On the eve of our very first field recording trip….. Story
…with. He followed Ayub Ogado who played percussion throughout. There was a lot of dancing, including a drop by from Maddo: Winyo: He’s the current new star from the Ketebul stable. He sang back up for Samba and when he came on he said he was humbled by the extraordinary talent in the room. 50 years of East African music, the hand-off of one generation to the next. Massive respect for each others talent and an amazing evening that only Tabu could p…
Mufu Ndosi-Luvai – Crave Music News
…“I’m glad I came across Singing Wells. The production team goes all out to unearth East African traditional music, giving account of the people’s past and present through music. The recordings are a valuable treasure, since a lot of traditional African music often goes un-notated. Singing Wells is the much needed portal for ethnomusicology research in East Africa.” Publisher, Crave [music] Magazine. …
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…o 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 (Ketebul Music) presented the idea of recording music at the Festival to the AMF, it seemed a perfect fit with the objectives of the Singing Wells project and the trustees were happy to approve a grant to cover the costs of travelling to the Festival with the…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Willie Bembe News
….he snores at +3db…”does he have a girlfriend?” I wonder. We get to talk a lot in the car and I realize that Jimmy is not such a stuck up guy after all….he’s alright. Journey is long and on getting there everyone is tired and a round of tuskers is greatly appreciated. Alas….the restaurant is closed and we have to go out and get some food. DAY 3 We get into the car to go and find the first group we are to record Mwanzere Nyere wa Konde. Everyone is…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…mpromising on sound quality. Mzinga were accompanied by a small wooden xylophone, the marimba. Mzinga After four captivating numbers from Mzinga, we quickly pulled down the set and set off for our second location. The drive would take us to Mombasa,where we would end up in the most interesting set of all so far. Junda. We first drove in to what seemed to be a very busy township with a very steep and treacherous gravel road to drive on. Everyone…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
…ly special 3. And Lessons? What Need to Improve? We were glad we did the pilot because we did learn a lot. Here are the main lessons: Far more time on Visuals: We had under-estimated how beautiful the locations would be and how ‘picture perfect’ the performances would be. We had only two video folks (Jimmy and Pato) and not enough good equipment. So, we’ll fund raise for a major upgrade on the equipment and bring at least one other person for Nove…