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…
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…
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…
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
…inyo. Here, they put down their track. Not at all phased by the use of headphones and mics, they take everything in there stride, performing a number of takes as the song develops. We start by giving them a simple click to follow the beat but quickly realised that their tempos are far more subtle than this. Francis comes back to set the rhythm with their natural clapping and it suddenly all came together again. Once we have the female vocals recor…
Congratulations Singing Wells! News
…Wells Project website. I’ve shared it with a lot of people because these sorts of collaborative efforts at recording, archiving and disseminating music ethically are so important. I met Tabu Osusa and Bill Odidi while doing some training on audiovisual archiving in Kenya as part of a British Library World Collections Programme initiative. It was a great pleasure and it is wonderful to see these fruits of their expertise and enthusiasm. Janet Topp…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…he Border: Rwanda was colinised by the Germans and Belgians, Uganda by the British. The result? As you cross the border between the two countries you switch sides of the road. Our drivers had left hand side drive, which was fine in Uganda, but meant that those in the passager side were left in the ‘middle of the road’ driving around Rwanda. Everyone seems to keep it straight, as we had no head on collisions. Kisoro: Located in the Mufumbiro Mounta…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…groups were very large, but because of budgets we could only bring a small number. We had good production but we couldn’t get the whole band in their element . Gargar was an example. Huge women’s group with lots of culture things – women’s rights … we could only work with four. We realised it would be better to take the studio to them. We would get a better view and get a more authentic sound. Then Abubilla Music contacted Tabu for a project and w…
Interview with Fifty Cows – fixer for Singing Wells News
…ng men sat on him to keep him still and one held his head. The surgeon cut open the skin to get to his skull. With a primitive instrument he made small holes all around the crack and took off the piece of skull with the crack in it, about the size of peach pit. They did not think the crack would heal together unless they took out part of the skull. Then the skin was brought back together and sewn up. He describes this as the worst pain he as ever…
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…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…he south of Kenya. In the 1920s they eventually made an agreement with the British to allow their cows to graze in the Rift Valley again. After World War II, the British allowed war veterans to buy land in the Rift Valley and the Maasai were pushed out again. In the 1960s, after Independence, Jackie’s father moved back to the Rift Valley once again. He was a career soldier and her mother, from Tugen, was an agricultural scientist and worked for th…
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 …
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…mpromising on sound quality. Mzinga were accompanied by a small wooden xylophone, the marimba. Mzinga After four captivating numbers from Mzinga, we quickly pulled down the set and set off for our second location. The drive would take us to Mombasa,where we would end up in the most interesting set of all so far. Junda. We first drove in to what seemed to be a very busy township with a very steep and treacherous gravel road to drive on. Everyone…