Lugbara Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…, mainly that man are descendants from the first creatures put on earth by spirit (the creator of men). Spirit created a man (gboro-gboro) and a woman (meme), and then domestic livestock. Meme had wild animals in her womb so that after the gazelle had broken out all animals followed from her womb. Man was the last to come out. The first human beings are said to have been twins: Arube and O’duu. Arube was a boy while O’duu was a girl. These twins,…
Alur Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…tes. Left with no alternative, Labongo handed over the child to Nyapiri to open and retrieve his bead. Nyapiri killed the child and got out the bead. This caused a separation of the three brothers. Tiful having been impressed by Nyapiri’s story of a good country beyond the river, moved with his followers including Lendu and Okebu to the highlands in the west. Nyapiri followed Tiful and traveled along the west bank of the Victoria Nile and finally…
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
…to Map 1, or wherever you put it. Then right-click on GBR_adm2 and select Open Attribute Table. This will open a box with the attribute table in it, which should look like this. The column called NAME_2 contains the names of all of the counties. Unfortunately I have yet to figure out a smart way of getting those names out of ArcMap and into Excel, so usually I just copy them out. Luckily for you wondermonkeys, if you’re going to be using the UK u…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…w: C:\How To Map\Country Outlines\UK. Getting your map outline into ArcMap Open ArcMap and select Cancel – you want to create a new map rather than opening an existing one. This will give you the completely blank ArcMap screen. Before we do anything else, we’re going to save our map. Like all your other GIS files it needs to be saved on the C: drive. It’s also a good idea to put it in a folder of its own because it will start to collect lots of ot…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…t he said yes to such a request. First, their travel story. He was able to contact all the singers on the 29th of November and he arranged all travel papers by the 30th. They then left the morning of the 30th and travelled by private van from Kisoro to Kampala, arriving in Kampala the same evening. They spent the night in Kampala and left the morning of the 1st of December and arrived in Nairobi in the afternoon of the second. ‘They’ were five lad…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…e cars were not yet allowed to pass, as the Uganda exit border had not yet opened for vehicles. By about 7:55 it opened and we climbed in our cars and were off again. And, as you might recall, we were now driving on the ‘other side of the road.’ The drive back was beautiful, through the hills of Rwanda. We rushed because we wanted some time in Kigali to visit the Genocide Memorial Museum. We were able to spend about 90 minutes there before heading…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…praise of the National Park. The Music Groups Francis Sembargare We did a number of ‘Influences’ sessions with Francis, but we love this one, with Jessie and Francis singing together in the gardens of the Traveller’s Rest hotel in Kisoro. Please listen before reading the blog: https://youtu.be/c1XBVlNQL6E We also recorded a beautiful version of Amahoro with Jessie, Francis and the ladies. Francis and the ladies are happy to pose for a series of…
Gary Barlow, Ayub Ogada & the Diamond Jubilee song News
…nal stringed instrument called the nyatiti. We are delighted that Gary did contact Ayub and that he features on ‘Sing’ written especially for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee: It was great to see an article about our involvement on Take That Daily, a fan website for all things related to Take That and Gary Barlow. Click here to go to the article. Our post from March 23rd 2012 Our friends at the Kenya Tourist Board UK & Ireland have added a feature…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…r equipment (we really wanted to return with it all!). We then took Kenyan Airlines (new plane with movies!) to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, population roughly a million. We were met by our drivers Arun and John and drove through heavy rains to the Rwanda-Uganda border crossing near Kisoro. After a rather lengthy crossing, we then drove on to our final desitination – the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro. Five quick things: Rwanda: Beautiful country kn…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…ould get a better view and get a more authentic sound. Then Abubilla Music contacted Tabu for a project and we discussed the idea of a mobile recording studio. From that discussion, we established Singing Wells. We thought something might happened because Tabu was pretty sure – but it was odd to get this e mail out of the blue. But then Andy came down in October 2010. First time he came to studio he was very business like. He had a checklist that…
Interview with Fifty Cows – fixer for Singing Wells News
…ing the recording of the Kalenjin tribes in March 2012. He was our liaison contact with the music groups. Kathy interviewed him – here is his story… The Interview Fifty Cows is a Merekwet, part of the Kalenjin tribes. He organised for us to see singers from the Merekwet, Pokot and Tugen tribes. These are all sub-tribes of the Kalenjin. He was born in 1976 and grew up in a Merekwet village. His father was Merekwet and his mother was Pokot. Hi…
Kenya (Coast): Day 2 – recording in the village of Kibarani Story
…village was called Kibarani. We set up behind on larged thatched hut in an open field, filmed with cows (lots of mooing ended up on record), cow poo (lots of misteps), children, beautiful trees, chickens… but far off the main road, wonderful quiet and cool. This is the goat pen to the right of the thatched hut where we recorded … The Music Groups Chechemeko Raha We recorded Chechemeko Raha first thing in the morning of March 30th. Led by Bahri wa…
Matthew Morin News
…inging Wells project since March 2011 when he met the team in Nairobi. He has praised the project for its ‘value to academic fields like musicology and anthropology in addition to the broader benefit of providing an open sourced educational resource, internationally as well as to East Africans‘. Here is Matt’s full evaluation of the Singing Wells project: Matt Morin on Singing Wells …
A Year in Review March 2011 – March 2012 News
…you are excited by our journey and enjoying the music. If you’d like to support our artists or the project please don’t hesitate to contact us. The Singing Wells Team …
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…o allow them to undertake the trip to this remote area of North West Kenya, 800 km from Nairobi and home to the Turkana and Samburu tribes and the original ‘singing wells’. When Steve Kivutia (Ketebul Music) presented the idea of recording music at the Festival to the AMF, it seemed a perfect fit with the objectives of the Singing Wells project and the trustees were happy to approve a grant to cover the costs of travelling to the Festival with the…