Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…more our team needs to work individually to break stress not create it and find ways to support each other. Singing Wells creates very long days for the team, somehow… Ultimately, it is all about the music. Nothing replaces a great take of great musicians. You can forgive a lot with a great song. You will be happy to know we’ve just passed Jinja and are roughly two hours from Kampala on a well paved two lane road. We have moved from sheer terror t…
Northern Uganda: Day 5 – from Pakwach to Soroti (a road trip) Story
…is/her head. You see in the distance yellow dots and you are guaranteed to find a beautiful Ugandan child smiling beneath it. The women are altogether different, carrying baskets of nuts and spices, water jugs, charcoal, thatched bundles, etc…. This, of course, gives them a ram rod straight posture, giving them a majectic air and a very practical crown. Before talking about the markets, let’s now talk about the middle of the road, where the vehicl…
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 4 – night recording at Fort Murchison Story
…be frank, these weren’t as good as their parts during the songs. We often find this the case and it shouldn’t be surprising. Most good musicians play off the band and if you ask them to play the song just with their part find it all a bit strange. So too for African village groups. They don’t go into studios and ‘lay down their track’ in some great over-dubbing session. They perform with a troupe, and they feed off of and help drive the dancing a…
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…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…ately we all made it to super-market where we loaded up with money, mobile phone cards and other sundries and headed out. The William car stopped to pick up Akello, a lovely Ugandan singer/songwriter, who is joining the group as our Influences artist. The Emmanuel car headed into Kampala to pick up our press badges. We then headed off 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…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…every field visit and decided to invite the Otacho Young Stars, the great find of our field visit to record the Luo, and Ben Kisinja, the great Kalenjin musician we recorded earlier this week. Saturday was all about the Otacho Young Stars. Let’s remind you who they are – here are two clips: We focused our recording time on Mr Manager, their quite sincere thank you song to a factory manager that came to their factory and actually did a good job. W…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…out how he can’t live without her and he will travel as far as he needs to find her. ‘Chesaina’ : this is a person who can hold the hind leg of a donkey. This is highly unusual because a donkey kicks so hard, no one could hold his hind leg. ‘Arap Oloo’ : about a wife who thinks her husband is lost. She wants to look for him because she can’t be responsible for all her children and animals without him. ‘Chang’komen’ : about a woman who is married t…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…a flat area and we stopped and 50 Cows announced ‘we’re here.’ We tried to find a recording site out of the burning sun but failed. We wanted the lovely 360 views and sacrificed shade for our art. The Music Groups Kasagat Traditional Dancers The first group was the Kas agat Traditional Dancers. Kathy talked to the tribal elder about them. They come from Tot, about 50km from where we were recording. They had walked here the night before and had bee…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…to Uganda and back and die. Masirtarit Finally, we recorded the ill-fated Masirtarit, a wonderful female folk choir with great songs. They had waited all day for their turn only to find the rain arrived to join them. We did record one wonderful take which will be part of Singing Wells, but they deserved far more. …
Singing Wells – Origins News
…neer, 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 tribal musicians in East Africa. We are recording music in Northern Uganda in Autumn 2012 and then we will travel to Tan…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…med up with Andy Patterson while he was here and together they conducted a number of interviews with Kenyan musicians who are now based in the UK. They also had the chance to visit Kenya House in Stratford as a guest of our friends at the Kenya Tourist Board. Here’s Bill’s article published in Business Daily Africa: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Where+the+world+got+real+flavour+of+Kenya+in+London/-/1248928/1480860/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Phot…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…you some random data. Select CSV (basically Excel) as your Result Type and number range as your Data Type. When we downloaded the country outline of the UK, we downloaded three shapefiles of different administrative levels, called 0, 1 and 2. Administrative level 0 is the outline of the whole of the UK. Administrative level 1 is the outline of the countries within the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Administrative level 2 is th…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…ase, GBR_adm.zip. Open it up and take a look. What you will see is a crazy number of files, none of which your computer seems to really recognise. Don’t panic. What you’re seeing is just a few shapefiles (remember shapefiles? No? Let me jog your memory). As we’re looking at the shapefiles in the C: drive rather than in ArcMap itself, you can see the six individual files which make up the one shapefile. In fact, in this case you’re looking at 18 fi…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…ame. He’s called Nicholas. We tell him my daughter is called Nicola and he finds this hilarious. He asks my name and spends some time repeating it with his friend Dorothia, giggling when I try to correct his pronunciation. When we are near the bottom I can see Nicholas has been eyeing up my water bottle. It’s still half full and I offer it to him. He’s delighted and keeps hold of the bottle like a prized possession. I realize that it’s not the wat…