Support Singing Wells Page
…project will be spent in East Africa and will go towards supporting music groups during their Singing Wells recording session. Each group receives a payment for their performance, which they can use to help them continue practicing and performing in the future. The songs and videos we record are archived and published, giving each group further opportunities to gain an income from their music. Our Gift to You As well as a special thank you on our…
Muwewesi Xylophone Group Group
… Muwewesi Xylophone Group featuring Muniru Ayubu and Kisubi Eliasa on lead vocals. Song meanings “Obutasoma”: a song about education. “Obwiire Bukyeire”: meaning ‘the time has come’. “Obwayu”: a song about poverty. …
Karambi Sanaa Group Group
…From Kagera Bukoba and part of the Wahaya Community, this group was formed in 2000 and performs in the Akasimbo style. Their instruments are: Kangote (Drums), Akafotho (hand whistling), Enganja: Clapper – two wooden ‘bricks’ struck together, and they wear Ebisheshe (grasses). is…
Day Three: February 18, 2020 (Stonetown, Mpendae, Maungani) Story
…om there we drove for another half an hour to Maungani to record the third group: Tarajazz – This group was formed by the director, Suleiman Makame, who studied classical piano and music. He became interested in Jazz and created an African fusion of Taarab and Jazz about two years ago. The name of his band changed from Mansule to Tarajazz. He combined African rhythms such as Msewe and Kyaso (both from Zanzibar) with Singeli (a new tribal rhythm)…
Day One: January 18, 2019. Assemble in Tanzania Story
…amera to provide a second angle on the performance and c) we interview all group leaders to understand group musical styles and background, instruments and songs. In almost every village, we struggle with spellings of songs and instruments as these can differ by village and by band. We fully recognize that there are multiple spellings out there, but we defer to the band leader in almost all cases. During a recording session, we will also capture a…
2. Naizungwe Drums – progress report 1 Story
…enough drums for training a new generation of players. However, the basic number includes: 1 large Uganda drum (played with short heavy beaters) 3 smaller drums (played with long curved sticks) 1 medium drum (played with sticks) 1 long drum (ngalabi – hand-beaten) All together, 6 drums. Therefore, we are making four sets of naizungwe drums mainly to facilitate learning.” Below is a video documenting the progress of the drums thus far. https://you…
1. Introducing the Naizungwe drums Story
…from Peter Cooke. James tells us: “Nile Beat Artists is a semiprofessional group of musicians that include highly talented musicians. We will also add other musicians selected on the basis of high skill to avoid wastage of time. We will listen to the recordings together with the youths. Then we make sense of what is played in the recordings. After that, we will play the rhythms slowly until we can reproduce them. Then we will add the singing. This…
Day 7: Friday, February 24th, 2017 Story
…ory of Tanzanian music, we asked Henry to assemble members of his original group DDC Mlimani Park Orchestra. We assembled at Nafasi Art Space, which is very similar to the Go Down Art Center in Nairobi, hosting artists of all kinds from musicians to painters to dancers. Henry brought two members: Hasaan Rehani Bichuka, his lead vocalist and Juma Ubao (aka, King Makussa), his lead guitarist. Juma was nick-named King Makussa because at one time he h…
Day 6: Thursday, February 23rd, 2017 Story
…ting Magic Moment 3: Francis singing ‘Alelewani’ solo. Alelewani with full group Mikocheni Makongwe Malowe Magic Moment 4: Daudi Fernando Joseph plays the drums in style of Mzee Morris We then interviewed Daudi about Mzee Morris: “I met Mzee Morris when I was younger and saw him play. I loved his style from the first moment I heard it. I also listened to him on the Tanzania Broadcast Corporation, because his drums was used hourly to announce the…
Day 5: Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017 Story
…kuni 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 long thin drum called a Neya. Here’s the set: In the dance they…
Day 4: Tuesday, February 21st, 2017 Story
…in the morning we return to the village Boma to collect musicians from the group Chibite, who we had recorded the day before. We love their energy and musicianship and wanted to record a fuller album. Three members were the same as yesterday: the brother/sister combo of Ndekwa and Ndahani and Ndahani’s daughter Grace. We then added Tabu and Estelle, two other sisters of Ndahani and Ndekwa. This was an album of two halves: we first recorded 5 songs…
Day 3: Monday, 2017 February 20th Story
…t of camera range tuning their drums as they play. See example: Here’s the Group: The group played 6 songs: Ndio Kwanza (We’re just starting and haven’t done anything yet) Mama Shughuli Yako Tomeiona (Now, you’ve seen how we play) Boga (Pumpkin), or Mboga in the local dialect Nina Ubembeleza Undugu (I’m begging for us to be brothers) Drum Instrumental Mama Ni Mama (A mother is a mother), a coming of age song We interviewed Husein, the band leader,…
Day 2: Sunday, 2017 February 19th Story
…The group leader was Asha Saidi Kazidi. The style was Unyago. Here is the group: They played 12 songs, including Magic Moments and Influences Sessions: Zakulola: You’ve come to see us play Wake Kwa Ume: Female to male Nataka kusema kasi naogopa: I would like to say something but I am afraid Umpati Ng’o: You’re never going to get them Magic Moment 1 Utalikologa Utalinywa: If you mix it, you’ll drink it. Tueheze Zembwela (local dialect) Bonanza Nat…
Day 1: Saturday, 2017 February 18th Story
…aily basis as we travel in the field, doing our best to record traditional groups, songs, and stories. All groups and songs mentioned here will eventually turn up on YouTube (see our current video collection here), as we prepare each of the videos. We will go back to these reports and provide hot links to all of these, but that will take a couple months or so, so please be patient. This is our first trip to Tanzania. For those of you that have fol…
Our journey to the Royal Drums: in the words of James Isabirye Story
…mes Lugolole is helping train the new musicians and we now have 4 separate groups. Slowly, we think we are reviving this instrument. I felt we had a model that would work: find a surviving musician, assemble students, build new instruments, build new groups, find opportunities for them to perform. From my conversations with Singing Wells, we are now calling this the ‘Bigwala Model’, although that sounds a bit grand, and sounds like we had a perfec…
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 4, Part 2 – Flutes Story
…at we first decided to rediscover the Royal Drums after recording Albert’s group in 2013, we wanted to end this field visit with his recordings. Part two: the flutes So, let’s close this chapter of Singing Wells with music and here we’ve come full circle. We are back with Albert Ssempeke. His father was one of the last royal flutists of the Buganda kingdom, and Albert has dedicated his life to rediscovering Buganda music through his Buganda Music…