Our Sponsors Page
…f sponsorship: Field Recording day in Kenya, Music of the Kalenjin, March 2012 Thank you to Anne for her kind and generous donation to towards our 2012 field recording visit to Kenya. Read all about it here. http://www.annewright.com/index.asp Institute of International Education Type of sponsorship: Field Recording Visit, Music of the Batwa, Uganda 2011 Through our relationship with The Ford Foundation we were able to apply for a grant from the…
Day Four: 10 March 2022 (Rongo) Story
…at he has become, gave an exemplary performance without any re-takes. By 7:00pm his session was completed and he was on his way back to Kisii County. The next group was Otacho Young Stars who began their performance at 8:00pm. Otacho Young Stars were also no strangers since we recorded them in 2011 as part of the Singing Wells project. These musicians are now in their 30s and no longer answer to the name Young Stars and are appropriately simply kn…
Royal Entenga Drummers Group
…ight of the attack itself (more on this here). James met him and realised that together they could begin to build the drums. Working closely with Albert and Shaban, a professional drummer who now leads the new band, they built a new set of Royal Drums, recruited a team of passionate drummers to learn how to play the drums, learned to tune the drums and ultimately learned to play new music….
Kirundo Group
…r the harvest. New composition. Mjomba – Uncle, celebrating the good hunt. New composition Uye – Come Back Please, used at a wake after someone is buried. New composition. Uringe – Be Proud. Old Traditional song Kyaso – old traditional Zanzibarian song of celebration Mnyamwana – Respect for women. New Composition. They sang in a combination of Hehe and Kigogo, both languages from mainland Tanzania, as well as Swahili. They had incredible energy an…
The Revival of the Entongooli Page
…rs. Some of the instruments that Mr Mukadisi has in his position are over 100 years old. Once the correct tree has been found that is of an appropriate age, around 10 years old so the wood is fully formed, it is chopped down and into smaller pieces to begin the drying process. When the wood has appropriate time to dry, it is prepared for chopping and shaping, and the next process of preserving the wood through the use of animal dung. More on that…
FAQ’s Page
…ideo has a donation button associated with it and you can donate £1, £5, £10,£20 or £50 to help support a music group you particularly like. Find us on YouTube here. If I support you where will the money go? How do I know it will be well spent? Donations to Singing Wells can be made through The Abubilla Music Foundation. Your donation will be restricted for use in East Africa to support the project goals. You can specify just how much you would li…
Day Four: February 19, 2020 (Maruhabi Palace) Story
…nger), Heri Kombo (drums) Songs: Mwaludeje – Tradition after the harvest. New composition. Mjomba – Uncle, celebrating the good hunt. New composition Uye – Come Back Please, used at a wake after someone is buried. New composition. Uringe – Be Proud. Old Traditional song Kyaso – old traditional Zanzibarian song of celebration Mnyamwana – Respect for women. New Composition. They sang in a combination of Hehe and Kigogo, both languages from ma…
2. Naizungwe Drums – progress report 1 Story
…ded to make many because we would like to have enough drums for training a new generation of players. However, the basic number includes: 1 large Uganda drum (played with short heavy beaters) 3 smaller drums (played with long curved sticks) 1 medium drum (played with sticks) 1 long drum (ngalabi – hand-beaten) All together, 6 drums. Therefore, we are making four sets of naizungwe drums mainly to facilitate learning.” Below is a video documenting t…
1. Introducing the Naizungwe drums Story
…ms that James talks about: http://www.singingwells.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Peter-Cooke-naizungwe-recording-1.mp3 http://www.singingwells.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Peter-Cooke-naizungwe-recording-2.mp3 What makes this project particularly exciting, is the difference of approach required compared to the entenga drums. With the entenga we found a surviving old master player (Musisi) who was able to teach a younger generation of musicians…
Day 5: Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017 Story
…ord the group Liwambwe. The Group Leader is: Atanas Teleni. It is a fairly new group, having played off and on for three years. They had unique drums, including small drums with wooden spikes on bottom to be embedded in sand, called the Siganga. They also had a pair of drums called the Likuti and a long drum called the Msondo, and a very long thin drum called a Neya. Here’s the set: In the dance they had a character in a mask called a Lipiko, who…
Day 3: Monday, 2017 February 20th Story
…the Dar es Salaam Development Corporation. They had multiple hits in the 80’s and 90’s including: Mpenzi Edita (name of a lady who portrays the lead 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 Influ…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…had listened to his drums all my life – his drums are used to announce the news on Tanzania Broadcast Corporation (TBC) hourly news bulletins. At 14 years old, I would sit at my drums just trying to recreate that one riff. It took me three months of non-stop listening to get it down. And that was just 30 seconds of his lifetime of drumming. All I want to do is master his style.” As Daudi mentioned, Mzee Morris became the sound of Tanzanian news….
Ketebul Music presents Shades of Benga Online News
…de their book ‘Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya 1946 -2016’. You can watch the latest episode below, and also find out more at their website here. Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya delves into the foundations of modern Kenyan music, examining external influences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the it…
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…are? This matter has concerned a circle of my friends deeply since around 2003 and we’ve all tried to deal with it. I have a circle I talk to all the time about this, including Julius Kyakuwa, Centurio Balikoowa, Haruna Walusimbi, Sarah Mukyala and Cornelius Mwima. We all understand that without intervention, somehow, all this music – all this culture will die. But we also know that the issue will always be resources: how do we bring new resources…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…music. And yet, we all walked away convinced that you will see an exciting new East African artist writing new amazing music with these drums as part of the rhythm section. Are there lessons from this journey? Yes, and the most important of these is our discovery of a single repeatable model to restore these instruments: we refer to this as the Bigwala Model. What James Isabirye discovered from his work to restore the Bigwala trumpets is a five st…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 2 – Interviews with Musicians of Uganda’s Royal Palaces Story
…ed in a bus to travel to his house. There was an older man on the bus who knew the village. When he climbed on the bus, he knew Kizito (the boy who’s mum we were visiting and Musisi’s half-brother, shared mother). The gentlemen said that when we reached the village he would bike ahead and tell the village we were coming, so we walked very slowly to the village. But when we got to the village I saw a sight I had never seen before. By the time we ar…