How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…always good to keep things tidy. I have entitled this map HTM1 (How To Map 1) and have saved it in a folder called How To Map 1, so the address where it is saved is C:\How To Map\How to Map 1. To get our country outline into ArcMap we need to Add Data. To do this either click File > Add Data > Add Data or select the Add Data icon. This will open a box; click this icon till you reach ‘Home – Documents/ArcGIS’: From here click on Folder Connections…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…– when the slaughter happened it was the decedents of folks with less than 10 cows slaughtering the decedents of folks with more than 10 cows. 250,000 people are buried in mass graves 50 metres from the memorial centre. What is hardest to understand, travelling through Kigali, is that the slaughter started here. This is an urban centre filled with incredibly friendly Rwandans. And yet, when the President’s plane was shot down on 6th April 1994, t…
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…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…reen of the vegetation. It is known negatively, of course, for the horrible 1994 genocide that was launched from its capital. Rwanda is roughly the size of the US state of Maryland, or Wales in Great Britian and has a population of 11.4 million. It’s econony was devasted by the genocide but is recovering; a major source of its recovery is the tourist industry, centred on the famed mountain gorillas. Uganda: Known as the ‘pearl of Africa’ – it too…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…nging Wells Project and met the Ketebul team in the studios for a day . Day 1: 11.11.19, Flight to Nairobi: Jimmy and Andy, Founder and Sound Engineer of Abubilla Music respectively, set out to Nairobi on Saturday for Nairobi. All good with flights, visas, bags and customs and we were greated by Tabu Osusa. Checked into Fairview, had the obligatory fries in a chip basket and crashed. Day 2: 11.11.20 Day in Ketebul Studio: Jimmy and Andy meet the S…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…rth certificate. It said December 15th. So my actual birth date is December 12, but my recorded birthday is December 15th, when my mum actually filled in the forms. Q: How did you get involved with Ketebul and Singing Wells? SK: I set out to be a graphic designer in multi-media. I was in college for Graphics Designs and met a lot of musicians there and started with music production, music software, starting with Fruity Loops. I remember the first…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…e Village Sita is about 15 kilometres from Malindi, which is on the Kenyan eastern coast, against the India Ocean. It has a long history, is mostly Muslim and has been ‘discovered’ by everyone including Chinese Emperor’s in the 1400’s. Sita is a very small village with about 200 people; we recorded in a subset of the village, where all of Bado‘s brother’s and sisters lived with their families. Bado is the fourth son of Nyerere Wa Konde, who runs t…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…s two. Her father is Maasai. His family come from Rift Valley near Iten. In 1911, when the British took Laikipia, his ancestors were chased out of the Rift Valley to the 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 Inde…
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
…t night were around 31°C and humid), Paradise Hotel scored a minus 4 on the 1 to 10 scale, 1 being disastrous. Despite all the mishaps with the Hotel, we were all excited to be heading out for our first day of recording. But first we had to change a flat tyre on car number 02. Half an hour or so later, we were all geared up and ready to go. Jesse, who had just arrived after taking the night bus from Nairobi to Malindi, joined us in car number 02….