ATTA is following Singing Wells News
…guest at the World Travel Market at Excel and I met representatives from a number of organisations and companies in the travel and tourism industry operating in the East African counties we are visiting during our field recording trips. I met Nigel Vere Nicoll, Chief Executive of the African Travel & Tourism Association and explained a little about Singing Wells and our aims to record and celebrate the cultural music heritage of East Africa. It se…
A day in the field with Singing Wells News
…with us: 2 Apple 17″ 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 Microphones2 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 Think…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…could go on, such as with information about dress, language, history of conflict, customs etc. Below is an example of how the layers on the map can be used.. Distribution of all percussion instruments Distribution of melodic percussion instruments Distribution of only ankle bells The map above gives an indication of where ankle bells are generally used in East Africa: broadly in Uganda and in specific parts of Kenya. Interestingl…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…ately we all made it to super-market where we loaded up with money, mobile phone cards and other sundries and headed out. The William car stopped to pick up Akello, a lovely Ugandan singer/songwriter, who is joining the group as our Influences artist. The Emmanuel car headed into Kampala to pick up our press badges. We then headed off to Gulu at around 2PM (yes, we tend to spend a lot of time getting mobile phone cards!) and headed out on a 360 km…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…sicians 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 Singing Wells field visits. His first album ‘Benga Blues’ (released by Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music in September 2012) is rooted in traditional music. Of Singing Wells, he says, ‘What we find in these villages are important…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…med 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/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Phot…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…you some random data. Select CSV (basically Excel) as your Result Type and number range as your Data Type. When we downloaded the country outline of the UK, we downloaded three shapefiles of different administrative levels, called 0, 1 and 2. Administrative level 0 is the outline of the whole of the UK. Administrative level 1 is the outline of the countries within the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Administrative level 2 is th…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…gistics of taking a team of 10 to Kisoro and beyond. We have spoken on the phone and emailed many times. It’s good to meet at last. The flight to Kigali makes a stop-over in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. I suddenly realize that by the end of the day I will have been in four different countries – Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. I am already struggling to believe that I am in East Africa when 24 hours ago I was in South West London and this…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…ase, GBR_adm.zip. Open it up and take a look. What you will see is a crazy number of files, none of which your computer seems to really recognise. Don’t panic. What you’re seeing is just a few shapefiles (remember shapefiles? No? Let me jog your memory). As we’re looking at the shapefiles in the C: drive rather than in ArcMap itself, you can see the six individual files which make up the one shapefile. In fact, in this case you’re looking at 18 fi…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…ch story as horrible as the one before. As you can imagine, we boarded our flight to Nairobi somberly. We reflected on all the people we met on the long drives through Rwanda and wondered how they now face their neighbours – you are fairly certain every person knows a either victim or an executioner well. To prove the point, we asked our Ugandan driver what he thought of the memorial. He said he now understood how his dad died – he was a Ugandan w…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…praise of the National Park. The Music Groups Francis Sembargare We did a number of ‘Influences’ sessions with Francis, but we love this one, with Jessie and Francis singing together in the gardens of the Traveller’s Rest hotel in Kisoro. Please listen before reading the blog: https://youtu.be/c1XBVlNQL6E We also recorded a beautiful version of Amahoro with Jessie, Francis and the ladies. Francis and the ladies are happy to pose for a series of…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…the new Ketebul website and designing Singing Wells. So we then booked the flights to visit the Ketebul team. We met with Guy in UK and then flew down My first time out of Europe. Ngadia met me at airport. I was very nervous and didn’t know what to expect. I could tell there was a lot of poverty – and in UK if you went into poorer neighborhoods, you’d be nervous about everthing. Here it didn’t seem to be an issue at all. It wasn’t easy leaving my…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…o allow them to undertake the trip to this remote area of North West Kenya, 800 km from Nairobi and home to the Turkana and Samburu tribes and the original ‘singing wells’. When Steve Kivutia (Ketebul Music) presented the idea of recording music at the Festival to the AMF, it seemed a perfect fit with the objectives of the Singing Wells project and the trustees were happy to approve a grant to cover the costs of travelling to the Festival with the…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…e heading out for our first day of recording. But first we had to change a flat tyre on car number 02. Half an hour or so later, we were all geared up and ready to go. Jesse, who had just arrived after taking the night bus from Nairobi to Malindi, joined us in car number 02. First stop was Watamu at the fuel station to fill up the cars and Jenny, our beloved and reliable generator, and also to pick up our man on the ground, otherwise known as The…