Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…ed, but the steps are worth recounting: 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 fa…
Day 7 (pm): Recording at the Airport Guesthouse, Entebbe Story
…ally beaten a number of strokes depending on your age, in his case it was 300. Odika called it the ‘bush mind’, and sometimes even once soldiers returned that mind would come back again, in nightmares or in daily life. To help returning soldiers they were taken to Gulu Children of War Rehabilitation Centre for 6 months before going home, partly to make sure the rebels couldn’t find you in your home village but also to help the returning soldiers a…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…on. Matthew Watmon (above) is the leader of his group, which he started in 1991. The members are from all over Uganda, but generally perform music in the style of Acholi, as Watmon is originally from Kitikum, 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…
An Evening with Mserego Mwatela Group News
…nally performed with his father’s group and then he founded this group in 2007. They use a number of styles, most notably Sengenya, which we covered fully in our March 2011 field recordings in Malindi. We interviewed Swalhe Mwatela Massai and his grandson, Ali Tungwa : Q to the grandfather: In contrast to Uganda, we have seen many villages in Kenya where the traditional music is only played by the older generation. And yet your group is so young…
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
…hallenges. 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 Microphones2 Rode professional boom pole 1…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…and strange guinea fowl pottering about. The two groups were united around 10 with our two drivers William and Emanuel and set off for Kampala. As promised Kampala traffic was a nightmare. The William Team (Jimmy/Pato and Hannah) tried to take a short cut, but the road was closed and we ended up winding through some very poor areas around Kampala with a truck not designed for essentially footpaths. All the time, the high rises of Kampala were in v…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…this new way of displaying data when working for the Virtue Foundation in 2011. They were keen on this new technique and trained me to use it for mapping health data in Ghana (example shown below). This was in collaboration with Harvard University. Following on that I spent some time working with the GIS department at Harvard in Boston specifically learning how to use the mapping software, and I also attended GIS classes given at Harvard. I then b…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…er two years of planning, the Singing Wells project was launched in March 2011 with our first field visit to Malindi to record the music of the Mijikenda. So, how did Tabu Osusa, one of Kenya’s most successful record producers end up in a remote Kenyan village, teamed with me, an American businessman, and a sound engineer from Gateshead? The Singing Wells project is a result of a chance meeting between two music labels on two separate continents….
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…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 House …
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…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 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…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…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 select t…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…for the night. We say a quick hello and arrange to meet for breakfast at 7.00am. Tomorrow we are off to Uganda. MONDAY Tabu, Ketebul Music’s founder, arrives at the Fairview to meet us. He’s made the last minute arrangements for my flight to Kigali today, so I’m very grateful to him. We’ve never met before, only spoken on the phone and emailed, but he’s so welcoming I feel I know him already. The complete Singing Wells team congregates at Nairobi…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…ssport control to ‘exit.’ They were not open, however, but arrived about 7:10. We exited and then walked across the 100 metre ‘no man’s land’ to the Rwandan side, leaving the cars to come through separately. We check in with police and then go to Rwanda passport control to enter. This is now 7:20 or so and a big crowd is forming but luckily, as we were so early arriving,we got through okay. By about 7:40 we were done, but the cars were not yet all…
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
…nted to be a pro studio engineer. He agreed and I joined as apprentice in 2005 and I was 23. The cultural side started in 2007. We started the spot light on Kenya music and other initiatives with Ketebul Productions, the Ministry of Culture and Alliance Francaise. We picked artists from all over Kenya to create an album. This is first move to culture things. Tabu was on the committee for Spot light and he would go out to select folks for the later…