Singing Wells – Origins News
…inents. Tabu Osusa founded Ketebul Music in 2007 with a goal to record and promote traditional East African music. Tabu laments the fact that the music heritage of the region is being eroded. He says, ‘For reasons I can’t fully explain, contemporary East African music has lost touch with its tribal roots. Our most popular musicians find far more inspiration in western music than they do with East African music. I worry about this. As a people, we…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…h 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’s about helping communities, celebrating their pride in their music heritage, giving them a voice, showing them that their music is valued and valuable. And, of course, it’s also about providing a new source of income for them. And there was no better place…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…ns 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 Photos from Kenya House …
Day 4: Discovery of the Young Stars… Story
…e the Kanindi Jazz Band, great dancers who also introduced us to our first Africa venture with the Vuvuzelas. They also had a wonderful Teng’ (the horn): Here’s the full band. The leader is second from right. The two lead dancers are third from the right and far right sitting. https://youtu.be/YT7fEQn7u5o https://youtu.be/F_iuv9uwlRo https://youtu.be/ZLRh1szBXoI https://youtu.be/NLstJmXsKTU https://youtu.be/-fgeskbFbow Jose Kokeyo Jose is a fantas…
Day 3: Homa Bay and the Kochia Dancers Story
…Lake Victoria dial) but a little more south and a little more west, on the south shore of the Winam Gulf. After a long drive, we set up at the hotel in a beautiful field against the lake – we’re surrounded by camels and pelicans, which is frankly a bit off putting. The pelicans are big enough to fly us away, but luckily we don’t smell like fish. We smell like a lot of other things by this time – there aren’t a lot of opportunities to wash and you’…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…al data at http://www.diva-gis.org/. To get your spatial data you click on Free Spatial Data in the top-right corner. On the Free Spatial Data page click on country level data. On the Download Data by Country page, select the country you need and make sure the Subject is Administrative areas. There is other data available for free download from this page, such as elevation and population density, but for our purposes we’re only interested in admin…
How To (Arc)Map News
…The Singing Wells team are currently hard at work on a musical map of East Africa, using an piece of software by Esri called ArcMap 10. Singing Wells is intended to be a pilot project, demonstrating to other groups how traditional music can be recorded and archived, so we want to make sure anyone can understand what we’re doing and replicate it. To that end, Singing Wells will be blogging about how to use ArcMap 10 and what exactly we’re doing wit…
Day 6: The Studio @ Traveller’s Rest Hotel, Kisoro Story
…wonderfully the age range across the group and the fact that music here in Africa is for the whole community, from the very young to their much respected elders. This lady was one of the principal dancers and she out performed many of the younger members of the group… You can see her in action in the later part of the amazing, high energy performance… As always, the babies are not excluded from the show. They learn the traditional Batwa songs and…
Christine Kamau – “The Jazzist” News
…ria! Thanks for getting in touch! I have checked out you project…it’s great that you are dedicated to keeping indigenous music alive..#very best wishes and I hope we can keep in touch. Christine BBC Africa Beats: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17831507 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thejazzist Reverbnation: https://www.reverbnation.com/christinekamau …
Day 4 (later): Recording for ‘Influences’ with the Birara Dancers Story
…is music, which is why he is such an inspiration: But too many (most) East African musicians want to sound like 50 Cent or Justin Timberlake and too many East African radio stations sound like they are competing on Los Angeles air waves. So the second major goal of Singing Wells is to inspire current artists to pick up on the traditions of these tribal artists. One way we do this is to record ‘Influences’ sessions, where Winyo and other artists wo…
Day 3: From Nairobi to Kigali to Kisoro Story
…ite a small town, population 12,000. On a map we are about as far west and south in Uganda as you can go. Traveller’s Rest: We stayed at the Traveller’s Rest, a hotel famed for being a meeting place for gorilla observers. They write about this on their website: “In 1955 Travellers Rest was bought by Walter Baumgartel, and quickly became a meeting place for people interested in the mountain gorilla. Amongst them was ‘gorilla-woman” Dian Fossey, who…
Day 1 & 2: Preparing to leave for Kisoro, Uganda Story
…to helpother groups set up to expand the recording of tribal music in East Africa, we also use these blogs to also document our ‘way of working.’ The Gear: Let’s summarise what a the Singing Wells Kit is for a location shoot. We bring 7 bags to a site (the picture shows most of it); these are: SW1 and SW2: These are identifical Pelicases with Apple Laptops, Motu Mixer, Hard Drive Back ups and Headphone Amps. With these, we can record 1 large sessi…
Kenya (Coast): Day 4 – the road back to Nairobi Story
…ditional music and new music. And this is going to kill our traditions. In South Africa and West Africa, the best modern artists are completely rooted in the heritage of their country. Their music is fresh and relevant, but the traditions are completely built into the song. You can hear the instruments, the rhythms, the harmonies, the melodies. Our young artists want to sound like 50 Cent. They seem almost embarrassed by the village music. This te…
Kenya (Coast): Day 2 continued…. Story
…realised all our fears were misplaced … another wonderful village of East Africa, simply loving their music. Supaki Kalazi Our first group was Supaki Kalazi led by Katana bin Kalama playing in the Mwenzele style. Wonderful dancing, costumes and percussion… Katana bin Kalama, with beautiful costume of shells… The Group prepares for their performance… Sengenya The most energetic group by far, brought the house down, with wonderful dancing. Led by…
Day 1: The very first field recording day for Singing Wells Story
…ssion then is to help create an East African musical identity to rival the South and West African successes. We had a taste of what this could be on March 29th in Sati, when Winyo joined Bado and his father, Nyerere wa Konde, to do a new song. Bado participates in his dad’s group, but separately records his own music. Bado’s music is great, propelled by his wonderful voice, but it’s American-sounding and could have been produced in LA. We asked hi…
Kathy’s reflections on her Singing Wells experience News
…ease. It would also be useful to have a debrief afterwards to see how they felt it went and if they have any comments. I hope to go back to other areas of East Africa to hear their stories and music but especially to meet the people. Kathy Allen March 2012…