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
…page which displays the data you are about to download – an outline of the United Kingdom. Click Download. This will download a .zip file called, in this case, 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…
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
…ontinue to tell the story of one young man carrying a generator on his head 800 metres, with 400 metres elevation. We will get T shirts made. Francis Playing Kid Golf: Francis is the music leader of most of Kisoro Batwa, knowing all the clans – he is pretty much has the final say in who sings what song. He is also the lead dancer of his group. We will never forget Francis playing what we called ‘kid golf.’ He was carrying his big spear doing his d…
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 4: UOBDU and the Birara Dancers Story
…er’s Rest Guesthouse: After breakfast our first stop was the office of the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU), where we met Henry Neza, the Capacity Development Co-ordinator, and Alice Nyamihanda, Tourism Officer and the first University graduate amongst the Batwa communities. They are to be our hosts and translators for the two days – we were lucky to be joined by Precious as well, Alice’s five month old daughter. Patrick…
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…
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 …
Recording music & dance of the Batwa News
…their communities and help them reclaim their traditional way of life. The United Organisation for Bawta Development (UOBDU) was founded in 2000 to address land problems and develop sustainable livelihoods. UOBDU has identified four key areas of support: land & housing; education and adult literacy; income generation and forest access & benefit-sharing. By way of example, the Batwa Cultural Trail is a new initiative launched by the Uganda Wildlife…
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…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…me food apart from Tabu. I have known Tabu since 2005, and I can count the number of times I have seen him having a meal on 1 hand! After refueling car number 02 (it must have been guzzling the fuel because of the AC), we set off for the second leg of our journey, Voi to Mombasa. Salif Keita’s ‘M’bemba’ CD and Winyo’s in production CD ‘Benga & Blues’ proved to be the favorite cruise music as we kept on switching between the two. Though I must admi…