Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 1 – Nairobi to Kiongwe to Muranga Story
…to Kitui, on the Mombasa Road, arriving at 10:00AM. We picked up our local contact, Dominic Mukora, and drove to the Kiongwe Market to record our first group. Here’s our route: The site passed the first Singing Wells test, lots of chickens and children; we find their noises the perfect backing track for all our recordings. The market structures were beautiful with the typical brick structure, light blue paint and the red earth of Africa bleeding u…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 0 – London/Nairobi Story
…(Video 3), who is from the Meru ethnic community and has been our primary contact person to support this trip (e mail: lkoome2000@yahoo.com) Raphael Sipalla (Audio 4) our ‘Influences’ artist (e mail: ruffmaud@yahoo.com) We will be interviewing them throughout this trip to provide additional color to our Field Reports. We spent our Saturday packing and preparing the vans for the trip. Let’s remind you of our team – we cheated and took photos from…
Central Uganda: Day 5 – Jinja to Kampala Story
…the traditional Ugandan Xylophone. All instrumentalists also sing and are supported by three ladies who sing and dance. The three core members are: Walusimbi Nsibambi Haruna: He the Founding Director of Nile Beat Artists. Walusimbi was once the Global Youth Earth Day Ambassador for Africa after winning the Global Youth Earth Day Ambassadors Competition in Marikina-Philipines. Nabayaza Sumaya Baiga: She is a senior member of Nile Beat Artists and…
Central Uganda: Day 4 – Jinja Story
…s/traditions and can train the youths. One already died in May to move the number from 4 to 3 and one of the three surviving is very ill. But it is almost certain, now that the trumpets won’t disappear. Young people have some interest, thankfully, and are learning.” Click here for further reading on the Bigwala. Here’s their music: Adagha Nalya Drama Group Our second group was from the Bukoona Village and called the Adagha Nalya Drama Group. Their…
Central Uganda: Day 3 – From Mbale to Iganga to Jinja Story
…oir with alternating lead vocals. Their style is Embaire, which is the xylophone. Their instruments were: Embaire, Xylophone Endigidi, tube fiddle Enkwanzi, pan pipes The performance was simply spectacular. Our search for the best xylophone players in Uganda is declared over! What a group. Obutasoma (Education), with lead singer Muniru Ayubu Obwiire Bukyeire (The Time Has Come), with lead singer Kisubi Eliasa Magic Moment: We loved the xylophone a…
Central Uganda: Day 0 – Nairobi/London to Entebbe Story
…on arrival – little did we know that a thunderstorm of biblical proportions was on its way….. A Note About Our Sponsors We are very grateful to have two sponsors for this recording trip. Firstly, The Mara Group are sponsoring a full recording day and have chosen to support our day in Mbale (Day 4: Thursday 21st Nov). We are also very pleased to have the support of Gorilla Tours, owners of the Airport Guesthouse who have provided one of the transpo…
Singing Wells surpasses 500,000 YouTube hits! News
…c of East Africa on this channel and we couldn’t be more grateful for your support. Our YouTube channe l features videos from our trips across Kenya and Uganda, including visiting the tribes of the Kenyan Coast, Central and Eastern Uganda, our work to share the music of the Batwa community and the Luo community. We’ve told the story of repatriating Kenya’s music heritage after 50 years and celebrated magic moments – where we’ve found an extra-spec…
Current Leading Figures News
…rather than cultural by our leaders, partners, the UN name it. They focus support on health, military, roads etc and all development support is placed in hands of politicians who do not share values with their predominantly rural populations. Therefore, there is no political / economic will to support ” waste money on mere singers and dancers… culture, what is culture, how does it contribute to development; job creation, tax revenue?”. This is be…
Amone Watmon Matthew Story
…lick here to go to the Singing Wells group page. You can view more videos from the group on YouTube (click here) where you can also make a donation to support the group through our charity, The Abubilla Music Foundation. …
Archiving Guidelines News
…e archived, they are still able to be played back in the long term, due to support for new media or data formats – as in conjunction with OAIS. Chapter 7, Small Scale Approaches to Digital Storage Systems, is of particular use because it contains straightforward information for smaller would-be archives, such as those wishing to archive East African music, concerning both the digitisation of audio or the online storage of the data. It cites two vi…
Singing Wells in Numbers…. News
…Andy did a litte homework for this one: Number of recordings of groups: 374 (this does not include other recordings like Magic Moments, Influences, etc…) Number of groups recorded: 83 Number of hours of music: 27 hours and 30 minutes. …
Promotion of Batwa Culture/Music: UOBDU report Nov 2013 News
…munities and are entertained at UGX 50,000/= per visit per group. Furthermore, Abubilla Music Foundation sent the Batwa CDs to UOBDU for sell and make money that can support Batwa so far a few CDs have been sold at UGX 120, 000/=. Compiled by Zaninka Penninah, UOBDU …
Ketebul Music: A Year in Review News
…focused on the Kenyan Coast and it will be released next 2014. We are also supporting Kenyan Music Week. This is an annual event and we are going to support each decade for each day, for our five days, for our 50 year history. This will help solve our identity crisis, to give our people a sense of history. Our partners are Hivos, Phat Magazine, Kiss 100 (every Sunday they host two artists from us and talk about the music, etc..) etc… and we will b…
Report from Womex 2013 News
…n which the Singing Wells project may be interested in the future – mobile phones and ring back tones as a method of delivery for music. Mike and I also attended the African music networking session which became the launch for a new initiative by the Cape Verde government. It has been calculated that music is their biggest export and so has set up the African Music Forum to make it easier for musicians to make a living – from visas and flights to…
Obuell-Lira and the Macedonia Band Story
…f the Macedonia Band. The Macedonia band and the song Uganda, Land of Freedom was known by everyone and many times served to spare someone from being accused a rebel collaborator. How you can help the Macedonia Band We aim to help support the communities we meet by sharing their music and dance through Singing Wells. You can support the Macedonia Band by donating directly to our charity The Abubilla Music Foundation. Donate via YouTube here Dona…
SWP Uganda 2013 – our proposed itinerary News
…i (about 120 kms from Mbale), recording a Basoga group called Muwewesi Xylophone Group. Like their name suggests, they play the traditional xylophone or ‘Embaire’ which can be played by up to 6 people, depending on how large it is. At the end of the session, we will pack up the studio (we are very quick at doing this now!) and head off to a new location – this time the town of Jinja on the shores of Lake Victoria, close to the source of the River…