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
…– which will feature on the site soon. The Team A big thanks to Mike and Louise who were marvellous evangelists for the project over the course of the 4 days. Here is a picture of us all at our stand: And Finally… We were intrigued by the two fellas with a load of equipment at the end of one of the rows on the other side of the hall – they seemed to be doing something with records… Further investigation showed us that they were creating vinyl…
SWP Uganda 2013 – our proposed itinerary News
…d guitarist living in Kampala who was recommended to us by Akello, our Influences artist on our 2012 recording trip – The Music of Northern Uganda. Steve is liaising with James about the various recording locations but it’s possible we may once again use the garden of the Airport Guesthouse which proved to be such a wonderful setting this time last year (and surprisingly quite considering its proximity to the airport!). Stay tuned for more updates…
A recording studio which fits into the back of an SUV Story
…nda!) 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 selected so it can easily fi…
Group of the Month – Watmon Cultural Group News
…itter.com/singingwells – if you do tweet any links, please use the hashtags – #gotm and #singingwells We’ll update this page with any new items we add to the site over the course of the month. Check out the featured content links below to find the Watmon Cultural Group page from our Musical Map of East Africa….
The Singing Wells supports Ketebul Music’s ‘Kenya at 50’ project News
…schooled at Sherborne, and went on to work in the aviation industry, based out of London Airport – then in Croydon. During the second world war he was stationed with the Kings African Rifles (KAR), as a lieutenant and aide de camp to Sir William Platt, the commander in Chief of the East African Forces. He also worked as a flying boat traffic officer. He was thought to be the first person in Kenya to own a tape recorder, which he bought from a fell…
A quick summary of the Singing Wells Project News
…donia Band: We’ll provide background later, but let’s story with the story of Uganda Land of Freedom. Let’s start with the music – click play and let the band be a soundtrack for this story… We were recording in Northern Uganda, in the Teso region, scene of multiple rebel movements, land of terrible atrocities. That was a decade ago, of course, and the land has returned to host villages of peace and music. We met the Macedonia band and the leader…
73,603 views on YouTube News
…es mean more and more people are finding us and enjoying what we are all about – bringing the more traditional sounds of East Africa to an enthusiastic audience. Thanks for watching! Our top 3 video hits In third place, this is the Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club from Sita Village, Gede in Kenya’s Malindi District. It was the very first video we uploaded to YouTube following our field visit to the Coast Region to record the music of the Mijikenda tr…
Victoria’s reflections on field trip to Northern Uganda News
…ing Wells On my last day in Uganda, just before I had to leave the rest of the team and travel back to London alone, Akello recorded one of her songs with the Watmon Cultural Troupe, in the gardens of the Airport Guesthouse. It’s one of my favourites and brings back happy memories of an amazing experience. Have a listen… Victoria Denison December 2012 More photos…….
A new type of city Story
…hat the capital would be like; this image speaks a lot about the city. The number of ‘proper’ buildings were few and in only the small centre. It was hilly and most of the roads were not built for vehicles. The shops were small shacks mostly and at night stayed open, lit by candle light. There were animals everywhere and make-shift houses, which starkly contrasted to the taller office buildings you could see in the distance. Despite this unconvent…
The Boy with the Headphones Story
…hen we travelled to the Mperwa Batwa community. Consisting of just a small number of families, the Mperwa have settled on a small area of borrowed land just a few kilometres from the town. At first glance the setting appeared to be spectacular, with the lush valley and terraced hills of local farms as a backdrop and the magnificent Virunga volcanos in the distance. But we were quickly struck by the impoverishment of this small community. As we a…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…Wells allows 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.’ In addition to our field visits, we have developed an online Music…
Day 10: File Management at Ketebul Studios Story
…nd negative. On the last topic, here are our reflections on our management of things (elsewhere we will talk about the music, as we did with Tabu yesterday), where we drew 5 main lessons on this trip: Agree the ‘must do’ instruments/song styles at the beginning of trip planning and then make sure we have a group (and a back up group for each). On this trip we came close to missing a couple styles. We work ourselves too hard in the field and don’t…
Day 8: Entebbe to Nairobi and Ketebul Studios Story
…es to Airport. About 600 meters outside airport we had to stop and all get out of van and go through a metal detector. There was a large sign telling us not to bring in pistols and rifles. The van was then searched. At airport, we had to unload bags at departures, take them by trolly to bottom of stairs. Take all bags up the stairs. Find new trolly and proceed to next stage. All this would be fairly straightforward except we had 34 bags. There was…
Day 7 (pm): Recording at the Airport Guesthouse, Entebbe Story
…ar Ugandan music, as we’d heard alot during the week (usually being pumped out of local stores on big speakers). We listened to a few different tracks on his phone, and I narrowed my favourite Ugandan pop tracks down to ‘Apple’ by Bigtym and ‘Guns & Bomb’ by Bebecool.. Odika Constantine, son of Watmon, is in his 30s. He was abducted by the LRA from his home in Kitgum District when he was just 17. He was held as a soldier in the bush for 6 months u…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…e carved into a hill, with rows and rows of streets below us, and an equal number of streets and houses piled up above us. There were cars, motorbikes and taxi’s driving past and planes flying overhead. Everything was for sale by everyone who walked by. No sleeping cattle. No flower beds. But, as always, there was wonderful music. The first group was the Adungu Cultural Troupe, masters of the Adungu. We had interviewed their leader on our ‘recce’…