Day 3: Monday, 2017 February 20th Story
…ead singer) and MV Mapenzi (essentially the ‘love boat’). The latter is an East Africa classic that most people know. Throughout this trip, we will spent a lot of time with Henry, starting with this first night of live recording at the Bagamoyo Country Club. Leo: Leo is Henry’s son and has been our Influences Artist for this trip. He was raised in a musical household, but Henry did not want Leo to become a musician. In fact, it was Leo’s cousin Is…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…usic but also a shout of concern: are the great traditional instruments of East Africa and the amazing musicians that play them in danger of being lost? And so we travel in our first hour of our first day in Tanzania to the home Mzee Morris’s son – a compound in the suburbs of Dar es Salaam. Here’s the son: We are greeted by the music of the Nyunyusa Dancing Troupe, which included two of Mzee Morris’s grandsons, Abdala Nyunyusa Morris on vocals…
A Report by Professor James Isabirye – Indigenous music learning in contemporary contexts: Nurturing learner identity, agency, and passion News
…rtnered with such a visionary for the future, and protector of traditional East african music and instruments. We know that generations to come will be grateful for the work he has put in to continue these traditions. He has also written a report analysing how indigenous learning can inform modern schooling, in which Singing Well’s gets a featured mention as collaborators within his project. You can read more about that here: https://journals.sage…
Fundraiser for Matthew Watmon News
…ope that some of our followers may be able to help us. If you are based in East Africa, please get in touch with Matthew’s brother, Constantine Odida ((MTN) +256-782-236-742 and (Airtel) +256-704-261-037). If you are based elsewhere in the world, we have created a GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-mathew-watmon The donors of Abubilla Music Foundation, who support the Singing Wells project, will match these contributions up to £1000…
Singing Wells Approaches 5 Million Views News
…hard work is paying off – in the last few months we have almost doubled our views on our Youtube channel and are now approaching 5 million total views across our videos. When we started Singing Wells almost ten years ago, we set an aim to bring the traditional music of East Africa to a wider audience. It amazing to see the Youtube algorithm agreeing that this is a project worth showing people! We can’t wait to bring more songs and stories to the w…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…sicians who have died after our visit. This mission is sad, but vital. At least future generations have these recordings and when/if they seek to understand something unique about their heritage, our recordings will be there for reference. But we have always wanted to do more than this – we want to find great musicians and help their music to reach new audiences. That is why we will be in Nairobi in the studios with musicians from our 2013 visit t…
Singing Wells Youtube Channel hits 2.5Million views News
…discovering, recording, archiving and celebrating the traditional music of East Africa, and its an amazing reward to see the impact our work is having. We want to take this opportunity to thank you all for supporting us over the last few years, and for creating such a thriving community in the comments below. As we build towards our ten year anniversary in 2021, we are thrilled to know that we have the support of such an engaged audience. Here’s a…
Central and Eastern Uganda: Day 2 – Kampala to Jinja Story
…re’s the obvious: at Singing Wells, we record and share the great music of East African villages. But, there’s another, equally important reason: the revival of the Bigwala trumpets was the model we used for the restoration of the Royal Drums. We felt it was critical to check in on their progress. We focused on three main things on this visit: Interviewing James about the instruments themselves Recording the trumpeters Interviewing James in more d…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…tric guitar. European recording companies were to hold a monopoly over the East African music industry for many years to come before independent Kenyan producers made real headway. Rivaling the Europeans at the time was Kenyan producer of Indian ancestry, A.P. Chandarana, who set up base in Kericho, lying in the lush tea-growing regions east of the Rift Valley, and has remained there since. It is at Chandarana’s studios that a vast number of music…
Central Uganda: Day 7 – A Magic Day in Entebbe Story
…. But this is our first super group. The Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young of East Africa. We had Passy, Jacinta, Maita, James (our musical leader in Uganda and co-founder of Nile Beat Artists) and Jovah, the wonderful female singer we first listened to in Kisoro and then again in Nairobi. We will talk more about Jovah below. The group practiced and performed two songs: Ugandan Lullaby: We knew that Jovah and Maita knew lullabies and James came up wi…
A Tanzanian Effort to Salvage the Music of the Past News
…r is it just about Tanzania; Benson also has a bigger point to prove about East African music. “Many people think that the only place where you can find really good African music is in West Africa”, he says. “We can say to people, hey, it’s not all about Kilimanjaro and the national parks. We also have cool music.” We wish them all the best, and hope one day to take a trip to Tanzania for a few recording sessions of our own! Check out the Tanzania…
Central Uganda: Day 6: Kampala to Entebbe Story
…arathoners in bright yellow shirts. The Recording Site We packed and drove east, just outside Kampala to the Kyambogo University, where James teaches. It was a beautiful gated campus, very quiet, big trees, lovely red dirt paths – it seemed to be a preserve for the lovely Ugandan greens and reds we’ve grown to love. Students walked everywhere with packs. We set up in the garden of James’s class room, under big trees, in tall grass. It had rained t…
Kenya’s Amazing Musical Instruments News
…ground and played by two more sticks. Of course there are so many more amazing instruments that we’ve recorded, and more still to find. To learn more about East Africa’s traditional musical instruments, have a look at our instruments page here….
Interview: fusion band Ndoto Afrika News
…m of music, the universal language. Where are you from? From Kenya, in the East of Africa. To be more specific, we hail from a small village in Siaya County where most of the renowned Luo musicians come from. Ever heard of Otieno Aloka (the famous Ohangla artist)? He is our next door neighbour back at the village. We borrow each other’s salt from time to time. Why is the group called Ndoto Afrika? We represent a dream. A dream every African youth…
Discussions with Peter Cooke: ethnomusicologist and Ugandan music expert News
…any times in our field reports and blog posts: in our history of recording East African music summary, in our post about music archives across the world, when reflecting on the importance of archiving traditional music and, most recently, in our posts about our journey to discover and record the Royal Drums. It was James Isabirye, a lecturer at Kyambogo University and expert in traditional Ugandan music, who first introduced us to Peter. We learne…
Before They Pass Away News
…ast Africa’s music. Not only do we want to sustain the musical heritage of East Africa, we want to promote it in today’s world. With this in mind, we’ve been following the work of British photographer Jimmy Nelson with interest, who spent four years travelling to meet and photograph some of the world’s last surviving tribes. His book, Before They Pass Away, is a fascinating insight into these communities’ ways of life. Nelson’s breathtaking photog…