Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…hletes. The Journey Most the Olympic gold medallists among Kenyan athletes live within 100 kms of Iten and it has become the legendary source of great long distance runners. Over 1,000 Kenyan runners train here and the roads are filled with athletes training for London 2012. In addition, over 300 foreigners train here, mostly from Europe. We went to the main training centre and interviewed a project manager about why so many people travel all this…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…n we received a Skype call from Andy in the UK and he actually joined in a live Influences session! The Location We woke up after a second night in Kitale and drove 56 km to Kapenguria to record the Pokot tribes. The country side was beautiful – very hilly, with round thatch huts peppered along the green and red hills. Like Uganda and Rwanda, the countryside here is green with slashes of deep red as the soil is turned or roads are made. We arrived…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…ove of cattle to a new level. 50 Cows is a local journalist and student at United States International University (USIU). The Music Groups Ben Kisinja First up for recording was Ben Kisinja, a wonderful guitarist in the typical Kalenjin style. Tabu describes this style as very traditional and the way of singing is very unique to the Sabaot clan of the Kalenjin. The guitar is called a burkandit, and is a homemade guitar somewhat resembling the Nyat…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…e older sister and two older brothers and a younger brother and sister. He lives with his three brothers in an apartment in the Umoja district of Nairobi. Pato graduated from Pumwani High School in 1999 where he was always the ‘camera guy’, volunteering for every school project involving photography. He then worked in computer software before founding Foxhole Entertainment with some school friends – they focused on making videos, doing studio reco…
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…
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
…by in a small washing up bowl. I realize that I would be equally unable to live a nomadic life in the forest, the way the Batwa lived for centuries. The Bawta heritage is one of a simple life living off the fruits of the forest and surviving without any of the modern day comforts we know. The sadness is that this lifestyle was abruptly taken from them and they have had to adapt to a new life on the fringes of Ugandan society. I am buoyed by the fa…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…page which displays the data you are about to download – an outline of the United Kingdom. Click Download. This will download a .zip file called, in this case, 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…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
…because the links made in ArcMap (that will make more sense later) aren’t live, meaning they don’t update themselves. So if you change a file or folder name ArcMap gets confused with the pathway it’s supposed to be following and it loses the data. It’s remediable, but a pain, so best to avoid doing that. The point of all this is: keep your GIS folders and files obsessively well organised, and keep them all on the C: drive. When this is applicable…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…y of recording on the hill tops near Kisoro. He played kid golf during his live performances, gently knocking the kids from the ‘stage’ with his spear. He is an amazing visual performer, especially in his songs about cranes where he does the Batwa ‘Bird Dance.’ He is the leader of the Kisoro Batwa in terms of music and we could not have recorded further without him at the heart of our sessions. Francis Sembagare Tiny Moses Tiny Moses blew us away…
The Batwa Trail News
…Batwa people destiny. The Batwa are the mankind example of how people can live in harmony with nature. Something that the Batwa did much longer than all other populations! I am an amateur film maker and I was pleased with the explanation about the living, the medicinal plants, hunting methods… that the Batwa use(d). When I think about the darkness in the Garama Cave and then the sudden singing and dancing, I am still deeply touched. After that in…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…praise of the National Park. The Music Groups Francis Sembargare We did a number of ‘Influences’ sessions with Francis, but we love this one, with Jessie and Francis singing together in the gardens of the Traveller’s Rest hotel in Kisoro. Please listen before reading the blog: https://youtu.be/c1XBVlNQL6E We also recorded a beautiful version of Amahoro with Jessie, Francis and the ladies. Francis and the ladies are happy to pose for a series of…
Gary Barlow, Ayub Ogada and our very own global song News
…nnection… Back in March 2011, we were invited to Sippers, a restaurant and live music venue in Nairobi, to celebrate the launch of the Singing Wells project and the collaboration between Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music. Tabu Osusa, Ketebul’s founder, had organised an evening of music and Ayub was one of the performers. He played his signature instrument, the traditional nyatiti and sang his most celebrated track, Kothbiro which featured on the so…
Day 5 (PM): The ‘Togetherness Group’ from Kanyabukunga Story
…ratsinze Sikota’ in praise of God, but lamenting that the Batwa people had lived in the forest under grass huts, but now live 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 Pelicas…
Day 5: Recording the Mperwa Dancers Story
…e young boys enjoy exclusive access to the sound recording area, keeping a close eye on Andy and Willie and enjoying listening to the live performance through their headphones……
Day 4 (later): Recording for ‘Influences’ with the Birara Dancers Story
…rtant to these communities. It is no exaggeration to say that most of them live to dance, live to sing. When we come to record them, we come to honour them, to listen to them as they tell their stories. But that is not enough. We said when we started this project that we weren’t fossil collectors. Our goal wasn’t to shove the music on to hard drives and store them in some museum. Our goal was to also bring that music to the next generation of arti…