Music Depositories and Archives around the World News
…o on the Putumayo site, he highlights the positive change that you can see today; ‘one can hear world music in television commercials, film soundtracks and other mainstream outlets on a daily basis. A hit world music album that may have previously sold only 15,000 copies today can sell hundreds of thousands of copies.’ Putumayo is living proof of this, as they have sold over 20 million CDs since it began, showing world music can be commercially vi…
A History of Recording East African Music News
…did not have the equipment to archive them adequately. However, disaster struck and the tapes were unfortunately destroyed by a flood of the UCLA basement, demonstrating the difficulties of archiving with an easily destructible medium like reel-to-reel tapes and the importance of now digitising these perishable recordings. The sound engineer who had recorded the music with Wachsmann kindly offered up the copies he had made a kept aside. Wachsmann…
Singing Wells YouTube reaches 200,000+ views! News
… We’ve reached an exciting milestone here at Singing Wells and are so happy to see that our channel has reached over 200,000 views! Thank you to everyone who watches and enjoys are videos – all of our artists would love to see that their music has reached so many people. Here is our most recent upload for you… The incredible Original Chuka Drummers!…
ILAM, Repatriation and Jimmie Rodgers/Chemirocha News
…illage music. We listen to the likembe music in Uganda and here the steel drums of Calypso music. We listen to Benga blues and here the music of Cuba, demanding that we look further into the circles travelled between musicians between the Congo and Cuba, and we listen to Samba drumming and particularly the tambourin only to be reminded of the Watmon Cultural Group’s use of the Calabash. Our heads appropriately spin and we’re happy about that. The…
James Isabirye and Tabu Osusa Discuss East African Music News
…a word but she would be so proud and tell the village that I was learning English. That was so important to her. I was praised for aspiring to be an English man, not a Ugandan. She only wanted what is best for me, but this is part of a larger problem we have today. I’ve taught for 20 years now and my concern is that our entire system is training us to be like a white person from England or America, not to be Ugandan. The English and Americans don…
Preserving Threatened Heritage News
…our heart, such as Uganda. An article on the website of the Ugandan daily newspaper, New Vision, warns about the need to preserve ‘Bigwala’, the royal music of the Busoga region. Bigwala music is performed at ceremonies such as coronations, funerals and, recently, other social events. It is the music of gourd trumpets and is accompanied by a specific dance. UNESCO cites Bigwala music as playing ‘a significant role in contributing to unity among t…
The Birara Batwa Community Story
…Singing Wells project is to make traditional East Africa music relevant to today’s artists and audiences. We want to celebrate and promote the music heritage of East Africa in a contemporary context. We are doing this with ‘Influences’. We were staying at The Traveller’s Rest Hotel in Kisoro and the staff kindly allowed us to set up the studio under the verandah and it was there that we recorded our first ‘Influences’ session – a fusion of Batwa m…
Report from Womex 2013 News
…second film was ‘Sweet Dreams’ – and tells the story of the first female drumming group in Rwanda, and how they formed a co-operative to open an ice cream shop in their town. The film tells the story of how the idea was born and how they managed to get the idea and the shop off the ground and into reality. The film is also punctuated by stories from members of the group about their experiences in the genocide. It was a great watch and the group w…
SWP Uganda 2013 – our proposed itinerary News
…ised to find a large group of teenagers playing an assortment of brass instruments and drums in a marching band format! Elgon Ngoma Troupe is an interesting group led by a very charismatic director called Wolimbwa Julius. Most of them are former street kids and, apart from learning music and performance at the centre, they also live there and till a modest garden, producing crops for their food and also for trading in exchange for other food items…
A recording studio which fits into the back of an SUV Story
…icrophones we have chosen are industry standard models used in studios the world over but, most likely, not seen in the villages of East Africa. The equipment has been carefully selected so it can easily fit into a few holdalls and four rugged peli-cases which protect everything while in transit, whether it be on a plane from Nairobi or in the back of the van on a bumpy track to one of the remote villages we are heading for. We are adding to our e…
Group of the Month – Otacho Young Stars News
…s with the group in the field – one of which was ‘Charles Manager’ sung in English -about the arrival of a new manager to a sugar plantation. The irony being that they are thanking him, just for doing his job properly. This was one of the songs the group re-recorded at Ketebul studios – re-named Mr Manager and available on YouTube here: You can find links to the field reports below – along with a link to the group page for the Otacho Young Stars….
NME News
…It’s always nice to find your videos featured elsewhere, so when we found quite a few of our Singing Wells videos featured on NME we thought it was pretty cool. Although the content is generated by YouTube, it is always great to have a little bit more publicity for our cause! …
The Key to Sustainable Aid in Africa? Perhaps we should follow the music. News
…high susceptibility to degradation. This tends to encourage migration from rural areas to the cities. However, in the world’s cities, more than one billion people live without facilities for garbage disposal or water drainage, and breathe polluted air.2 There are Healthy Cities policies and programmes aimed at addressing these problems. At times, it seems to be assumed that eventually everyone will move to the cities. MK Rajakumar, the great famil…
What people say about Singing Wells News
…-author of the RideThePlanet project – we as a group of friends make short videos on travelling and action sport, in various landscapes around the world. I’m also the music editor for our films and now while searching for tracks for our Ugandan film. I’ve found your website – lots of respect for this work!” Josh Courter, Director, The Last Hunger Season “Hi Victoria, a friend, of a friend, of a friend, brought the Singing Wells project to my atten…
Group of the Month – Watmon Cultural Group News
…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.facebook.com/singingwells and on Twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/singingwells…
The Singing Wells supports Ketebul Music’s ‘Kenya at 50’ project News
…seems to have taken a photograph of almost everyone he met, including the ruling politicians of the era. The archive also contains some interesting artefacts from Independence in Kenya – including an invite to the ceremony of the handover of instruments at Independence. Colmore bequeathed the contents of his archive to his friend, Oxford academic Professor Richard Greenfield. Sadly, Professor Greenfield died before the contents reached the UK – a…