A quick summary of the Singing Wells Project News
…sounding like a calypso band), played in the rebel camps and within the rebel held villages. Aware that the political tides may change, the band leader was careful to not play rebel songs and stuck with very traditional songs far away from politics. The tides did change, the government took over and again the band leader’s village was invaded; this time by the government seeking to punish rebel sympathizers. The band leader was assaulted but convi…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Kampala (a driving story) Story
…awlessly. The next big mission was video. We had to discover what everyone else knew before us, that to be able to work quickly after a take to edit between three cameras, we needed to have all three cameras and audio start recording to a clapper board and keep recording through the whole take. We learned to get all the computer and cameras on the same time signature. We learned the roles of each camera (1 is stationary, full group, 2 is politely…
Northern Uganda: Day 6 – Soroti to Obuell-Lira to Soroti Story
…illing the men under the assumption that they must have fought with the rebels. For Joshua, this was a terrifying moment because the band was known to have played to the rebels. Again, a group of soldiers came into their village and again their mission was to kill the men and boys of the village. And again, Johsua rallied the village and started to play Uganda, Land of Freedome and again a small group of the army felt the village should be spared…
Northern Uganda: Day 5 – from Pakwach to Soroti (a road trip) Story
…Each woman then pops one on her head and marches into the local market to sell a packet for about 2,000 Ugandan shillings ($1). By our calculation, that is a 15-30 kilometer round trip the market, giving her time to make two runs. Most of the women carry empty bottles and cans on top of the grass bundle so she can buy essentials, like cooking oil at the market. The thatched bundles are then sold at the market to businesses that are working on new…
Northern Uganda: Day 4 – night recording at Fort Murchison Story
…the fire light, and the flickering flames add mystery and drama to the performance. For some of the music, and we thought about Oramba yesterday, the song are fireside songs. Oramba is a hunter and the song is about the village wondering whether he will come back with a kill. Oramba is fierce, running around with a spear, lunging at the audience. Think about what that would be like for the children as Oramba drifts into the shadows only to fly ou…
Northern Uganda: Day 4 – Pakwach to Widiang’a, Nebbi Story
…the Ndara with Omiya Charles playing Mbeta. We loved these musicians the fun of the traditional dances. You got mad at the stubborn girl, you got scared when the hunter returned and you celebrated for the new chief. On the way to Fort Murchison where we were staying, we saw some spectacular stormy scenes as we crossed the River Nile:…
Northern Uganda: Day 3 – from Gulu to Awach to Pakwach Story
…eached the lodge. It was like the sunset had spilled onto the land and kept the fields covered in its colors as night fell. Lovely….
Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…re the best we ‘ve seen and the rhythms of the Gwara (galabash) was over-whelming. They performed: Dongo Lobo Auma Woto Mobile Aparo Wota. Most of these were courtship dances with wonderful drama between the boy and girl dancers. https://youtu.be/bpmEEIUwm68 https://youtu.be/y6Z3BC9VCOk https://youtu.be/YRpkiI_hGXY Akello, our Ugandan Influences artist than performed her song Yang, backed by the Ribbe Ber Drummers. It was a great moment as she san…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…ult of a platform developed by Harvard University. WorldMap is a great platform for a project like this for several reasons. It is free and open source which means any researcher can work with the source code to extend and improve its functionality, so it is constantly developing and improving. It’s also web-based so it’s easy to access and share, which is exactly what we want in order to carry on building the Singing Wells community. Rosie has ma…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…d friends, Jan Willem Van De Kamp (the owner of this hotel and the Travelers Rest in Kisoro), Charles and Simba (the Rottweiler who feast on Kisoro locusts during our locust attack). They ran a lovely hotel and greeted us warmly with Nile Specials! We handed off a pile of Batwa DVD’s for them to take back to the Traveller’s Rest and hit the sack. Jimmy (Entebbe)…
Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…Ketebul crew continued to work in the studio, led by Jessie who loves bringing Singing Wells musicians into the studio. Hunter and Jimmy will board our flight at about 11PM and with a 12 midnight wheels up, we will officially end the ‘field visit.’ Now the hard work begins of producing all the videos… Jimmy March 11th, Joma Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi Kenya…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…some great songs over the course of four days. We now want to repeat this for every field visit and decided to invite the Otacho Young Stars, the great find of our field visit to record the Luo, and Ben Kisinja, the great Kalenjin musician we recorded earlier this week. Saturday was all about the Otacho Young Stars. Let’s remind you who they are – here are two clips: We focused our recording time on Mr Manager, their quite sincere thank you song…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…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 not happy and yelled at us for the last 6 kms. Singing Wells team 8th March 2012 …
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…ngular house with pitched roof balcony. There were no other buildings or dwellings for 10 kms of travel and then a little market would pop up which would be filled with thirty or so stalls. Then more empty roads and lovely hillsides. We travelled this way for another 80kms or so. Finally, at one hillside, there was a flat area and we stopped and 50 Cows announced ‘we’re here.’ We tried to find a recording site out of the burning sun but failed. We…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…at ran through the tall trees. The Music Groups When we got back to our hotel in Eldoret (128 km of hard night time driving), long after darkness fell, we added up the day, in wonder at the numbers of songs we recorded: 5 groups, 33 songs, 3 Influences Sessions and 2 Magic Moments. Pokot music is all about the dance and vocal harmonies – most music with origins in nomadic tribes is about the dance/vocals not the instruments, because at best you co…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…t. Camera 2 focuses on instruments. Camera 3 is context. This worked extremely well but created a separate issue – lots of cameras all shooting the same take created the classic problem of linking camera to audio. We thought about this and decied ‘what would be great is if we could write the name of the song on a sheet and then make a sound that linked all cameras to audio.’ Someone pointed out that what we needed was a clapperboard – something th…