A day in the field with Singing Wells News
…ing us. Once we arrive in our location, we liaise with the local musicians to find the best space to record. If possible we will record more than one of groups in each location, as it reduces the setup and breakdown time and maximizes the time for recording. We decide on two or three different ‘backdrops’ for the performances and park vehicles in the centre so that we can easily rotate the setup while leaving the back end of the audio equipment se…
Northern Uganda: Day 3 – from Gulu to Awach to Pakwach Story
…to watch. They played: Wanencalo Munu Aciel Longo Luo Yee Luga Luga Kot Ngwer Cwe Here’s Wanencalo Munu: https://youtu.be/-vb_69xN7ZY Here’s Aciel Longo: https://youtu.be/A_iBiSJIrsQ Here’s Luo Yee: https://youtu.be/m-9CTn_zkKA Here’s Luga Luga: https://youtu.be/zTwZdHLQjUs And finally here’s Kot Ngwer Cwe: https://youtu.be/BVFzbppQ9Ig We loved their energy and recorded a second ‘Magic Moments’ of the day for one of their dances. Waroco Tekwaro T…
Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…) and the Gwara (calabash or tambourin with Samba drumming, in this case a tortoise sized shell that they hit with a brush of wire). In addition, one of the groups featured the Uvure, a wonderful horn. The Uvure in action… Omee Odokomit Our first group was Omee Odokomit, who played Apiri style. The group is led by Evelyn Ojok and was formed in 1981, disbanded for the war and reformed in 1999. The leader summons the band to practice by playing drum…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…w did you make Worldmap work for Singing Wells? As Worldmap is open source we were able to use a map of the distribution of tribes in Africa created by a Harvard professor named Suzanne Blier. By using her research we could create a map of only the tribal borders of East Africa, from a layer she had created. Once we had a map that only represented these tribal groups we then attached further information on each tribe to this layer so there would b…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…t on a 360 km drive to the town of Gulu in Northern Uganda. Within minutes we were deeply immersed in the ‘classic’ East African road scene: big tall white bags of coal, with grass helmets, bricks in various stages of manufacturer (either drying or firing), pyramids of potatoes, tomatoes on patches of blankets under trees, tiny goats tethered near the road side to pick at a fresh patch of grass, bike rider riding with small loads or walking their…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…our trip to Kisoro Uganda last year, we realised something – the musicians we were discovering were often so good, we needed to bring them back to the Nairobi studio. That led to 10 Batwa musicians and 5 Batwa babies travelling from Kisoro to Kampala to Nairobi and recording some great songs over the course of four days. We now want to repeat this for every field visit and decided to invite the Otacho Young Stars, the great find of our field visit…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…how we hit a ‘floor’ and the climbed back up almost immediately: The lower we went the hotter we became, which means we were delighted when we arrived at the Kabarnet Museum which was surrounded by beautiful tall trees which blocked the sun. There were two all-female groups waiting for us, which seems appropriate given it is International Women’s Day. The Music Elimu Cultural Promoters Our first group was the Elimu Cultural Promoters from the Tuga…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…don 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 way to train on the red dirt roads around Iten. She answered: “First, the altitude (roughly 2300 meters) is perfect – right at the peak of natural altitude where you can still train hard, but so high that the lungs are pushed to the limit. Second, for such high alt…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…anaging to keep you posted on our progress and had an extraordinary moment when 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 gree…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…dustry had discovered 100 years ago and the solutions to all our problems! We were chastened. We 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 writ…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…don had similar concerns. Some of us had travelled through East Africa and we were astounded by the quality of the tribal music, but equally surprised to find how hard it was to access the music back in Britain. As the founder of Abubilla Music, I set out to find partners in East Africa who were committed to preserving the music. Through a series of e-mails that travelled the world, Tabu and I were brought together by Joyce Nyairo, then of the For…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…click here). Sigerer tells the story of two bulls in Teriet’s family that we were stolen and taken to Uganda. The family dog was able to follow the scent and led a posse of 20 armed men 75kms to a butchers where sadly one bull had been killed. The surviving bull, Sigerer, was re-taken and brought back to Kitale. In celebration, the owner slaughtered poor Sigerer to feed the posse. As Kathy pointed out to Teriet, the real hero of the song was the…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…posed to the Spotlight Series. He began to really love tribal music and so when we started developing the Singing Wells project he jumped on it, keen to head up the video recording department . We asked him what he liked most about the project and he gave two answers: “First, I love the exposure to different cultures – even my own. I have never heard a lot of the tribal music, even around my own villages. Our trip to Nyanza in November 2011 blew m…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…music documentary. He teamed 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/-/…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…mazing music and had the time of their lives.” Tabu puts a lot of effort into finding the true traditional music. He feels politics and tourism have affected the music we usually hear from the tribes. He wants to hear how they really are at their most natural, where their roots are. Sometimes it is difficult to convince the tribes that this is what we really want to hear. The tribes often think we want to hear gospel, rap or songs performed for to…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…map ready for you to play with in ArcMap. This is where it gets cool. Now we can start using the real functions of ArcMap to display information on the map so you have a visual representation of your data. First of all, a recap of what we’re going to do: Prepare our data: ArcMap can be tricksy if your data isn’t properly organised and formatted so it’s worth sorting that out first. Import the data into ArcMap. Join the data to the country outline…