Music Depositories and Archives around the World News
…oken word, instruction, and sounds from around the world’ and is committed to ‘to cultural diversity, education, increased understanding, and lively engagement with the world of sound.’ They currently have more than 3,200 albums and 45,000 tracks and, through the dissemination of audio recordings and educational materials, are seeking to expand this legacy. Their vast content is relatively easy to search – though of course it helps to know what yo…
Singing Wells in Numbers…. News
…Andy did a litte homework for this one: Number of recordings of groups: 374 (this does not include other recordings like Magic Moments, Influences, etc…) Number of groups recorded: 83 Number of hours of music: 27 hours and 30 minutes. …
Report from Womex 2013 News
…their work, and it looks great. Hopefully we can help the project and work together in some way in the future. Showcases Visited Mike and I were present at the opening concert – curated by Cerys Matthews at the fantastic Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. The show was a showcase of traditional Welsh music including performances from Matthews herself, The Welsh Ballet and The Treorchy Male voice choir. I heard a bit of a day showcase from th…
A recording studio which fits into the back of an SUV Story
…st Hotel in Kisoro, Uganda!) We can also combine the two recording units into one to increase the number of inputs, while still working off battery power. The laptops use Avid ProTools recording software – an industry standard for recording and music production. The microphones we have chosen are industry standard models used in studios the world over but, most likely, not seen in the villages of East Africa. The equipment has been carefully selec…
A quick summary of the Singing Wells Project News
…ouldn’t help but joining Jovah in song: 5. Singing Wells is about bringing together tribal music and wonderfully talented young performers like Akello from Uganda… We brought Akello to Northern Uganda. She joined almost every band. Here she is with the Watmon Cultural Group singing Amari… Or with the Adungu Cultural Group singing Awinyo… 6. Singing Wells is about capturing how cool, how relevant this music is through Magic Moments: Listen to the N…
73,603 views on YouTube News
…was the very first video we uploaded to YouTube following our field visit to the Coast Region to record the music of the Mijikenda tribes. Is second place is a video from our field visit to Kisoro in south west Uganda where we met and recorded the wonderful Batwa people. The music is performed by Kamuntu ‘Tiny’ Moses accompanied by our Influences artist Winyo. And in first place with over 21,700 views is ’71 Hours to Monday’- a global tra…
A new type of city Story
…n the distance. Despite this unconventional type of city,I loved it. There was certainly a lot going on and during the week Akello told us many stories of the vibrant buzz in Kampala. Every night there’s music to listen to somewhere in the packed hub of 180,000 people . The image above of the tin houses and the Uganda House of Commons in the background was one of the first pictures I took on the trip….
The Boy with the Headphones Story
…oys who were intrigued with all our recording equipment. Andy invited them to listen to a playback of one of the songs through his headphones and this particular boy overcame his shyness to have give it a try. We could see how hard life is for the Batwa, living on small pieces of borrowed land on the fringes of society but the performance of the Mperwa Dancers did not portray this – it was full of pride and happiness. Once again, we witnessed ho…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…ough a series of e-mails that travelled the world, Tabu and I were brought together by Joyce Nyairo, then of the Ford Foundation, East Africa office. After several long e-mail exchanges and a few Skype calls, we agreed to start the Singing Wells project. We both knew we wanted to do something to preserve the music but it took us a while to define exactly what to do. Finally there was a eureka moment – the best thing we could do was to go the music…
Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…had a chance to interview Tabu about the Uganda trip: Q: What did you want to get out of the trip?. A: In each of our trips I’m trying to focus on the one or two things the region is know for. In the coastal regions of Kenya, I wanted to make sure we recorded their shakers, the Kayamba (hand shaken idiophones with dried seeds inside), the Lungo (broken glass moved in a big bowl) and Ndema (2 brass rings played in ringing and muted tones). In the R…
Day 7 (pm): Recording at the Airport Guesthouse, Entebbe Story
…ened: the rebels arrived to his village and asked him to show them the way to town. In a way this was a blessing, because his family was saved (often, on abduction, the rest of the child’s family would be killed, so they’d feel angry, distant and unable to return home). Once they arrived at the town they wouldn’t let Odika go and it was clear he was a prisoner. He only managed to escape once the rebels believed he was one of them, and stopped watc…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…kum, not far from Gulu up in Northern Uganda, and moved down to Kampala during the war. We love the instrument they played, the Nanga (below) so much we asked if they would join us in Entebbe to record more songs with Akello. We asked them to come with us to our next stop: our hotel in Entebbe, purely because we were desperate to have more time with the stunning musicians we met in the city. During the two hour drive to Entebbe we talked with Watm…
An Evening with Mserego Mwatela Group News
…et your group is so young and vibrant. How have you managed to do this? A: To get the young people involved I decided to go to schools and teach music. I compose new material with my students and come up with something they like. I watch how they dance and whether they feel the rhythms and I try to teach them what I’m doing, but I also adapt to how they feel the music. I let them take the music where they want to take it as long as it is rooted in…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…g to a clapper board and keep recording through the whole take. We learned to get all the computer and cameras on the same time signature. We learned the roles of each camera (1 is stationary, full group, 2 is politely called fingers/feet and faces and 3 is context and overcoming the weaknesses of 1 and 2’s position). We even sorted out after a while how to stop the groups from starting the song while our poor clapper board person (Nick) was still…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Obuell-Lira to Soroti Story
…second half of the day was, well, not so good. We needed to leave at 13:00 to get to Kampala before nightfall. No night driving is a Singing Wells rule given how scary the roads are. We actually left at 12:45 and got about 20 minutes outside of Soroti only to have a car breakdown. So we had to turn around and get back to Soriti for a quick welding (by a guy on the street in flip flops..). We didn’t leave Soroti until about 15:30, knowing we now fa…
Northern Uganda: Day 5 – from Pakwach to Soroti (a road trip) Story
…teed 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 vehicles are. There are two types of African roads. r oads in the day. An…