Singing Wells – Origins News
…a few Skype calls, we agreed to start the Singing Wells project. We both knew we wanted to do something to preserve the music but it took us a while to define exactly what to do. Finally there was a eureka moment – the best thing we could do was to go the musicians, to their villages, to their homes and record them with their families. We would record them singing their songs to their children, three generations dancing together in their village….
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…– clearly taken from 50 Cent, but taking the Kalenjin love 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 burkandi…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…011 Jovah – Ye Warararaye by singingwells We asked Pato whether he always knew he would be involved in music. “No, but from high school I knew I was going to be working on videos. And music is my life. I started listening to Joseph Kamaru when I was growing up in the Ngara Estate, another part of Nairobi. He was the biggest Kikuyu artist around and would walk around our area with a guitar and play to all the little kids. My brothers all love salsa…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…o use the new lighting kit (SW 4), but he was constantly distracted by the new Singing Wells Flip Camera. Nick focused on learning the Clapperboard. And Willie joined Jimmy in the studio with Johnnie, the guitarist, to lay down some guitar tracks for the new fund raising song, Missing – Global Remix. An interview with Tabu The the midst of all the packing chaos, Hunter and I had a chance to talk to Tabu, the head of Ketebul and a music producer wi…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…o the country outline shapefile. Export the joined data and shapefile as a new shapefile. Display the data. Prepare the data To demonstrate I’ll be using some nonsense data about the number of unicorns in each county of Britain, but if you’ve been following along using a different country and your own data then carry on with that. If you want to make your own nonsense data then this site will generate you some random data. Select CSV (basically Ex…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…mfort zone’ and be shown life from a completely different angle. It puts a new perspective on your own life. Hopefully it prompts some positive action. Secondly, it was so good to meet the Ketebul team after many months of emailing. And now I understand much more clearly about the impact the Singing Wells project can have in East Africa. I can see that it’s so much more than a project to record and preserve the traditional music of the region. It’…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…p outline into ArcMap Open ArcMap and select Cancel – you want to create a new map rather than opening an existing one. This will give you the completely blank ArcMap screen. Before we do anything else, we’re going to save our map. Like all your other GIS files it needs to be saved on the C: drive. It’s also a good idea to put it in a folder of its own because it will start to collect lots of other bits that go with it and it’s always good to keep…
How To (Arc)Map News
…Introducing our new series of blogs on how we’re using ArcMap 10 to make our musical map….
Where the hell is Matt? 2012 News
…Matt Harding’s new video is an inspiration – he’s done something very special to bring people together through music and dance and show that, despite our many differences, dancing is something that brings happiness to everyone. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s the wonderful new video….. Where the Hell is Matt? 2012…
The Batwa Trail News
…a lovely email this week from Ivy Beccu from Belgium. I’m glad to see that news of the Singing Wells project is spreading far and wide! Ivy has made a great video about the Batwa Trail in Kisoro, Uganda. When the Singing Wells team visited Kisoro last year to record the music of the Batwa (click here to go to our field reports), we didn’t have enough time to do the Batwa Trail but we heard about how it is helping the Batwa people tell the story of…
Samba Mapangala & Orchestra Virunga News
…Records. We first met Samba in Kenya, on a recording trip as part of The Singing Wells project. He sang as part of a ‘Welcome’ concert put together by our friends at Ketebul, along with Winyo and Ayub Ogada. We’ll bring more news on his new album as we have it, but until then you can view his tour dates on the Abubilla Music events calendar – just click here For a profile on Samba Mapangala click here …
Day 4 (later): Recording for ‘Influences’ with the Birara Dancers Story
…where Winyo and other artists work with a sub-set of the tribe to create a new song. This is an altogether different way of recording and something very new and often scary to the tribal artists. They have to wear headphones to hear other instruments we recorded earlier. They have to sing into a mic. Often they are asked not to clap. Often they are asked not to dance while they sing. We do it to focus on sound quality, but we are fully aware that…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…t (we really wanted to return with it all!). We then took Kenyan Airlines (new plane with movies!) to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, population roughly a million. We were met by our drivers Arun and John and drove through heavy rains to the Rwanda-Uganda border crossing near Kisoro. After a rather lengthy crossing, we then drove on to our final desitination – the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro. Five quick things: Rwanda: Beautiful country known positi…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…and bass player and put down great guitar and bass tracks to build on the new version of the song we originally prepared in Abubilla Music’s London Studio. Winyo then added a third verse, changing the song from a Londoner pining for Spain, to a Kenyan longing to return to Africa. The full Singing Wells team was in the studio. It is worth re-introducing everyone again, as we will be discussing them throughout the trip: From Ketebul Music Tabu Os…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…with no benefit except to ourselves. But we did a great job launching the new Ketebul website and designing Singing Wells. So we then booked the flights to visit the Ketebul team. We met with Guy in UK and then flew down My first time out of Europe. Ngadia met me at airport. I was very nervous and didn’t know what to expect. I could tell there was a lot of poverty – and in UK if you went into poorer neighborhoods, you’d be nervous about everthing…
Kenya (Coast): Day 3 – our final recording day Story
…MQA Muungano Kayamba The groups is led by Futuma Ali Mwacheruve, dancing and singing in the Kayamba style (which is also the name of the wonderful percussion). It was our first ‘harvest dance’ (Mavuno), which celebrated the harvest and the arrival of the new baby. Lots of ‘props’ including a baby doll, hay stack and lots of bowls of water and spices. Some final shots at our last village. Enjoy…. Winyo and the kids… That’s enough for now. There…