site accessible on these devices. Albums We have now curated 4 albums, representing the music from 4 of our field trips to East Africa. We’ll be updating this as we curate more albums. You can listen to each of the albums in full and then purchase them in the knowledge that all of your…
Group of the Month – Watmon Cultural Group News
…d on Twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/singingwells – if you do tweet any links, please use the hashtags – #gotm and #singingwells We’ll update this page with any new items we add to the site over the course of the month. Check out the featured content links below to find the Watmon Cultural Group page from our Musical Map of East Africa….
73,603 views on YouTube News
…ls YouTube channel……73,603 views and still counting! It’s not a meaningful number in itself (like a nice round 100,000 – our next target) but it does mean more and more people are finding us and enjoying 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…