What people say about Singing Wells News
…music. The recordings are a valuable treasure, since a lot of traditional African music often goes un-notated. Singing Wells is the much needed portal for ethnomusicology research in East Africa.” Matthew Morin, PhD in Musicology, Florida State University: “Singing Wells does more than preserve traditions for future generations. By involving a younger demographic of East African musicians, producers and videographers like Winyo, Jesse Bukindu, Pa…
The New Singing Wells website News
…cting East African instruments since our first trip to the Kenya coast in 2011. Click here to read about the traditional East African instruments we have recorded being played. Responsiveness We recognise that a lot of our visitors may be viewing the device on iPads, iPhones, tablets, netbooks, Samsung phones etc, so a lot of work has gone into making our site accessible on these devices. Albums We have now curated 4 albums, representing the music…
Group of the Month – Watmon Cultural Group News
…s, stories, videos, interviews, and other content we have gathered in East Africa. Our first group of the month is the Watmon Cultural Group. We have videos from our Uganda 2012 trip, as well as recordings made in both Naguru and at the Entebbe Airport Guesthouse, where due to the generosity and patience of the manager Jan Willem and the other guests, we set up a recording studio in the garden. You can join us on Facebook here: https://www.faceboo…
Kampala traffic jam Story
…The infamous Kampala traffic jam…
The Singing Wells supports Ketebul Music’s ‘Kenya at 50’ project News
…to Me franchise in Kenya. His daily diaries between the years of 1970 and 2003 are comprehensively written and prove and interesting insight into life in Nairobi at this time. His diary writings tail off towards the end of his life. He died in Nairobi, on the 24th January 2004, aged 84. Colmore was a keen photographer and as his diaries and the archive show – he seems to have taken a photograph of almost everyone he met, including the ruling polit…
A quick summary of the Singing Wells Project News
…to record. Here is his music and story, which has been shared with over 15,000 people: 3. Singing Wells is about capturing the music before it is gone. Our mission is two-fold. First, we hope to capture and distribute the wonderful music of East Africa. There’s an urgency to this that was brought home to us when we recorded Okumu K’Orengo, one of the world’s greatest Nyatit players. His last song for us was a funeral march. His village thanked us…
73,603 views on YouTube News
…still counting! It’s not a meaningful number in itself (like a nice round 100,000 – our next target) but it does mean more and more people are finding us and enjoying what we are all about – bringing the more traditional sounds of East Africa to an enthusiastic audience. Thanks for watching! Our top 3 video hits In third place, this is the Nyerere Wa Konde Music Club from Sita Village, Gede in Kenya’s Malindi District. It was the very first vide…
Health and Safety? Story
On Day 6 of the Northern Uganda Field Trip 2012 we broke a wheel on the crazy roads full of potholes on our way down to Kampala. It was going to be a long drive and we were desperate to get in before dark (previous experience of Africa Night Driving had taught the team to avoid it at all costs), but after the accident we had to drive back to Soroti to get it fixed. It was there we were able to find an engineer purely through word of mouth, and…
Listen to more ‘Influences’ tracks from Singing Wells News
…atiti played by the Luo tribes. Here he performs with Eddie Grey, one East Africa’s leading Jazz guitarists. This track is by the Otacho Young Stars who we first met in December 2011 during our field visit to Western Kenya to record Luo music. Experts on the traditional instruments the orutu and nyangile, we loved this group and invited them to record at the Ketebul Music studio a few months later. Here they are performing ‘Mr Manager’ accompanied…
The origins of Singing Wells Story
…ic labels on two separate continents. Tabu Osusa founded Ketebul Music in 2007 with a goal to record and promote traditional East African music. Tabu laments the fact that the music heritage of the region is being eroded. He says, ‘For reasons I can’t fully explain, contemporary East African music has lost touch with its tribal roots. Our most popular musicians find far more inspiration in western music than they do with East African music. I worr…
Returning to Uganda in Autumn 2013 Story
…nstruments and wonderful dance: Our Love of Ugandan Music and The Pearl of Africa While our mission is to record the music of all of East Africa, we are continually drawn back to Uganda. This will be our third trip and we are convinced we will return again and again. While it is always hard to capture a million images and sounds in a single blog, we’ll try to summarize what keeps bringing us back… The individual voices The collective voices The ex…
Day 9 (AM): Ketebul Studio – Influences session for Cheri Story
…first part of our mission, which is to recording the tribal music of East Africa – in the field and with extraordinary sound and video quality. Our second mission is then to use these visits as inspiration for new artists to write music inspired by their tribal heritage. We now have developed a pattern – each field visit involves about 9 days in the field recording new groups AND then we return to Nairobi to work in the studio with tribal musicia…
Meet our ‘Influences’ artists News
…roductions, which has produced several local TV shows. His goal is to take African music all over the world and enliven people to dance and sing to the sweet and melodic sounds of African songs and music. Winyo’s debut album ‘Benga Blues’ has recently been released. Click here to view on YouTube. Winyo with Mperwa Dancers from Kisoro, Uganda Winyo has joined the Singing Wells team of three recording field trips – Kenya (Coastal Region); SW Uganda…
Day 7 (am) – back to Kampala: Naguru to Entebbe Story
…s to convey their message of national pride. Here is the video of Pearl of Africa: The last song, which was wholly authentic, was called ‘Africa Na Jembe‘ which talks about the Ugandan’s emphasis on being deserving. The song says that first you must dig in the field before you can eat. The lyric in swahili in the chorus: “tula kula kua jembe” means ” through our work in the field we can eat”. It is based on the traditional ideology that hard work…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…write and….gulp…. survived. To re-cap the journey so far. We set out at 1300 for Soroti to Kampala, promised to arrive before dark. We were chased back to Soroti with a broken right wheel spring on one of our vans. Some fast welding and we set out at 1530 promised an hour and a half of night driving. The road was rougher than predicted and arrived on the Nairobi road at about 1845. At 1930, the same van has the back left tire go. We are now off a…
How music archives can help communities News
…the community we recorded for the Singing Wells project back in November 2011 (click here for field reports). In the mid 1960’s an ethnomusicologist called Peter Cooke recorded oral histories of the Batwa tribe in Uganda, who were, at that time, a community of forest dwelling hunter-gatherers. Cooke’s recordings were subsequently archived at the British Library. The recordings were recently found by Chris Kidd, a Ph.D. student who was working for…