Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…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 song I was produced was a song called Msewangu, which is slang for my ‘buddy.’ During the time I was in college, I had a friend who was in a band; she knew an Indian singer who had…
Kathy’s reflections on her Singing Wells experience News
…t didn’t really matter because the travel was almost as interesting as the destinations. It took eight hours to get to Kitale on two lane roads with more lorries than I could imagine. Jimmy’s written very accurately about the driving in his blogs. The country side was beautiful with mostly farm land, small villages and quite hilly. I feel I had the best job on the trip because I got to interview all the groups about where they were from, what thei…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…our tent, our two tables, our recording kit and our six mics. Andy ran the desk, supported by Jessie, Steve and Willie. Jimmy and Pato handled video, Winyo did a lot of photography and Tabu and Maddo watched (having retired after driving 10 hours the day before). Mwenzele – Nyerere wa Konde Music Club The group is led by Nyerere wa Konde in the Mwenzele style. The group featured a wonderful percussion trio, with the Lungo (broken glass moved in a…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…ft 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 the Kenya Seed Company. Jackie went to primary and secondary school in Kitale. Her father became a military attaché in the Kenyan embassy in Washington DC when she was a teenager. She moved there and went to the Un…
Best of Singing Wells 2011 News
…36 videos of these performances to YouTube (so far). Every performance was unique and special – we loved them all – so picking just 10 songs for a ‘Best of’ album was not easy. Here are our final choices….it’s just a small reflection of what was an extraordinary year of recording music in East Africa. We hope you enjoy listening. Please get in touch and let us know what you think. Just send us an email – we’d love to hear from you. Email Victoria…
Why “Singing Wells”? News
…from each well. The animals appear from the bush, seeming to recognise the unique song of their master. Once the animals have had their fill the herdsmen climb from their wells and disappear into the bush. The songs tell stories of Samburu traditions and help the herdsmen keep a steady rhythm while they lower and raise their buckets. The singing wells illustrate the importance of traditional songs in the life of the Samburu tribes people. We think…
AMF receive grant to fund Batwa recordings News
…rationale as follows: “The overall aim of the Singing Wells project is to identify, record, preserve and promote the cultural music heritage of East Africa. In taking the project to Uganda to document and record the traditional music and dance of the Batwa, we can help to stem the tide which is threatening to obscure the music traditions of this ethnic group. The SWP will ensure that the unique sights and sounds of the Batwa are fully and professi…
Recording music & dance of the Batwa News
…hunter-gatherers, are widely acknowledged to have been the first human residents of the forest areas which stretch across much of what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC. In recent history however, the Batwa have become a displaced and largely forgotten ethnic group and their traditional culture and way of life is threatened with extinction. The Batwa community first became fragmented as other ethnic groups populated their homelands, cutting…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…ndation (AMF) was pleased to be able to provide the funds to 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 gran…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…the project called Deche. We had sent him on the ground earlier so as to identify the groups we were going to record. After meeting up with Deche we stopped again to pick up Bado the son to Mzee Nyerere wa Konde, singer and group leader of Mwanzele Nyere wa Konde Music Club. It was nice to see Bado we had met about five year’s earlier and became good friends. Every time I visit Malindi we always meet up. Bado took us to his village called Sita in…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…ies and melodies of their past resulting in an incredibly strong cultural identity on the world map. Countries that have turned their backs on their roots have a struggling music stage where musicians are caught in a warp trying to experiment with styles that they are clearly not at ease with. I recognize that, as I have mentioned, that things do change. But I would love to see more and more young Kenyan musicians base their work on more acoustic…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…his was a culmination of months of planning and exchange of email correspondence between Abubilla Music and Ketebul Music. Day 1: The Briefing Jimmy and Andy from Abubilla Music, came to Ketebul Studios for a pre travel briefing and to go through the new equipment and software with Ketebul Music engineers on the afternoon of March 27th. They had flown into Nairobi from London the previous evening. I must confess we started off on the wrong footing…