Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…tting, with the square carved into a hill, with rows and rows of streets below us, and an equal number of streets and houses piled up above us. There were cars, motorbikes and taxi’s driving past and planes flying overhead. Everything was for sale by everyone who walked by. No sleeping cattle. No flower beds. But, as always, there was wonderful music. The first group was the Adungu Cultural Troupe, masters of the Adungu. We had interviewed their l…
An Evening with Mserego Mwatela Group News
On our last night in Nairobi following the recording trip to Northern Uganda we met with Swalhe Mwatela Massai, the founder of Msergo Mwatela Group, from the Coastal regions of Kenya. He originally 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, A…
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…
Northern Uganda: Day 3 – from Gulu to Awach to Pakwach Story
…y sang so softly and it was such a big crowd. But we gave her a lapel microphone and put a microphone directly on the Adungu and recorded. Afterwards, when we turned her up in the mix a magical voice and sound emerged – the ancient lady sitting on the blanket in the middle of this village, surrounded by 100’s had a beautiful, strong, pitch perfect voice. Incredible. She sang: Two Man Dong Lakee Cok Mon Alwak Munu Keya Here’s Two Man Dong: https://…
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…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…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 brought the idea to Singing Wells when I began work in the summer of 2012. The Virtue Foundation – Ghana – Yellow Feve…
African Strings: The Nyatiti and The Adungu News
…ite prominent Benga musicians of today are Ogwang Lelo Okoth, Musa Juma (below) and Dola Kabarry (below). Instrument: The nyatiti has 8 strings and is usually played sitting down on a three-legged stool known as the ‘Orindi’, it can be as low as shin level. The player sits with the instrument in front of him whilst wearing a round-iron ring (like a nut) which he taps on the lower bar of the nyatiti to produce a constant beat. On the same leg he we…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…hills, with hills looming tall above us from behind and the valley sinking low in front of us, through a series of canyon steps. We arrived at the bottom of our step, with a canyon still to the right going down another 700 meters or so. Having arrived at the lowest point, marked by a small stream we immediately climbed back up the other side. The second car bites the dust From Karabaret, we travelled to Nakuru and then half of us travelled on in t…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…s for the whole group to perform, singing and dancing in front of ten microphones and three digital cameras.’ Video engineer, Patrick Ondiek, adds, ‘I love producing the final videos and getting phone calls from my friends asking me ‘how did you find these musicians?’ I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection of 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
…ut the number of unicorns in each county of Britain, but if you’ve been following along using a different country and your own data then carry on with that. If you want to make your own nonsense data then this site will generate 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…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…wn the hillside onto the road. At times we were negotiating a small, fast flowing river. And the rain made visibility out front pretty poor too. Luckily, I was deep in conversation with Henry who was telling me a bit more about the plight of the Bawta. Consequently, I was largely distracted from the peril of the road conditions. Later Andy confessed that, in the van in front, he had been in fear of his life, convinced they were about to slide off…
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…
The Batwa Trail News
…people, were suddenly evicted from the forest and forced to abandon their low-impact, nomadic lifestyle. Now landless, they work for local farmers. The only time they are permitted to re-enter their cherished forest is as tour guides on the Batwa Trail. A visit to the Batwa trail permits visitors to discover the magic of the indigenous people old home while partaking in nature walks and learning about the group’s cultural heritage. During this mo…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…got through okay. By about 7:40 we were done, but the cars were not yet allowed to pass, as the Uganda exit border had not yet opened for vehicles. By about 7:55 it opened and we climbed in our cars and were off again. And, as you might recall, we were now driving on the ‘other side of the road.’ The drive back was beautiful, through the hills of Rwanda. We rushed because we wanted some time in Kigali to visit the Genocide Memorial Museum. We wer…