Hannah interviews Sabina – Acet, Northern Uganda News
…an Acholi woman from the village of Acet, performed with ‘Umuny Jubi Ite Yaa’ – a women’s group from a nearby IDP camp on our first recording day in Northern Uganda. Sabina played the ‘Uvure’ a type of horn for this women’s group and blew us away. Like Evelyn Ojok her husband was killed in the war after he was abducted and taken into the bush by the LRA. She has 7 children and 4 of them love to sing and dance, mainly through learning at school. …
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…le weaving but very utilitarian. The other big change is the arrival of potatoes. We are in potato country now and the roadsides are covered with them. Otherwise, the same road rules apply so we won’t repeat ourselves. We suppose a description of inside the car is overdue. So let’s get the basics out of the way. Some of us sleep. Some of us put on our iPods and drift off to a faraway place, usually not involving an African road at night. But we ar…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Obuell-Lira to Soroti Story
…and served dozens of times to spare someone a fast execution as a collaborator. We then arrived at Joshua’s village. It was the most beautiful we’ve seen with four-five small thatched huts, each painted with patterns. There was a large clay oven in the middle of the village and the whole grounds were landscaped with flowers. The village was so well swept and so often that you could see by the raised area under the huts that they had swept 6 inche…
Northern Uganda: Day 5 – from Pakwach to Soroti (a road trip) Story
…etty sure that you will find under it 6 or 7 ladies selling pyramids of potatoes, green oranges, etc… The fruit and vegetables complement the plethora of cows, sheep, goats and chickens found along the road, somehow connected and protected by a distant owner. And then there are the bikes, generally falling into two categories. There’s the rideable load, where the bike is carrying simple things like doors, coffins, gates or water bottles and the bi…
Northern Uganda: Day 4 – night recording at Fort Murchison Story
…cond group of the day, Cieng Dwong, to travel to us from their village Alebtong. All well and good, but our poor travelers didn’t arrive with us until about 1900, by which time it was pretty dark – okay, very dark. The good news is we have good lighting equipment. The bad news, good lights attract bugs. These are Nile bugs, mind you, so in addition to the millions of little moths you’d expect, we had bat size critters, from very big grasshoppers t…
Northern Uganda: Day 4 – Pakwach to Widiang’a, Nebbi Story
…ers are picked from the top villages around the area. Their leader is Cwinyaai Atya, Richard. Their first song was Tambara, in the Osegu style. It is all about a stubborn girl who doesn’t want to marry early. Here they are, dancing in glory: The second song was magnificent, called Oramba, the name of a hunter, in the style ‘Aliku’. This style is traditionally performed around the fire, as a celebration of the hunter’s coming back from a successful…
Northern Uganda: Day 3 – from Gulu to Awach to Pakwach Story
Long day but glorious. We woke early, loaded our bags and headed out to Awach, about an hour away from Gulu. We settled in the beautiful village of Paibona Tuga, which is known for the music of the Likembe, the thumb piano. As yesterday, we settled under a big tree in the middle of the village, about 30 metres from some homes, and became surrounded first by goats and then by children. The musicians gradually arrived over the next forty minutes, u…
Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…ad music most of the night. We tucked into a breakfast of fruit, bread, potatoes and sausage and then headed off to Gulu (via a trip to pick up a generator, a bunch of electric cables and Big Jimmy our Acet Coordinator, below). It was a beautiful day with stunning 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 land…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…on that I spent some time working with the GIS department at Harvard in Boston specifically learning how to use the mapping software, and I also attended GIS classes given at Harvard. I then brought the idea to Singing Wells when I began work in the summer of 2012. The Virtue Foundation – Ghana – Yellow Fever Immunisation Why do you think it is the best way to display data? When displaying data it’s no secret that people often understand it better…
African Strings: The Nyatiti and The Adungu News
…re is his website. The Instrument: The Adungu is based on the major or pentatonic scale. In modern Africa the Adungu has tuning-pegs, which the Egyptians did not, and play the harp with it away from the player’s body, whilst the Egyptians leant the harp against his chest like a musical hunting bow. Great care was taken to achieve the ideal of sound timbre desired, such as the movable rings attached round the neck of the instrument, one to each str…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…led to 10 Batwa musicians and 5 Batwa babies travelling from Kisoro to Kampala to Nairobi and recording some great songs over the course of four days. We now want to repeat this for 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…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…obi. The Nakuru crew, in the white van, was stopped cold by a broken alternator belt. The other car was able to flag down a matatu (small van public transport that fill the roads everywhere) and head back. We agreed to take off the belt altogether and get them to Nakuru before dark (with no power they had no lights). They made it. The second jeep soldiered on to Nairobi, trusting our now loved GPS to take us ‘home.’ The Equator We passed the equat…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…the Eldoret Club to start our third day of recording, this time with the Marakwet tribes. The drive was long but spectacular. Our journey took us from Eldoret to Iten, the home of Kenya’s world class athletes. The Journey Most the Olympic gold medallists among Kenyan athletes live within 100 kms of Iten and it has become the legendary source of great long distance runners. Over 1,000 Kenyan runners train here and the roads are filled with athlete…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…gs: Anya Kar, Chepo Laleiyo, Kirap, Kiter, Kiyuar, Asoiyen, Adong’o and Montonyo. The women were dressed in white, carrying sticks and the men carried spears and their portable chairs/sleeping pillows. Kalomoywa We recorded 8 songs with them and a magic moment of wonderful chorus. The songs were: Kinyakar, Kamatakar, Chepo Nandi, Kamitoi, Kaperwo, Chemining Tie, Chepo Chepkai, Kimnakiy Mitinge, Kisech. Click here to go to Song Translations Everyth…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…we had a great opportunity to interview Steve, the Singing Wells Project Manager, on the way to our first session. Interview with Steve Kivutia Steve was born in 1982 in Nairobi but his ‘home’ is the village of Kakamenga; his father moved villages to Moi’s Bridge (names after Kenyan President at the time). He was born in Mata Hospital and sent to Maseno Highschool, graduating in 2000. During school he loved Alpha Blondy, a reggae artist from the…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…shoot of the trip – Kapsokwony Kenya, 56 kilometers from Kitale. We drove onto the athletic grounds of Chesamis High School to record four groups. Our fixer was ’50 Cows’ – clearly taken from 50 Cent, but taking the Kalenjin love of cattle to a new level. 50 Cows is a local journalist and student at United States International University (USIU). The Music Groups Ben Kisinja First up for recording was Ben Kisinja, a wonderful guitarist in the typi…