73,603 views on YouTube News
…ls YouTube channel……73,603 views and still counting! It’s not a meaningful number in itself (like a nice round 100,000 – our next target) but it does mean more and more people are finding us and enjoying what we are all about – bringing the more traditional sounds of East Africa to an enthusiastic audience. Thanks for watching! Our top 3 video hits In third place, this is the Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club from Sita Village, Gede in Kenya’s Malindi…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…s for the whole group to perform, singing and dancing in front of ten microphones and three digital cameras.’ Video engineer, Patrick Ondiek, adds, ‘I love producing the final videos and getting phone calls from my friends asking me ‘how did you find these musicians?’ I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ In addition to our field visits, we have developed an online Music Map of East…
Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…anted to make sure we recorded their shakers, the Kayamba (hand shaken idiophones with dried seeds inside), the Lungo (broken glass moved in a big bowl) and Ndema (2 brass rings played in ringing and muted tones). In the Rift Valley, where the people are more pastoral, we really focused on their voices and I wanted some one to play the burkandit (a handmade guitar). In Nyanza, we focused on the Orutu, the Nyatiti and the Ohangla (drums). In Kisoro…
Day 7 (pm): Recording at the Airport Guesthouse, Entebbe Story
…ocal stores on big speakers). We listened to a few different tracks on his phone, and I narrowed my favourite Ugandan pop tracks down to ‘Apple’ by Bigtym and ‘Guns & Bomb’ by Bebecool.. Odika Constantine, son of Watmon, is in his 30s. He was abducted by the LRA from his home in Kitgum District when he was just 17. He was held as a soldier in the bush for 6 months until he managed to escape. He described the day it happened: the rebels arrived to…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…e carved into a hill, with rows and rows of streets below us, and an equal number of streets and houses piled up above us. There were cars, motorbikes and taxi’s driving past and planes flying overhead. Everything was for sale by everyone who walked by. No sleeping cattle. No flower beds. But, as always, there was wonderful music. The first group was the Adungu Cultural Troupe, masters of the Adungu. We had interviewed their leader on our ‘recce’…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…ng at the most spectacular African sunset to our right. We must be heading south right now and we must be being rewarded for bringing the story of Macedonia to you. You’re most welcome. But we digress. A group of us is in file management mode and this is worth a brief discussion (well, mostly because we are driving on the road in pitch black to Kampala and are using this blog to distract ourselves from the terrors occurring outside!). Behind the s…
An Evening with Mserego Mwatela Group News
…with his father’s group and then he founded this group in 2007. They use a number of styles, most notably Sengenya, which we covered fully in our March 2011 field recordings in Malindi. We interviewed Swalhe Mwatela Massai and his grandson, Ali Tungwa : Q to the grandfather: In contrast to Uganda, we have seen many villages in Kenya where the traditional music is only played by the older generation. And yet your group is so young and vibrant. Ho…
How music archives can help communities News
…dings have helped communities, one of which centres on the Batwa people of south west Uganda – the community we recorded for the Singing Wells project back in November 2011 (click here for field reports). In the mid 1960’s an ethnomusicologist called Peter Cooke recorded oral histories of the Batwa tribe in Uganda, who were, at that time, a community of forest dwelling hunter-gatherers. Cooke’s recordings were subsequently archived at the British…
ATTA is following Singing Wells News
…guest at the World Travel Market at Excel and I met representatives from a number of organisations and companies in the travel and tourism industry operating in the East African counties we are visiting during our field recording trips. I met Nigel Vere Nicoll, Chief Executive of the African Travel & Tourism Association and explained a little about Singing Wells and our aims to record and celebrate the cultural music heritage of East Africa. It se…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…to Gulu at around 2PM (yes, we tend to spend a lot of time getting mobile phone cards!) and headed out on a 360 km drive to the town of Gulu in Northern Uganda. Within minutes we were deeply immersed in the ‘classic’ East African road scene: big tall white bags of coal, with grass helmets, bricks in various stages of manufacturer (either drying or firing), pyramids of potatoes, tomatoes on patches of blankets under trees, tiny goats tethered near…
A day in the field with Singing Wells News
…with us: 2 Apple 17″ MacBook Pro 2 MOTU Traveler MK3 Audio Interface 4 Headphone amps 8 Sony MDR-V600 headphones 2 Shure mics & stands 2 Rode Lavalier 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 Think…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…frica, meaning that within the huge range of instruments there were also a number of different names for them. This became very interesting to discover however, and over time that information could gather on the map, making it more comprehensive. What did you find most interesting about the data you collected? What stood out for me was the huge range of instruments used, and the huge range of percussion instruments available, which you don’t reall…
Background on the Music of Northern Uganda News
…ibe are part of the Luo people of Uganda, and they migrated to Uganda from Southern Sudan with other Luo peoples along the Nile banks. 2. Next we stay in Murchison Lodge in Pakwach and meet up with ‘The Aynu Traditional Music’ group, (a Lugbara group) ‘Wenipac and ‘Ndara Troupe‘ who will spend a day with us at the Lodge. These groups represent all of the Alur, Lugbara, Acholi, Kakwa, Madi and Kebu tribes! This seems to demonstrate how traditional…
Acholi Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…li in Uganda. History: They came to northern Uganda from Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan. In the late seventeenth century, they developed a socio-hierarchical system, in which communities, or chiefdoms, were run by Rwodi (rulers). They were traditionally hunting communities, whose economies revolved around hunting and breeding livestock. In the British colonial period, the Acoli comprised the majority of manual laborers and military. This damaged th…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…s for the whole group to perform, singing and dancing in front of ten microphones and three digital cameras.’ Video engineer, Patrick Ondiek, adds, ‘I love producing the final videos and getting phone calls from my friends asking me ‘how did you find these musicians?’ I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection of important…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…gistics of taking a team of 10 to Kisoro and beyond. We have spoken on the phone and emailed many times. It’s good to meet at last. The flight to Kigali makes a stop-over in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. I suddenly realize that by the end of the day I will have been in four different countries – Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. I am already struggling to believe that I am in East Africa when 24 hours ago I was in South West London and this…