Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…med up with Andy Patterson while he was here and together they conducted a number of interviews with Kenyan musicians who are now based in the UK. They also had the chance to visit Kenya House in Stratford as a guest of our friends at the Kenya Tourist Board. Here’s Bill’s article published in Business Daily Africa: http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Where+the+world+got+real+flavour+of+Kenya+in+London/-/1248928/1480860/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Phot…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…Eldoret then onto Iten and Kapsowar to record the Marakwet and Keiyo. The last day to go to L Baringo to record the Tugen. Tabu is not sure what to expect of the tribal music in the villages we are visiting but he is always surprised by the quality of music we discover with Singing Wells. “I didn’t really know what to expect of the Batwa of Uganda, and was blown away by the musicianship. I expect to be surprised again!” The last time he was there…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…you some random data. Select CSV (basically Excel) as your Result Type and number range as your Data Type. When we downloaded the country outline of the UK, we downloaded three shapefiles of different administrative levels, called 0, 1 and 2. Administrative level 0 is the outline of the whole of the UK. Administrative level 1 is the outline of the countries within the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Administrative level 2 is th…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…Ketebul Music’s founder, arrives at the Fairview to meet us. He’s made the last minute arrangements for my flight to Kigali today, so I’m very grateful to him. We’ve never met before, only spoken on the phone and emailed, but he’s so welcoming 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 int…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…ase, GBR_adm.zip. Open it up and take a look. What you will see is a crazy number of files, none of which your computer seems to really recognise. Don’t panic. What you’re seeing is just a few shapefiles (remember shapefiles? No? Let me jog your memory). As we’re looking at the shapefiles in the C: drive rather than in ArcMap itself, you can see the six individual files which make up the one shapefile. In fact, in this case you’re looking at 18 fi…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…to her name and is always up for anything; the first in the studio and the last to leave. Jolly Naiti Paskazia (and baby Julius) One of Francis’s two wives and part of the trio of female singers that support Francis. Paskazia Nyirakarombo Vastina (and baby Robson) The second of Francis’s wives, the third of the trio that sings with Francis and on their own. Beautiful voice. Vastina Ayinkamiye Gasoda “DJ” Yohanandj DJ is the lead dancer for Tiny Mo…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…mping about a foot off the ground with each ‘kick’ – this went on for four minutes. Try it for 10 seconds. Then he then would jump over the drums at key moments or jump in deep squats around the drums, and c) twice he did major spins, hitting drum, spinning and hitting again on time. The reason you hear it ‘fizzle’ at the last second is because he eventually collapsed. As you listen to drumming, let’s introduce the Orutu. It’s a one string instrum…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…loved chips the best). Favourite game: Chasing her brother down the hill. Last Memory: Seeing her Mother hacked to death. Cause of Death: Smashed against a wall. There are about two dozen cubicles. Two dozen Micheles. Each story as horrible as the one before. As you can imagine, we boarded our flight to Nairobi somberly. We reflected on all the people we met on the long drives through Rwanda and wondered how they now face their neighbours – you a…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…by the Kamuntu Moses Group. They only performed two songs for us but each lasted 20 minutes and involved frenetic dancing follows by a set of ‘James Brown style’ falls to the floor from the principal dancers, only to be revived again by the drummers. Simply amazing. Their drums were the key to their style – reviving them each time they fell from ‘James Brown’ exhaustion: https://youtu.be/1et4E7lKojA https://youtu.be/1BvCwhX2ctM The Kabahena Gro…
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…
Kenya (Coast): Day 3 – our final recording day Story
…t dance’ (Mavuno), which celebrated the harvest and the arrival of the new baby. Lots of ‘props’ including a baby doll, hay stack and lots of bowls of water and spices. Some final shots at our last village. Enjoy…. Winyo and the kids… That’s enough for now. There’s 150 pictures more for every one we show, but the internet is too slow to keep posting Jimmy…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…lage elder. To reach the village, you go 15 clicks and then another 2 on a dirt road. There are about 7 houses, two cows, lots of chickens, groves of pea trees and lots and lots of children. All smiling all the time. The Music Groups We arrived and set up our tent, our two tables, our recording kit and our six mics. Andy ran the desk, supported by Jessie, Steve and Willie. Jimmy and Pato handled video, Winyo did a lot of photography and Tabu and M…
A Year in Review March 2011 – March 2012 News
…recorded, Okumu K’Orengo, died only weeks after our visit. Ironically, his last recording with us was a funeral song that our team at Ketebul Music felt was the best version they’d ever heard sung. Here it is: But, this journey is not just about preservation of the music. We are continuously reminded that this music is vibrant, fresh and contemporary. This was on full display for us at the close of last year when we brought 10 musicians from t…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
Last week, a four man crew from Ketebul Music travelled to the 4th Lake Turkana Cultural Festival to collect new audio and visual material for the Singing Wells project. The Abubilla Music Foundation (AMF) was pleased to be able to provide the funds to 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 (Ketebu…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…e..When we finally managed to get them to stop, they insisted on doing one last number for us to join them in dance. I was dragged into the dance and forced to expose my two left feet. Tabu and Winyo gave a good account of themselves with the shoulder shaking dance (which I must point out though is very similar to the dance style of the Lake Victoria region where both Tabu and Winyo hail from). Jimmy gave it his best shot while Andy and the rest o…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
…city power. In Kenya, we would be truly in the field, without power, with dirt/dust, with the constant threat of storms, with concerns about theft, etc… Test the Team: We would be training the Ketebul team on the new equipment and we would be seeing how we all did in the field in terms of logistics and audio and video capture. Test the Concept: Singing Wells is about the archiving of traditional East African music and ensuring that these traditio…