Music of Northern Uganda News
…ncluding the likembe, rikiriki and the ndara, all pictured here: Oriem Geofrey of Wenipac Troupe holding a Likembe Rikiriki Dongu tube fiddle Ndara – a giant wooden xylophone The ndara or giant xylophone is made by digging a hole in the ground and placing fresh banana tree trunks around the edges. Wooden planks of various sizes and tones are then placed over the hole. The instrument is played using a wooden stick with a large rubber head. One…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…asked Nick to be in charge of ‘the clapperboard’ and he got very good at shouting out takes, despite a lot of abuse from the Camera Crew. We now refer to him as ‘Clapper Man’. The rain We need to talk about the rain. We were completely rained out today. A deluge. We had the tent. We hid under the tent. The tent blew away. Everyone scattered. As we write this we are using blow-dryers to dry very wet equipment. All our “world famous” Singing Wells T…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…ack with Eddie Grey, a musician who joined Ketebul Music in 2011. https://youtu.be/ot3xNHqm7pU https://youtu.be/MPPFeuH1vF4 Please click here to read the meaning behind Ben’s songs: Song Translations of Ben Kisinja Chebonet Our second group was Chebonet, a traditional folk group with several percussionists and a wonderful young lead female vocalist. They were a great choral group with some wonderful dancing using shields and spears. Again, Eddie s…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…Wells allows for the whole group to perform, singing and dancing in front of ten microphones and three digital cameras.’ Video engineer, Patrick Ondiek, adds, ‘I love producing the final videos and getting phone calls from my friends asking me ‘how did you find these musicians?’ I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection o…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…w the second it started. I was so glad it started raining and we could get out of there.” [Editor note: we did not include this group in any Singing Wells materials.] So here is Pato’s favourite Singing Wells track – Jovah from the Mperwa Batwa community in Kisoro performing with Jesse on piano at the Ketebul Music studios This track is also on our album Best of Singing Wells 2011 Jovah – Ye Warararaye by singingwells We asked Pato whether he alwa…
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
…Unfortunately I have yet to figure out a smart way of getting those names out of ArcMap and into Excel, so usually I just copy them out. Luckily for you wondermonkeys, if you’re going to be using the UK unicorn distribution data I’ve cooked up or even just the UK for your country, I’ve already done that for you! Click here to get the data. As I mentioned, ArcMap can be tricksy if your data isn’t properly formatted and so on. The Unicorn Distribut…
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…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…ute one. Kathy, one of our Abubilla Music Foundation trustees, had to pull out of the trip quite suddenly which left a gap in the team’s resources. Kathy was due to be videographer on ‘Roving Camera 2’ and also document the names and meanings of songs we would be recording. On Tuesday Jimmy asked if I could make any part of the trip to take on that role; on Wednesday we changed the flights into my name and on Sunday I found myself on a plane to Na…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…the drummer was drumming without a chair, doing deep squats and jumping 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 liste…
From Kisoro to Nairobi to Lake Victoria Story
…s, neighbour against neighbour. One machete at a time. Hutus grabbed Hutus out of Tutsi families and forced them to slaughter every family member. Mothers were forced to kill each of their children before they were slaughtered themselves. Rape was used to humilate and torture. Many rapists had AIDs and knowingly infected their victims. Long after the slaughter was over, the victims of rape continued to die in the thousands from AIDs. But most were…
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…
Day 5 (much later): The Micyingo Group – guitar and bass! Story
…song and dance… and this lady is their wonderful lead vocalist… https://youtu.be/pZzgr2PXZ3s https://youtu.be/gt4_CaZNN2c Then the guitar and bass took to the stage….if you are wondering where the bass is, the plastic bag turn out to be significant. We were bemused by this magic plastic bag, but it turns out it was covering a clay pot that supplied the song. The musician simply ‘beat boxed’ into the pot. And we soon figured out how to mic it (no…
Day 5: Recording the Mperwa Dancers Story
…hort climb this time, we reach our destination… The small village consists of a handful of traditional thatched huts, some with fires burning inside…. More and more people arrive….and find our cameras and recording equipment interesting… The Singing Wells audio team – Nick, Andy & Willie – start to set up the mixing desk while Patrick and Steve place the mics… The group gathers in place and the lead vocalist starts her captivating performance.. Th…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…94 genocide that was launched from its capital. Rwanda is roughly the size of the US state of Maryland, or Wales in Great Britian and has a population of 11.4 million. It’s econony was devasted by the genocide but is recovering; a major source of its recovery is the tourist industry, centred on the famed mountain gorillas. Uganda: Known as the ‘pearl of Africa’ – it too is covered with hills and lakes. Like Rwanda it has the mountain gorillas. It…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…: In charge of secondary shots of tribal dance. Roving Camera 2: In charge of ‘Making of’ video, plus all interviews, stills of village and logging of all performances (names, songs, background, performers) Here’s a picture of what we look like ‘loaded up’: Pelicases bottom left (one behind), cable bag on top, mic stands on right. That’s all we need for full field recording So, that’s the team and the kit. Tomorrow we head for Kisoro, Uganda. Th…