Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…cross again to arrange rescue and then again went crossed to head back to Nairobi. That brings to six the total Singing Wells Equator crossings in the last 12 weeks. Arrival We arrived in Nairobi safe and sound at about 10pm, having survived the wonderful horrors of the road. We actually breezed through a traffic free Nairobi, although Tabu was at war with the GPS and decided to go his own way. The GPS, which had served us well for 1,000Kms, was n…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…y spoke to them about their dress and its significance. The white paint in lines and crosses on the men’s arms represents the River Nile and where the tribe originated from. They came from Israel to Egypt along the Nile to the Sudan. This occurred in the 18th century. The women have white dots on their arms and faces representing the soil and harvest. The white paint comes from a special kind of soil and only one person in the tribe keeps this soi…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…hat is the power of music. We will try to put together a video clip of her best moments. Lomuke Group We recorded 9 songs: Anya Kar, Chepo Laleiyo, Kirap, Kiter, Kiyuar, Asoiyen, Adong’o and Montonyo. The women were dressed in white, carrying sticks and the men carried spears and their portable chairs/sleeping pillows. Kalomoywa We recorded 8 songs with them and a magic moment of wonderful chorus. The songs were: Kinyakar, Kamatakar, Chepo Nandi,…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…our first session. Interview with Steve Kivutia Steve was born in 1982 in Nairobi but his ‘home’ is the village of Kakamenga; his father moved villages to Moi’s Bridge (names after Kenyan President at the time). He was born in Mata Hospital and sent to Maseno Highschool, graduating in 2000. During school he loved Alpha Blondy, a reggae artist from the Ivory Coast, but also loved Hip Hop. He took a gap year and the joined a university to take compu…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection of important tribal musicians in East Africa. We are recording music in Northern Uganda in Autumn 2012 and then we will travel to Tanzania and Burundi in 2013, returning to Nairobi in Autumn 2013 in time for the celebrations for Kenya’s 50 years since independence. In addition to our field vis…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…iet, a guitarist with a wonderful acoustic guitar with a lot of miles. His best song was ‘Sigerer’. Kathy interviewed him about all his songs and this is a classic (to go to Kathy’s Blog on Songs from Day 1, click here). Sigerer tells the story of two bulls in Teriet’s family that we were stolen and taken to Uganda. The family dog was able to follow the scent and led a posse of 20 armed men 75kms to a butchers where sadly one bull had been killed….
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…Music. Pato is from the Luo tribe, from the village of Bondo (450 Km from Nairobi) , although he and his father were both born and raised in Nairobi. He is one of 6 children – he has one older sister and two older brothers and a younger brother and sister. He lives with his three brothers in an apartment in the Umoja district of Nairobi. Pato graduated from Pumwani High School in 1999 where he was always the ‘camera guy’, volunteering for every sc…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…I feel I know him already. The complete Singing Wells team congregates at Nairobi airport. After many months of planning the trip, this is the first time I actually put faces to the names. Steve has been integral to the planning – preparing the budget down to the last shilling and organizing the logistics of taking a team of 10 to Kisoro and beyond. We have spoken on the phone and emailed many times. It’s good to meet at last. The flight to Kigali…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
…s look intimidating, but don’t freak, soon you and shapefiles are gonna be best buds. Officially a shapefile is “a vector data (points, lines, or polygons) storage format for storing the location, shape, and attributes of geographic features. A shapefile is stored in a set of related files and contains one feature class”. Simply put, it’s the kind of file that maps are saved as. When you’re browsing files within ArcMap, a shapefile will appear lik…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…e here to focus on the Nyatiti, the core Luo instrument – as played by the best players it is a bass, drum and rhythm guitar combined. And we saw some of the best players. We want to remind you first of what a Nyatiti looks like and also of it’s beautifully haunting sound, played by the most famous Nyatiti players of all time, Ayub Ogado; here he is with Kothbiro: The Music Groups We saw three groups: two Nyatiti groups sandwiching…
Christine Kamau – “The Jazzist” News
…g indigenous music alive..#very best wishes and I hope we can keep in touch. Christine BBC Africa Beats: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17831507 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thejazzist Reverbnation: https://www.reverbnation.com/christinekamau …
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…we combine all the fun of travelling from Kisoro back to Nairobi and from Nairobi to Kisumu. Kisoro to Nairobi: Passport Control, Genocide Memorial and Planes We left the Traveller’s Rest at 6.30 AM (we told the boys 5:30AM to ensure promptness – and they arrived promptly an hour late, on time. Get it?). Our goal was to hit the Uganda-Rwanda border by the 7AM opening. Let’s describe for a moment “the procedure.” We arrive at 7AM on the Uganda side…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…can’t give you everything at once. Over the coming weeks, these blogs will be filled with the music and videos and far more background on the project and the Batwa. For now leave for Nairobi again and then, on Sunday, travel to Western Kenya for the next series of villages and more music. All the best The Singing Wells Team…
Day 5 (much later): The Micyingo Group – guitar and bass! Story
…ted, and ready to call it a day. Just in time to be shocked by the world’s best bassist.. We opened the ‘Hotel Studio’ for the Kisoro Hill Community who started with wonderful dance and song. But then, they switched gears and set up a smaller group of ‘bass’ and guitar and absolutely blew us away… They started as wonderful large group moving through a set of songs, including ‘Imparake Yagahinga’, the National Park song, which is a staple of the Ba…
Day 5: Recording the Mperwa Dancers Story
…s’ sessions with her. Until the music is ready, with think this village is best described through pictures: We arrived, greeted by lots of men and boys going back and forth to market, including this chap (later we’ll write on a blog on all the things folks carried on their head and bikes). And there’s always the wonderful backdrop of the Virunga Mountains. And the inevitable narrow path leading up to the village…. And after a relatively short cl…
Day 4 (later): Recording for ‘Influences’ with the Birara Dancers Story
…ble to take the studio to them, working in their environment to capture as best we can the music and dance of their community. It is important to note that these sessions are incredibly important to these communities. It is no exaggeration to say that most of them live to dance, live to sing. When we come to record them, we come to honour them, to listen to them as they tell their stories. But that is not enough. We said when we started this proje…