On the eve of our very first field recording trip….. Story
…about – bringing new East African artists to the world, but rooting them in the generations of music that came before. This seems a perfect send-off to record village music. We leave tomorrow at 9AM. Jimmy …
A Year in Review March 2011 – March 2012 News
…ls of the project and our progress and learnings. For those of you who are new to our work, this is a good place to start. OVERVIEW OF THE FIRST YEAR OF ACTIVITY: By the end of March 2012, we will have completed the following sets of field visits: March 2011 in Malindi, Kenya: This was our our pilot project, working our way across the Malindi coast recording 8 separate musical groups. Our major learnings here were: A) our audio equipment kit was e…
A message from Henry Neza at UOBDU News
…ong the Batwa families was also another priority for them. After the Singing Wells visit to Kisoro there was an opportunity for some of the Batwa to experience life outside their community when they visited the Ketebul Music studios in Nairobi for more recordings. During this trip they were able to interact with the Ford Foundation and benefit from new clothes and shoes, which improved their social status among the dominant tribes here. This gave…
Sad News from Kenya News
…g a funeral dirge. We send our sympathies and condolences to his family and friends at this sad time. Here is an audio excerpt and video from his performance in Aluny. The news of his passing is painful indicator of how important The Singing Wells project is, in its aims to preserve music….
Guy Morley – No Nation News
…Guy Morley is music programmer for the Big Chill festival – one of the highlights of the UK’s cultural calendar, and is the founder of No Nation, an independent arts programming, production and promotion company. No Nation has developed links across East Africa and has recently worked on a project for Sound and Music looking at the influence of early American country music in Africa. …
AMF receive grant to fund Batwa recordings News
…rnational Education has approved a grant to support the Singing Wells trip to Uganda to record the music and dance of the Batwa people. We are delighted that our proposal was successful and that the IIE agreed with our rationale for taking the project to the Batwa to increase awareness of their unique music and dance traditions. In our proposal, we outlined our rationale as follows: “The overall aim of the Singing Wells project is to identify, rec…
Recording music & dance of the Batwa News
…ife. The United Organisation for Bawta Development (UOBDU) was founded in 2000 to address land problems and develop sustainable livelihoods. UOBDU has identified four key areas of support: land & housing; education and adult literacy; income generation and forest access & benefit-sharing. By way of example, the Batwa Cultural Trail is a new initiative launched by the Uganda Wildlife Authority and UOBDU. The trail will provide an income for Batwa a…
May 2011 – Jimmy reports back on the pilot phase News
…etter to ‘go to the music’ then try to bring all these talented musicians 900 kms to Nairobi. In addition, we confirmed that Ketebul absolutely has the right set of sound and video engineers to lead these sessions in the future – they have all now been fully trained and have already begun to record sessions on their own. They will be leading the November sessions. If you are interested in the Ketebul’s team’s views of the sessions click on any of…
Lake Turkana Cultural Festival 2011 News
…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 n…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Pato News
…see the images my love was capturing. Day 2: Off to Malindi I was up by 5:00am in the morning, and was all showered and packed shortly after.I had breakfast and by 6:30 I was out of the house. Nairobi has serious traffic jams and to get somewhere on time one has to leave early. When I arrived at the studio Steve was already there and the rest of the team joined us later and as per Steve’s itinerary we left at 12:00 sharp hihihi. We split in two g…
Reflections on the pilot phase by Willie Bembe News
…ies our grandfathers told us which got distorted over time. The safest way to store them was in the music which was passed down from generation to generation. Another five years and all this would be gone since the present generation is not really interested in learning there music. This is because it’s not packaged in a way that would interest them. DAY 4 Have caught on on how to set up the equipment and under the Andy’s guidance do the recording…
Discovering music roots with SWP News
…s lurked in the background with brotherly advice. March 26, 2011, about 22.00 hours, JKIA Nairobi. Ketebul had partnered with Abubilla on the Singing Wells Project, just about the best thing, in my view, that has happened to the dwindling fortunes of Kenyan traditional genres of music. Tabu and I were at the airport to receive James Jimmy Allen and Andy Patterson from Abubilla. I’d met Andy towards the end of 2010 on his first visit to Africa and…
More Ketebul voices…Steve reports from the field News
…h a MacBook Pro laptop running on pro Tools 9, MOTU traveler interface, a 500mb external hard drive, and 2 ART headphone amps. There was also a 2 bags with mic and instrument cables, power extension cables, 8 pairs of headphones, mic stands, boom poles, 2 Rodes NT5 mics with dead cats (no animals were harmed in the acquisition of the dead cats!), 1 shure sm58 and 1 shure sm57 mic, and 2 AKG C414 mics. Patrick, our video guy, also made it to the st…
What we learned from the pilot phase News
…for us to hear. In each case they were trying to imitate US artists from 50 Cent to Justin Timberlake. In no case did they build off their own musical traditions even though each of them was proud of their parents’/grandparents’ performances. They just didn’t link these traditions to their own music. Second, we showed the power of bringing a contemporary artists into the villages and working on ‘fusion’, the blending of new music with musical tra…
Meet the team from Ketebul Music News
…ordinary team, with huge passion for Singing Wells. Our goal is not simply to ‘archive’ the traditional music of East Africa – it is about making it relevant to new generations and contemporary music. This is the right team to make it happen. Jimmy…
Testing the mobile recording equipment News
…in November. Tabu Osusa is putting together the itinerary and the plan is to travel to the coast, near Mombasa, to record the music of the Mijikenda – a Bantu tribe made up of 9 sub-tribes, the most well known being the Giriama and Digo. Music is prolific in these communities and features superb drumming and athletic dancing. Katana Bin Kalama is a contemporary Giriama musician and his song ‘Nilipata Mzungu’ is featured on Ketebul Music’s Spotlig…