1. Introducing the Naizungwe drums Story
…mselves and their values. Our history has weakened our minds and what is left is for man to eat man. No values! No identity! No humans! Just creatures moving the path of God’s gift called life and breathing the air meant for humans.” Below are excepts from Peter Cooke’s recordings of the drums that James talks about: http://www.singingwells.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Peter-Cooke-naizungwe-recording-1.mp3 http://www.singingwells.org/wp-content/…
Day 5: Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017 Story
…ord the group Liwambwe. The Group Leader is: Atanas Teleni. It is a fairly new group, having played off and on for three years. They had unique drums, including small drums with wooden spikes on bottom to be embedded in sand, called the Siganga. They also had a pair of drums called the Likuti and a long drum called the Msondo, and a very long thin drum called a Neya. Here’s the set: In the dance they had a character in a mask called a Lipiko, who…
Day 3: Monday, 2017 February 20th Story
…s and instruments die. But another mission is to bring these traditions to new audiences, allowing new artists to work with traditional artists to bring new life to these sounds and movements. So, we want the grandson of Mzee Morris to work with current artists like Leo, Sophie and Elliot. We want Leo, Sophie and Elliot to be inspired by Rajab and Henry’s music and hopefully they will bring these styles to new audiences. This theme is critical to…
Day 2: Sunday, 2017 February 19th Story
…ing for three reasons: We had the whole day so were able to record a large number of songs and do an “Influences” session. This gave the village children time to get to know us and understand our mission. By the end they were singing along to all the songs. In addition to being a professional musician, Leo also teaches music to school children so he is a natural with kids. On all the songs that he did, he had the whole village singing and laughing…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…had listened to his drums all my life – his drums are used to announce the news on Tanzania Broadcast Corporation (TBC) hourly news bulletins. At 14 years old, I would sit at my drums just trying to recreate that one riff. It took me three months of non-stop listening to get it down. And that was just 30 seconds of his lifetime of drumming. All I want to do is master his style.” As Daudi mentioned, Mzee Morris became the sound of Tanzanian news….
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…the Busoga King. We talked about the problems: no one played the music, no new musicians knew the trumpets, farmers had forgotten how to grow the gourds used to make the trumpets, and the seeds were lost. That conversation started everything. We needed to revive these trumpets. I got UNESCO support, I got Singing Wells support and gradually, we formed a group. Singing Wells filmed them in 2013 and helped us tell their story. We also invested in th…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…music. And yet, we all walked away convinced that you will see an exciting new East African artist writing new amazing music with these drums as part of the rhythm section. Are there lessons from this journey? Yes, and the most important of these is our discovery of a single repeatable model to restore these instruments: we refer to this as the Bigwala Model. What James Isabirye discovered from his work to restore the Bigwala trumpets is a five st…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 2 – Interviews with Musicians of Uganda’s Royal Palaces Story
…n his quest to track down surviving members of the musician corp. The good news is that there are some. The bad news is that the group is declining rapidly. In some cases, we refer to musicians as the ‘last surviving’ musician. This is based on James’ best reckoning, having tried for years to find others. Neither James nor the musician involved wants the title of ‘last surviving’ and we would love to be proven wrong. Musisi is looking for more dru…
Ketebul Music presents Shades of Benga Online News
…ences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the itinerant Congolese musicians Edouard Masengo and Jean Bosco Mwenda who’s intricate guitar-picking styles largely shaped the present Kenyan sound, with the Benga playing a dominant role. Currently, you can get advance copies from Ketebul Music Studios or place your order by contacting them directly….
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 1- Drum Making and Palace Players Story
…ing out the stitch of nylon string, cutting off the former holes, creating new holes and re-lacing the drum skins together with leather strings. Very fast. 9. Tuning The final stage is tuning. He showed us in detail how he uses the four instruments to tune, using a new bigger drum that is already stringed with animal skin strings. “I fix the wood, hammer them in to stretch the strings and then use the awl to pull the string up and then move to the…
Central and Eastern Uganda: Day 2 – Kampala to Jinja Story
…role. They are tuned to the pentatonic scale and like the royal drums are often tuned to the xylophone. Our group had five trumpets: The Enhana: meaning ‘calf’ — this is the largest trumpet, lowest in pitch and the one tuned initially to the xylophone The Empala: meaning ‘leopard’ and tuned one tone up from the Enhana Endhasasi: meaning ‘the one in the middle’, or ‘the one that slices the group in half’, the cutter The Endeesi: meaning ‘the starte…
Musisi’s Story, Part 1: The Fall of the Buganda Kingdom Story
…minutes later and said the soldiers were now far closer having broken into new rooms closer to where we were. The King asked him to go out again and find any other news. The man didn’t return and the King told me that meant he was killed and we must run. Soldiers were everywhere. He grabbed me and we ran through several palace gates and came into one of his Throne Rooms (there were several). There were a lot of us, around the King and in the room…
The Revival of Ohangla Music! News
…DTtU…
Rediscovering the lost Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom: Day 1, Uganda Story
…g closely with Albert and Shaban, a professional drummer who now leads the new band, they built a new set of Royal Drums, recruited a team of passionate drummers to learn how to play the drums, learned to tune the drums and ultimately learned to play new music. Over the course of their studies, the new drum students (most of whom are actually highly accomplished drummers and professors of music) starting calling Musisi ‘The Professor.’ Left: James…
Support for the Elgon Ngoma Troupe News
…ur favourite artists, the Elgon Ngoma Troupe, is seeking sponsorship for a new piggery on their project. The piggery will allow the troupe to establish a sustainable form of income for the project, which houses children from disadvantaged backgrounds through performance of traditional music, through breeding and meat production. Donate to Elgon Ngoma’s gofundme page here! And you can watch one of their brilliant performances, recorded on our 2014…
Singing Wells Youtube Channel hits 2.5Million views News
…This was filmed back in 2011, on the very first day of the Singing Wells pilot trip to Kenya. Seeing the generations of Nyerere’s family performing together was a special moment (his son Mr Bado is also a musician). We captured a great fusion of old and new https://youtu.be/-MU13FLg_io You also need to check out the Elgon Ngoma Troupe, performing a traditional circumcision ritual dance. Please keep following our channel – with new videos going u…