A quick summary of the Singing Wells Project News
…… 6. Singing Wells is about capturing how cool, how relevant this music is through Magic Moments: Listen to the Nyatiti for the first time with your eyes closed. It is a kick drum. It is a snare drum. It is a bass. It is guitar. Listen: Watch a real drummer. Watch someone that drums through their souls. And ask yourself whether East African Music is relevant. 7. Singing Wells is about bringing you groups and sounds that are ready for prime time –…
Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…ed each other more warily… Once in airport we queued up to put all 34 bags through a detector and walk through another detector ourselves (#2) Once through this line we lined up for Kenya airlines. We are our own queue and it took a while to check in our 23 bags and convince them to let us carry our 11 carry on bags… Once checked in we then waited in visa line. No issues. By this time the flight is calling for boarding… There’s another line at the…
Promotion of Batwa cultural music: UOBDU report March 2013 News
…Ds have started generating some income so far UGX 70,000/= has been raised through sales. Through Albums and music recorded provided by Abubilla Music Foundation to UOBDU, all the groups performed were very exited and appreciative while seeing themselves dancing as well as fellow Batwa viewing their fellow Batwa performing. This encouraged other communities to keep practicing and maintain their cultural heritage. For the last six month when the pr…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…as we typed about dust and rain we were travelling slowly but dramatically through a pot hole the size of Rhode Island), with equipment going through 1.5 gigs of data A DAY. Second, we need an exact record 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 reco…
How music archives can help communities News
…were recently found by Chris Kidd, a Ph.D. student who was working for the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU). Chris took the recordings back to Uganda and re-introduced them to the Batwa people who had since become a poor, landless and disempowered community following their eviction from the forests due to the gorilla conservation project in the mountainous south west region of the country. In particular, Chris played a r…
Northern Uganda: Day 5 – from Pakwach to Soroti (a road trip) Story
…ge crater makes you chuckle. You can drive around them or slow down and go through them. Our Ketebul team will explain that the worse the road, the less support the locals have given to the party in power. A lot of people don’t support the party in power it seems – at least by our road test. During the day, trucks are trucks. They lead a lot, overburdened with their cargo and the dozen or so folks hitching a ride to supplement the drivers income….
Singing Wells – The Story So Far News
…ging Wells project and buy a copy! You can buy a copy of the Singing Wells book at the Blurb Bookstore – just click this link: Singing Wells – The Story So Far The profits we receive from the sale of each book go directly to our UK charity The Abubilla Music Foundation which supports the Singing Wells project. Your donation will help give much needed financial support to tribal music groups in East Africa. By supporting these artists, we can help…
A day in the field with Singing Wells News
…from four microphones plus other sources at a high resolution to Apple MacBook Pro laptops. The benefit of the systems we have chosen is that they can run off the battery power of the laptops if we are in the situation where we do not have a generator (or there is a power cut mid-session which happened to us when we recorded to the Batwa at the Travellers Rest Hotel in Kisoro, Uganda!) We can also combine the two recording units into one to incre…
Northern Uganda: Day 3 – from Gulu to Awach to Pakwach Story
…the Nile near the Albert Nile Bridge next to Pakwach, Uganda. A long drive through the national park. We could say it was beautiful, but it was pitch dark. After driving about 100 kilometers in the dark, we suddenly saw the hills ahead in a dark red. As we got closer we realized the hills on both sides were on fire in a controlled burn. We drove through black and dark red for about 15 minutes. We then just we saw the back of four elephants crossin…
Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…nning blue skies and we drove for about 80 kilometers in glorious sunshine through village after village until we reached Acet, where we will meet Acholi musicians (hundreds, in fact). We landed in a field, pock marked with cement block buildings. Not the best site. But in the middle of the field was the most stunning tree that cast a hundred diameter shadow. We set up under its branches. As we did, from all directions, came a team of children and…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…retty flowers 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 Kam…
Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…p. In addition to writing blogs, organising strategy through 2014, sorting through about 10,000 receipts of expenses (we run a very tight shop, thanks to Steve’s leadership), we welcome Ben into the studio to record. The Otacho Young Stars stayed the morning as well. We had a full crew to support Ben – Johnnie and Bishop on guitar, Nina and Winyo on vocals. Watch this space. We also continued our work to capture new artists for Missing – Global Re…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…are for someone to essentially do his job that they need to write a song. Johnnie, Bishop and Eddie all joined in to support them in the studio with Winyo and Nina working on back up vocals. They were a huge amount of fun, smiling throughout it all. Other than recording, we continued to blog our little hearts out, write up trip reports, strategies, lessons learned, etc… The good news is we have now fully planned out field visits through 2014. Jimm…
Day 7: In Nairobi – sponsors, blogs and strategy Story
…isits, including all our song translations. Kathy brought back a full work book of notes. We have realised the growing importance of our ‘field interviewer’ who now spends as much time with the groups before and after their recording sessions as we spend with them recording. We are investing increasing time in group histories, background on costumes and songs. We then said goodbye to Kathy that evening as she flew back to London. Jimmy and Hunter…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…oming 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 the pitch black to Na…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…us, baked by the sun, but cooled slightly by a continuous breeze that ran through the tall trees. The Music Groups When we got back to our hotel in Eldoret (128 km of hard night time driving), long after darkness fell, we added up the day, in wonder at the numbers of songs we recorded: 5 groups, 33 songs, 3 Influences Sessions and 2 Magic Moments. Pokot music is all about the dance and vocal harmonies – most music with origins in nomadic tribes i…