The Boy with the Headphones Story
…oys who were intrigued with all our recording equipment. Andy invited them to listen to a playback of one of the songs through his headphones and this particular boy overcame his shyness to have give it a try. We could see how hard life is for the Batwa, living on small pieces of borrowed land on the fringes of society but the performance of the Mperwa Dancers did not portray this – it was full of pride and happiness. Once again, we witnessed ho…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…t will soon die out, leaving videos and songs in the archives. We also had to work to make this music relevant and important to contemporary artists. A key part of a field visit, therefore, is to bring contemporary African musicians with us to perform with the tribal groups and to write new music influenced by these sessions. Winyo, a wonderful singer/songwriter with Ketebul Music, is one of our Influences artists and has been with us on three Sin…
Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…nting: Drove 8 minutes to Airport. About 600 meters outside airport we had to stop and all get out of van and go through a metal detector. There was a large sign telling us not to bring in pistols and rifles. The van was then searched. At airport, we had to unload bags at departures, take them by trolly to bottom of stairs. Take all bags up the stairs. Find new trolly and proceed to next stage. All this would be fairly straightforward except we ha…
Day 7 (pm): Recording at the Airport Guesthouse, Entebbe Story
…ened: the rebels arrived to his village and asked him to show them the way to town. In a way this was a blessing, because his family was saved (often, on abduction, the rest of the child’s family would be killed, so they’d feel angry, distant and unable to return home). Once they arrived at the town they wouldn’t let Odika go and it was clear he was a prisoner. He only managed to escape once the rebels believed he was one of them, and stopped watc…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…kum, not far from Gulu up in Northern Uganda, and moved down to Kampala during the war. We love the instrument they played, the Nanga (below) so much we asked if they would join us in Entebbe to record more songs with Akello. We asked them to come with us to our next stop: our hotel in Entebbe, purely because we were desperate to have more time with the stunning musicians we met in the city. During the two hour drive to Entebbe we talked with Watm…
An Evening with Mserego Mwatela Group News
…have you managed to do this? A: To get the young people involved I decided to go to schools and teach music. I compose new material with my students and come up with something they like. I watch how they dance and whether they feel the rhythms and I try to teach them what I’m doing, but I also adapt to how they feel the music. I let them take the music where they want to take it as long as it is rooted in our traditions. I just watch them dance an…
ATTA is following Singing Wells News
…their website under the ‘ATTA Likes’ banner! Thank you ATTA – we will keep you posted on our travels in East Africa with news, photos and wonderful music! Victoria…
A day in the field with Singing Wells News
…st Hotel in Kisoro, Uganda!) We can also combine the two recording units into one to increase the number of inputs, while still working off battery power. The laptops use Avid ProTools recording software – an industry standard for recording and music production. The microphones we have chosen are industry standard models used in studios the world over but, most likely, not seen in the villages of East Africa. The equipment has been carefully selec…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…us stages of manufacturer (either drying or firing), pyramids of potatoes, tomatoes on patches of blankets under trees, tiny goats tethered near the road side to pick at a fresh patch of grass, bike rider riding with small loads or walking their bikes with large loads (this trips winner was a large door, but fails miserably to our Rift Valley coffin), bed frames in all shapes and sizes gathered in front of workshops, big steel gates leaning agains…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…ng the Singing Wells community. Rosie has made some ‘how-to’ guides on how to add to a map yourself which you can access easily on our website too, in a few steps, ‘Housekeeping’, ‘The Map Outline’, ‘Prepare Your Data’. I met with Rosie to talk about her experience using the map for the benefit of Singing Wells. How did you discover the mapping software? I am currently reading medicine at UCL, but during my gap year I spend time doing work experie…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…t will soon die out, leaving videos and songs in the archives. We also had to work to make this music relevant and important to contemporary artists. A key part of a field visit, therefore, is to bring contemporary African musicians with us to perform with the tribal groups and to write new music influenced by these sessions. Winyo, a wonderful singer/songwriter with Ketebul Music, is one of our Influences artists and has been with us on three Sin…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…music documentary. He teamed up with Andy Patterson while he was here and together they conducted a number of interviews 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/-/…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…will become clear later). The only way to make absolutely sure of that is to go into ArcMap and look at the attribute table of the shapefile (that’s basically the data that makes the shapefile look how it does), and check the names of the counties. To do this open the map, which is saved at C:\How To Map\How to Map 1, or wherever you put it. Then right-click on GBR_adm2 and select Open Attribute Table. This will open a box with the attribute tabl…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…tely stunned. Henry explains that this lady would need to make the journey to town 2 or 3 times a week, leaving her home one day, staying with another Batwa community overnight and returning the next. Extraordinary. Getting a lift in the van saved her half a day’s walk. The van pulls up on the track and Henry says we are there – or nearly there. The village is just up here he says, pointing to the top of the hill which looms high above us. We can…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…called How To Map 1, so the address where it is saved is C:\How To Map\How to Map 1. To get our country outline into ArcMap we need to Add Data. To do this either click File > Add Data > Add Data or select the Add Data icon. This will open a box; click this icon till you reach ‘Home – Documents/ArcGIS’: From here click on Folder Connections. This is where you will connect folders from elsewhere on your computer to ArcMap. Click on this icon: and s…
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…of the roots of Bob Dylan… https://youtu.be/iRQlHbyzoKM https://youtu.be/9Qx_vs2Uw-U https://youtu.be/bmFyePat-VY https://youtu.be/HRXyT1czwG8 https://youtu.be/4jnrLn92SxA And with the Jose recording, we officially finished our November field trip, which took us to Rwanda, Uganda and Lake Victoria. Tomorrow we head back to Nairobi where we will be greeted by the Batwa singers and musicians we invited back to record in the studio. They have been tr…