From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…th his spear. He made a par five on the ‘Crane Song.’ Willie Bembe’s First Flight: Our sound engineer Willie Bembe enjoyed his first ever flight going from Nairobi to Kigali. He was far less scared of the thunderstorms then the rest of us, but did make things interesting. He almost went to the bathroom in the galley, confusing it for a loo. During a stop-over on the route to Kigali, he almost gave the flight attendee a heart attack by trying to sm…
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
…r equipment (we really wanted to return with it all!). We then took Kenyan Airlines (new plane with movies!) to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, population roughly a million. We were met by our drivers Arun and John and drove through heavy rains to the Rwanda-Uganda border crossing near Kisoro. After a rather lengthy crossing, we then drove on to our final desitination – the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro. Five quick things: Rwanda: Beautiful country kn…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…icrophones. This also carries the tripod for Roving Video 1. Cable Bag/Headphones: This is full of all the jacks, mic connects, headphone extenders. There’s a lot of cables. Mega Tripod: This is the bag for Pado’s pride and joy, the mega tripod for Stationary Camera 1. Project Management: How do we now set ourselves up for audio-video recording on site? Again, based on lessons from both the March Pilot and Lake Turkana, here’s the set up: Overall…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…groups were very large, but because of budgets we could only bring a small number. We had good production but we couldn’t get the whole band in their element . Gargar was an example. Huge women’s group with lots of culture things – women’s rights … we could only work with four. We realised it would be better to take the studio to them. We would get a better view and get a more authentic sound. Then Abubilla Music contacted Tabu for a project and w…
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
…tern Africa. Now she is much more interested in learning about traditional Eastern African music and her roots. She has been following the Spotlight series produced by Ketebul Music and first met Tabu in September 2011. She is interested in using traditional music from the Kalenjin tribes for her documentary about Kenyan runners. She says that other film makers have not been able to find the traditional music to use in their movies about Kenya whi…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…mpromising on sound quality. Mzinga were accompanied by a small wooden xylophone, the marimba. Mzinga After four captivating numbers from Mzinga, we quickly pulled down the set and set off for our second location. The drive would take us to Mombasa,where we would end up in the most interesting set of all so far. Junda. We first drove in to what seemed to be a very busy township with a very steep and treacherous gravel road to drive on. Everyone…