Baseki Group
…he band brought up children from the village and taught them about hoeing the soil to the song. Later we saw several videos of how this song is used in the fields to motivate farmers, who hoe to the beat. Throughout Tanzania, we saw school kids walking to/from school with their hoes, where they often tend to small plots at the school. Serengeti: We are near the national park and this is a song in celebration to Tanzanian parks and wild life. Frees…
Aynu Traditional Group Group
…Spirit created a man (gboro-gboro) and a woman (meme), and then domestic livestock. Meme had wild animals in her womb so that after the gazelle had broken out all animals followed from her womb. Man was the last to come out. The first human beings are said to have been twins: Arube and O’duu. Arube was a boy while O’duu was a girl. These twins, unlike their parents Gboro-Gboro and Meme, were believed to have been ordinary human beings and traditio…
FAQ’s Page
…e next 3 or 4 field visits to East Africa, so any groups we record would have to be within designated areas where we plan to travel. We’d love to hear from anyone with new suggestions for field visits. Can I join you on your next recording trip? Please get in touch if you would like more information about where are travelling with Singing Wells in the future. If you have any further questions, please get in touch with us by email here: info@singin…
Watmon Cultural Group Group
…mily cattle or worked on the farm. He lived in Awedi until 1991, when he moved to Kampala, due to the rebel fighting. He started a small group of dancers, performing Acholi traditional dance which he had learnt when he was young, both from grandfather in his village and from watching dancers at village events. He went around his district in Kampala, telling people he would like to start a dance troupe, and was met with a positive reaction. Eventua…
2. Naizungwe Drums – progress report 1 Story
Our efforts to revive the Naizungwe drums have been well underway. (If you haven’t read our introduction to the project, do so here). A drum maker has been contacted, the correct trees have been sourced and cut down, the logs have been hollowed out and the skins have been formed. One of the early milestones was finding a tree out of which to craft the largest of the drums, no trivial task given the size and type of tree required. Here is our firs…
1. Introducing the Naizungwe drums Story
…Isabirye about an exciting new project he was hoping to undertake – the revival of the naizungwe drums of the Basoga people in Uganda. James led our revival of the entenga royal drums of the Buganda kingdom starting in 2015 and contacted Singing Wells with the hope that we would support him with funding for his new project. We are excited to announce that we have agreed to support James in his endeavours and will be posting about the project’s de…
Day 5: Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017 Story
…the Bagamoyo Country Club early on February 22 to go to the Ukuni Village to visit the Makonde tribe, to record the group Liwambwe. The Group Leader is: Atanas Teleni. It is a fairly new group, having played off and on for three years. They had unique drums, including small drums with wooden spikes on bottom to be embedded in sand, called the Siganga. They also had a pair of drums called the Likuti and a long drum called the Msondo, and a very lo…
Day 3: Monday, 2017 February 20th Story
…Chilemba (large) and Ilemba (small) thumb piano https://youtu.be/RSE3dMgCEVk From the Boma Village we travelled to our hotel, the Bagamoyo Country Club and recorded music with Henry Mkanyia, his son Leo Mkanyia, Rajab Alli Nyunyusa, Tomato (Steven Jonas) Sophie Grant, and Elliot Wenman. First, a bit of background on all the players here: Henry: Henry was born in 1950 and has played in multiple bands throughout his life. He plays guitar and vocals…
Day 2: Sunday, 2017 February 19th Story
…mostly around male and female circumcision rituals – happily the songs survive but not the rituals in the places we visited! But we have far less on the theme of ‘women for women’ songs of instruction, or the rites of passages of women preparing for adulthood. We encountered these in three separate villages and all the women talked about their importance to the culture and education of young girls entering adulthood. All expressed sadness that th…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…background in our recordings. We are also here to try to bring this music to new artists and audiences, to show how it can inspire and inform more contemporary artists. This is why we always bring ‘Influences Artists’ with us on each trip and this is why our nights are filled with ‘hotel’ recordings where our ‘Influences Artists’ are reworking songs with the more traditional artists we discover in the villages. In Mission 2, we are ‘fusionists’,…
Ketebul Music presents Shades of Benga Online News
…ir website here. Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya delves into the foundations of modern Kenyan music, examining external influences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the itinerant Congolese musicians Edouard Masengo and Jean Bosco Mwenda who’s intricate guitar-picking styles largely shaped the present Kenyan sound, with…
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…be resources: how do we bring new resources to a decades-long problem to revive this music? I guess the general problem became a concern for me in roughly 2008, when I started studying the specific royal music. The Busoga King, Henry Muloki Wako, died. I was watching the age of the musicians at his funeral, and I thought: man, we’re running out of time. My first step was to meet with James Lugolole, one of the oldest survivors of the Bigwala, the…
Singing Wells Approaches 5 Million Views News
…doubled our views on our Youtube channel and are now approaching 5 million total views across our videos. When we started Singing Wells almost ten years ago, we set an aim to bring the traditional music of East Africa to a wider audience. It amazing to see the Youtube algorithm agreeing that this is a project worth showing people! We can’t wait to bring more songs and stories to the world. Keep an eye out on the Singing Wells Youtube channel for t…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 1 – Reflections Story
…ese grass huts, before it dies? What part of our efforts should focus on reviving the music, using it to inspire new generations to build on it in their own way, as thousands of generations did before? This has always been the core tension of Singing Wells. We have always had two missions. First, and sadly, we must preserve elements of a dying culture. And sadly, we have dozens of the only or last great village performances of musicians who have d…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 2 – Interviews with Musicians of Uganda’s Royal Palaces Story
…w the royal drums of the Buganda Kingdom are made 2) Interviewing other surviving musicians from the Buganda Palace Here’s our summary of part two: We travelled to two separate villages to meet four other surviving members of the royal palace musicians: a flute player, a trumpeter and two members of a xylophone-drumming team. A note here on surviving musicians: James Isabirye continues in his quest to track down surviving members of the musician c…
The Revival of Ohangla Music! News
We love this article about the revival of traditional Ohangla music from nation.co.ke, featuring one of our favourite Ohangla artists, Otieno Aloka. Giving A Trendy Sound To Traditional Ohangla Music Traditionally played at weddings and funerals, the music is having new life put into it by young artists like Otieno who use electronic production, combined with incredible musicianship, to create a whole new genre. Otieno’s song Kanungo Eteko is ma…