Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…here. I can’t imagine living in this way – tiny grass huts, mud floors, a basic latrine, a mother washing her baby in a small washing up bowl. I realize that I would be equally unable to live a nomadic life in the forest, the way the Batwa lived for centuries. The Bawta heritage is one of a simple life living off the fruits of the forest and surviving without any of the modern day comforts we know. The sadness is that this lifestyle was abruptly…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…nsense 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, 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 North…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…page which displays the data you are about to download – an outline of the United Kingdom. Click Download. This will download a .zip file called, in this case, 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…
Day 4: UOBDU and the Birara Dancers Story
…er’s Rest Guesthouse: After breakfast our first stop was the office of the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU), where we met Henry Neza, the Capacity Development Co-ordinator, and Alice Nyamihanda, Tourism Officer and the first University graduate amongst the Batwa communities. They are to be our hosts and translators for the two days – we were lucky to be joined by Precious as well, Alice’s five month old daughter. Patrick…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…r equipment (we really wanted to return with it all!). We then took Kenyan Airlines (new plane with movies!) to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, population roughly a million. We were met by our drivers Arun and John and drove through heavy rains to the Rwanda-Uganda border crossing near Kisoro. After a rather lengthy crossing, we then drove on to our final desitination – the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro. Five quick things: Rwanda: Beautiful country kn…
Interview with Fifty Cows – fixer for Singing Wells News
…o cover the hole and there would be a slightly better cosmetic result. The basic medicine is the same though. Although we would use general anaesthesia! It was honourable to fight for his community and he was given cows for his bravery. He sold these cows to pay for his school fees. In 1996 he went to the Seminary to become a Catholic priest. He felt this would be a way to help promote peace between the tribes. He had too much experience with conf…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…ting publication in the UK. She spent six year researching and writing the book spending spent much of this time in Iten, the home to many Kenyan elite runners. Jackie was born in Nairobi and moved to Kitale when she was two. Her father is Maasai. His family come from Rift Valley near Iten. In 1911, when the British took Laikipia, his ancestors were chased out of the Rift Valley to the south of Kenya. In the 1920s they eventually made an agreement…
Recording music & dance of the Batwa News
…their communities and help them reclaim their traditional way of life. The United Organisation for Bawta Development (UOBDU) was founded in 2000 to address land problems and develop sustainable livelihoods. UOBDU has identified four key areas of support: land & housing; education and adult literacy; income generation and forest access & benefit-sharing. By way of example, the Batwa Cultural Trail is a new initiative launched by the Uganda Wildlife…
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…mber sessions. We are pleased to report that the March Pilot confirmed the basic building blocks of the Singing Wells Project: a) mobile recording in the villages works and creates great performances, b) we can bring contemporary artists and traditional musicians together to create wonderful new music and c) we can distribute these recordings through a set of multi-media channels, including our Influences series, to give today’s musicians access t…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…s life. The only thing that scared him was the hotel room in Malindi. We’d booked the place for its beautiful name but promptly found out that we’d walked into a… (deleted!). Old, retired Italians prowled the place with semi retired local call girls in tow – the kind with skin falling off their faces after decades of chemical assault by skin lighteners. On our second morning at the hotel (and weren’t we glad we were leaving), this lady passed by o…
£25K donation from Abubilla Music Foundation News
…head with the purchase of the all mobile recording equipment which will be needed for the village recording sessions. Our resident technical expert and sound engineer, Andy Patterson, has sourced everything we need and will be using it for the first session later this month. Here’s a visual of the basic set up of each mobile recording unit. The equipment list for each mobile set up is comprehensive and has been carefully costed. This is the budget…