ATTA is following Singing Wells News
…r! 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
…earn new techniques and face new challenges. For our next field recording trip to northern Uganda (December 2012), this is the list of everything we will be taking 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 Microphon…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…resented these tribal groups we then attached further information on each tribe to this layer so there would be extra information about each group, anyone can access this by clicking on any area (each tribe is separated by colour – this is shown in the image of the map above). We then used this tribe distribution map as the basis for all other layers, for example, using data we had collected about instrument distribution to link it to the map. Thi…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…ted about 5 ‘brushes with death’, any one of which would be a lifetime of stories for London. We drove. We ate our packed lunch. We drove. We drove. And we raced faster and faster to make it to Gulu before DARK, our true horrible enemy on drives. Darkness just fell as we hit Gulu, which was fine, as we slowed right down and joined the chaos of the Gulu city center. We pulled into our hotel at around 1910, only 10 minutes or so after our target tim…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…rdsmen climb from their wells and disappear into the bush. The songs tell stories of Samburu traditions and help the herdsmen keep a steady rhythm while they lower and raise their buckets. These ‘singing wells’ illustrate the importance of traditional songs in the life of the Samburu tribes people. We think that Singing Wells is a very good name for our project which aims to preserve, celebrate and share the unique music traditions and heritage of…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…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 Photos from Kenya Hou…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…. Administrative level 2 is the outline of the counties of those four countries. To keep things clear, ‘counties’ will now be referred to as adm_level2. Our data is going to be regarding counties. In order for the data to be joined to the counties shapefile, i.e. administrative level 2, the names of the counties in the shapefile and the names of the counties in our data need to be identical. (The reason for that will become clear later). The only…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…hours. The road is good and there is relatively little traffic – of the motorised kind at least. Our van is right hand drive but in Rwanda they drive on the right which make overtaking a little precarious. Arun is unperturbed and drives at some speed. We have to ask him to slow down a few times so the other vehicle can catch up. In the meantime, I have the camera in hand to capture the wonderful landscape of the Rwandan hills on our climb to the…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…a-gis.org/. To get your spatial data you click on Free Spatial Data in the top-right corner. On the Free Spatial Data page click on country level data. On the Download Data by Country page, select the country you need and make sure the Subject is Administrative areas. There is other data available for free download from this page, such as elevation and population density, but for our purposes we’re only interested in administrative areas, i.e. the…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…of the Luo in the Nyanza province in the west of the country near Lake Victoria. We want the focus of these blogs to be about the music. So we’ll keep travel updates to the minimum. In this blog we combine all the fun of travelling from Kisoro back to Nairobi and from Nairobi to Kisumu. Kisoro to Nairobi: Passport Control, Genocide Memorial and Planes We left the Traveller’s Rest at 6.30 AM (we told the boys 5:30AM to ensure promptness – and they…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…or our trip to Kisoro. We have lots of music, lots of video and lots more stories to tell. But we want to keep disciplined and report daily, so forgive us if we can’t give you everything at once. Over the coming weeks, these blogs will be filled with the music and videos and far more background on the project and the Batwa. For now leave for Nairobi again and then, on Sunday, travel to Western Kenya for the next series of villages and more music….
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…performance and a secondary crew focused on Selling Wells, archiving the stories of the music and the artists. TO: The pilot was a success and proved we were right – take the studio to the talent not the other way around. This trip also confirmed that this mission is critical. As Steve said, the music was beautiful and the artists fantastic. But they were also older and no one from this generation was actively participating. There’s a complete di…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…as pleased to be able to provide the funds to 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…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…I must point out though is very similar to the dance style of the Lake Victoria region where both Tabu and Winyo hail from). Jimmy gave it his best shot while Andy and the rest of the lads suddenly became ‘busy’ with the equipment. Sengenya This was an epic conclusion to a very long day. With just about half an hour of sunlight left, we quickly pulled down the set and set off to catch the ferry in Likoni, and cross over to the south coast. It wou…