A History of Recording East African Music News
…at doesn’t have a history is a dead one.” His recordings are available to play online, for anyone, in the Klaus Wachsmann Collection at the British Library. Copies of his recordings can also be found at the UCLA archive, but cannot be streamed online. David Fanshawe 1942 – 2010 David Fanshawe recording the Luo Tribe, Kenya, 1973. Photo Judith Croasdell David Fanshawe did not limit himself to the confines of ethnomusicology and is described as an…
Report from Womex 2013 News
…of Independent Music. Horizons joined up members from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We were pleased to be sited next to New Zealand across the way and next door were South Africa! Podcast Andy recorded a few snippets of audio for an upcoming podcast – which will feature on the site soon. The Team A big thanks to Mike and Louise who were marvellous evangelists for the project over the course of the 4 days. Here is a picture of us all at…
The New Singing Wells website News
…nd sections. Find them via the menu bar. Podcasts Our podcasts are now displayed with the full track lineup and listen, watch and group links where they are available. Click here to listen. Featured Content At the bottom of each post and story you’ll find a list of related posts so if you find something you are interested in then it’s easy to read more about it. Instruments Library We have been collecting East African instruments since our first t…
Group of the Month – Watmon Cultural Group News
…and at the Entebbe Airport Guesthouse, where due to the generosity and patience of the manager Jan Willem and the other guests, we set up a recording studio in the garden. You can join us on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/singingwells and on Twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/singingwells – if you do tweet any links, please use the hashtags – #gotm and #singingwells We’ll update this page with any new items we add to the site over the c…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…sic. A few thousand miles north of Nairobi, our band of musicians at Abubilla Music in London had similar concerns. Some of us had travelled through East Africa and we were astounded by the quality of the tribal music, but equally surprised to find how hard it was to access the music back in Britain. As the founder of Abubilla Music, I set out to find partners in East Africa who were committed to preserving the music. Through a series of e-mails t…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…ecord of the day, linking files to songs and songs to groups and groups to sites and sites to days. We average about 20 songs a site and just over 1.5 sites per day. Just getting the right spelling on to a clapper board of a song and getting that recorded elsewhere against a take list takes time to master. Third, we then need to very quickly produce 3 camera videos. So during our car rides, we’re linking a group and song to the ‘bounce’ (final aud…
A day in the field with Singing Wells News
…valier 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 ThinkTank sun screens (for the laptops) Various Canon zoom and fixed lenses Plus at least 9 Sandisk memory cards and 15 portable back-up drives and a…
Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…tps://youtu.be/4Jt5-pqpOWw https://youtu.be/Aw2Nj1GNpGo https://youtu.be/5SLa0biLa54 Ribbe Ber Drummers Our third group was the stunner. It was also called Ribbe Ber, but this was the drum group – males drummers mostly, with female dancers. All young adults and extremely cool. The group included two dancers that were the best we ‘ve seen and the rhythms of the Gwara (galabash) was over-whelming. They performed: Dongo Lobo Auma Woto Mobile Aparo Wo…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…ice. There were reports in February of this year of men demonstrating with large placards against FGM. One man, Mr Lotolim, a resident of Jumbe village in Amudat District, reported that Pokot men often only resort to polygamy because their first wives have difficulty giving birth due to the dangerous procedure, so to have children men need multiple wives (allAfrica.com). Acholi Tribe (highlighted) I also found the Acholi tribe hugely interesting….
African Strings: The Nyatiti and The Adungu News
…ople of Uganda, a tribe we will come across in our next field visit. They play a similar instrument called the Adungu. Style: As music is mainly functional for the Luo, traditionally a nyatiti player is called upon to play at weddings or funerals, as it can be played as a solo instrument. The intsrument is often performed with a dance, called ‘Goyo Otenga’. Otenga is the Luo word for eagle, and so dancers move their shoulders, arms, fingers, legs…
Lango Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…on the map. Population: about 1.5 million people Language: They speak Leb-Lango, a language similar to those of the Acholi and the Alur. They are part of the Luo group or “Western Nilotic Group”, and so all of the languages in this area are fairly similar to understand. Origins: Their original homeland was north of Lake Turkana where they used to live along with the Jie and the Karimojong. This means, by implication, that the Langi are also relat…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…s left a bit to be desired and we bumped and jostled for about 80 kms. The land is tilled now, waiting for a new planting season, so we are surrounded by red. The red roads, the red tilled soil on either side, the red dust filling our eyes and lungs as cars pass us. We have the opportunity to interview Tabu in detail about his ancestry. The only issue was, the more animated he became, the slower we went. So we knew that the more interesting the tr…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…sic. A few thousand miles north of Nairobi, our band of musicians at Abubilla Music in London had similar concerns. Some of us had travelled through East Africa and we were astounded by the quality of the tribal music, but equally surprised to find how hard it was to access the music back in Britain. As the founder of Abubilla Music, I set out to find partners in East Africa who were committed to preserving the music. Through a series of e-mails t…
Andy’s cover of Boys of Summer News
…he project or producing music for various clients he actually finds time to write and record his own material and is also a member of Abubilla Music’s house band, The Saturday Morning Canasta Club. You can listen to more of Andy ‘s music online at his website: click here but before you go over there have a listen to his brilliant cover version of Don Henley’s Boys of Summer, recorded this summer at the Abubilla Music studio in Spain. You can fol…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…n 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 House …
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…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 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…