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 5 (PM): The ‘Togetherness Group’ from Kanyabukunga Story
…ive near the streets under tin roofs…. The crew worked hard in the blazing sun – getting close to the action to make sure we captured the energy of each vigorous tribal dance. While the audio team for the day, Andy and Willie, deploy the essential sun shield for the mixing desk. They also found an additional use for the Pelicases, and Winyo’s guitar case, as mixing table and chairs! This little girl sensibly brought an umbrella for a sunshade……and…
Congratulations Singing Wells! News
…see these fruits of their expertise and enthusiasm. Janet Topp Fargion, Lead Curator World and Traditional Music, British Library website: http://www.bl.uk online gallery: http://sounds.bl.uk main catalogue: http://cadensa.bl.uk/cgi-bin/webcat…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…ion – the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro. Five quick things: Rwanda: Beautiful country known positively for its gorillas, green hills and beautiful lakes. What strikes you immediately is the deep terracotta of the soil, which covers the roads, and seeps up the foundations of the houses, combined with the deep green of the vegetation. It is known negatively, of course, for the horrible 1994 genocide that was launched from its capital. Rwanda is roughly…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…oject 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 SWP team at Ket…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…ca, the best modern artists are completely rooted in the heritage of their country. Their music is fresh and relevant, but the traditions are completely built into the song. You can hear the instruments, the rhythms, the harmonies, the melodies. Our young artists want to sound like 50 Cent. They seem almost embarrassed by the village music. This terrifies me. SK: Singing Wells can’t just be about archiving. We can’t be fossil collectors. We have t…
Kathy’s reflections on her Singing Wells experience News
…agine. 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 their clothing and adornment meant, what songs they sang and what they meant. I took advice from Victoria and spent quite a bit of time getting to know the people in the groups as w…
The Kalenjin & Kenya’s elite athletes News
…r years. The programme follows two main runners – David Rudisha who won the 800m in the Beijing Olympics and Edna Kiplagat who is the world cross country champion. They are focusing mainly on their coaching and what it takes to get to the Olympics. Both athletes will be running at London 2012. Most Kenyan runners come from the Rift Valley, in particular the town of Itan where there is a strong culture of running. The high altitude enables runners…
Why “Singing Wells”? News
…good name for our project which aims to preserve, celebrate and share the unique music traditions and heritage of East Africa. More on Kenya’s singing wells BBC World Service video on how the singing wells in the village of Daaba have changed the life of the local community: …
Guy Morley – No Nation News
…Guy Morley is music programmer for the Big Chill festival – one of the highlights of the UK’s cultural calendar, and is the founder of No Nation, an independent arts programming, production and promotion company. No Nation has developed links across East Africa and has recently worked on a project for Sound and Music looking at the influence of early American country music in Africa. …
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…one of the long houses under two great trees, which sheltered us from the sun. Click here to read our fuller blog of this visit. Interviewing group leaders in the village of Kibarani The third group was Chechemeko raha, led by Bahri wa katana in the checchemeko style. They danced like crazy in the mabumbu-mbu style, with their main musician dancing wildly and playing a Gunda (a horn). By the end of their session, he was doing huge karate style ki…
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…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…ver from the shock of encountering a moon directly overhead. The next day, Sunday, they were busy at our studios before we ushered them to Sippers Restaurant where we’d lined up a team of brilliant music performers to welcome them and also accord them the opportunity to check if their hi-tech equipment would work well south of the Equator. Blow by blow accounts of the field recordings starting Tuesday March 29 to Thursday March 31 are available el…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…to put up the tent. We were also trying to get some recording done before sun down so we wanted to get up and running ASAP. On location in the river bed… Supaki Kalazi played 4 songs in the Mwanzele style. Every now and then, a motorcycle would ride past, and we would all cringe knowing the sound would definitely leak into our recording. Supaki Kalazi Then came what turned out to be everyone’s favourite group on the trip, Sengenya, led by Munyaka…