Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…Tanzanian.” https://youtu.be/C-4PdHne3Jc We’ll leave you here. We checked in to our hotel, the Mediterraneo Hotel, Dar es Salaam. Tomorrow we head off for Bagamoyo….
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…d that is how we ended up on this road. We filmed the drums yesterday and today we are going to see the Bigwala and discuss more lessons learned. Tomorrow, we are going to find out how much more there is to do.”…
Singing Wells Approaches 5 Million Views News
…s and stories to the world. Keep an eye out on the Singing Wells Youtube channel for the footage and recordings from our field trip to Zanzibar and Pemba….
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…ad rich musical lives, to become artists, to use the palace as a stepping stone to develop their art further. They were brought into these palaces as young boys, and all they did was play music. In most cases they received no other education and in most cases they played until they could play no more and their ‘retirement pension’ was the salaries of the sons or grandsons they were able to train and bring into the palaces. Their musical lives were…
Support for the Elgon Ngoma Troupe News
…m 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 field trip, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkyDtBXfunI Watch Julius, the leader of the group, explain who the Elgon Ngoma troupe is, and their mission: https://ww…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 1- Drum Making and Palace Players Story
…to stretch the strings and then use the awl to pull the string up and then move to the next hole, tightening and tuning as I go. This is very dangerous and I can miss and put the awl in my eye, or miss on the knife and slice my fingers off, or miss with the hammer and damage my legs. Many drummers have severe eye injuries or missing fingers. If the stringing of step 8 was fast, with awl and knife in a chaotic dance with his fingers, this step was…
Singing Wells Youtube Channel hits 2.5Million views News
…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 up the…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11:An Interview with Gregg Story
…my village life. When we gathered for big celebrations, the entire village took to the road to walk for miles to a central location. We walked all night. And we sang all night. The old people walking with the children, all of us singing. And now we have a nice road that probably gets us to that site in 20 minutes by car. But what have we lost? We’ve lost the connection that comes with all generations singing together, with laughter and joy. We san…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…1963, the Ogara trio recorded the song “Selestina Juma” at the African Gramophone Stores, famously known as AGS, in Nairobi. Curiously, the song bears a distinct beat of ska, the precursor of today’s reggae. The trio’s guitar work was evidently inspired by influences from way beyond Luoland and was pretty much ahead of its time. It is possible that its ingenuity came from itinerant guitarists from the Congo, Uganda and Zambia who were already vis…
Latest Field Trip – Kenya 2018 News
…We’ve returned from our latest field trip, this time to western Kenya. Field reports coming soon….
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11: Ketebul Studios, Nairobi Story
…a cause – they aren’t rooted. I was a session musician at AGS (African Gramophone Studio) and CMS (Capital Music Studio) studios, both on River Road. I formed Sega Sega and we had a drummer called Katoi and Juma Otheth. We did a huge amount of studio work and as Benga became popular, the three of us played on a lot of others’ songs. This meant that our Luo sound was getting on a lot of records. The early sixties was mostly about studio work but b…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 4 – Nkubu to Mukuuni to Nairobi Story
…drive that took about 90 minutes due to traffic! We all crashed early knowing we had almost a week in the studio starting tomorrow morning!…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 2 – Muranga to Kangema to Nkubu Story
…was at the table from 18:30 to 23:30 each night. We counted 478 individual trips to our table she made on one night alone. Working Practices: A Typical Field Recording Session The basic steps we use in a typical session are as follows: Arrival/introductions/set-up The interview team immediately sits with the groups and talks through how the session will work and then collects information on the group, the songs and the instruments and musical styl…
Tanzania 2017, Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo News
…We’ve just returned from our latest field trip discovering the music which took us to the eastern side of Tanzania. We witnessed an amazingly rich offering of music and met some extremely talented musicians. Read our field reports here to learn about our experiences with a snake dance, an amazing performance of a female initiation ceremony ,and recording members of the extraordinary Zawose family….
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 1 – Nairobi to Kiongwe to Muranga Story
…na ivinda (Chasing After Time). This song talks about the President’s call to stop corruption. The call to chase after time comes from the society that won’t condone these malpractices. Kaniini Kaseo The group is led by Mumbi Wambua, in Kyolo style. The group is also from Kamba ethnic community (ukambani wa kitui) and also from the village of Kiongwe. They have 16 members and were formed in 1980. They performed 3 songs, all of which use the Ileve…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 0 – London/Nairobi Story
…(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 the trip that follows: Tabu Osusa STEVE KIVUTIA & PATRICK ONDIEK NICK ABONYO GREGG TWENDA LEWIS KOOME RALPH SIPALLA JONAH KEGAH KENNETH KIPSANG Message from Abubilla Music Foundation Team For…