Alur Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…himself in a cool beautiful land where he met an old woman. The Old woman took him to Labongo’s spear and then gave him a bead.When he reached home, the bead was handed over for everyone to see and, in the process; Labongo’s son accidentally swallowed it. Nyapiri, in revenge, also demanded that his own bead be given back. He refused all the possible substitutes. Left with no alternative, Labongo handed over the child to Nyapiri to open and retrie…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…as a flat area and we stopped and 50 Cows announced ‘we’re here.’ We tried to find a recording site out of the burning sun but failed. We wanted the lovely 360 views and sacrificed shade for our art. The Music Groups Kasagat Traditional Dancers The first group was the Kas agat Traditional Dancers. Kathy talked to the tribal elder about them. They come from Tot, about 50km from where we were recording. They had walked here the night before and had…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…aperwo, Chemining Tie, Chepo Chepkai, Kimnakiy Mitinge, Kisech. Click here to go to Song Translations Everything Else Everything else from today can be divided into three key events. First, we survived the drive. There were a few scary moments, the first being driving to the village for the shoot – straight up a very steep hill. This was not a hill for most humans and certainly wasn’t a hill for cars and certainly not cars filled with Ketebul folk…
Music of Northern Uganda News
…l information given about travelling to the north of the country and where to find the music. Mary, Rose, Dnalega Bonnars and Charles all talked about different tribal communities we are planning to visit in December – the Langi from Lira, Iteso from Soroti, Lugbara from Arua and the Acholi from Gulu. Ndere Troupe While in Kampala, Steve and Patrick watched a performance by the Ndere Troupe at their centre in Ntinda, just outside the city centre…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…walk to Uganda and back and die. Masirtarit Finally, we recorded the ill-fated Masirtarit, a wonderful female folk choir with great songs. They had waited all day for their turn only to find the rain arrived to join them. We did record one wonderful take which will be part of Singing Wells, but they deserved far more. …
Singing Wells – Origins News
…e were astounded by the quality of the tribal music, but equally surprised to find how hard it was to access the music back in Britain. As the founder of Abubilla Music, I set out to find partners in East Africa who were committed to preserving the music. Through a series of e-mails that travelled the world, Tabu and I were brought together by Joyce Nyairo, then of the Ford Foundation, East Africa office. After several long e-mail exchanges and a…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…d news. The bad news was no one brought a key for the studio, forcing Tabu to have to drive home and back. We left an hour later. Drive good, but long (roughly 400 kms) with a few little thunder storms and the normal fun with roadworks and trucks. Nice chicken grill in Nakuru for lunch with full team. Fun fact, Nakuru is the birthplace of Nakumatt, the most successful retail chain in Kenya. It started as Nakuru Mattresses, hence ‘Nakumatt’. We arr…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…mazing music and had the time of their lives.” Tabu puts a lot of effort into finding the true traditional music. He feels politics and tourism have affected the music we usually hear from the tribes. He wants to hear how they really are at their most natural, where their roots are. Sometimes it is difficult to convince the tribes that this is what we really want to hear. The tribes often think we want to hear gospel, rap or songs performed for to…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…music documentary. He teamed up with Andy Patterson while he was here and together they conducted a number of interviews with Kenyan musicians 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/-/…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…will become clear later). The only way to make absolutely sure of that is to go into ArcMap and look at the attribute table of the shapefile (that’s basically the data that makes the shapefile look how it does), and check the names of the counties. To do this open the map, which is saved at C:\How To Map\How to Map 1, or wherever you put it. Then right-click on GBR_adm2 and select Open Attribute Table. This will open a box with the attribute tabl…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…called How To Map 1, so the address where it is saved is C:\How To Map\How to Map 1. To get our country outline into ArcMap we need to Add Data. To do this either click File > Add Data > Add Data or select the Add Data icon. This will open a box; click this icon till you reach ‘Home – Documents/ArcGIS’: From here click on Folder Connections. This is where you will connect folders from elsewhere on your computer to ArcMap. Click on this icon: and s…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…tely stunned. Henry explains that this lady would need to make the journey to town 2 or 3 times a week, leaving her home one day, staying with another Batwa community overnight and returning the next. Extraordinary. Getting a lift in the van saved her half a day’s walk. The van pulls up on the track and Henry says we are there – or nearly there. The village is just up here he says, pointing to the top of the hill which looms high above us. We can…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…to her name and is always up for anything; the first in the studio and the last to leave. Jolly Naiti Paskazia (and baby Julius) One of Francis’s two wives and part of the trio of female singers that support Francis. Paskazia Nyirakarombo Vastina (and baby Robson) The second of Francis’s wives, the third of the trio that sings with Francis and on their own. Beautiful voice. Vastina Ayinkamiye Gasoda “DJ” Yohanandj DJ is the lead dancer for Tiny Mo…
How to Map 1: Housekeeping News
…Map being too busy to faff around sifting through all your old school work to find shapefiles and the like, so we make it easy for the old guy by saving all our GIS files to the C: drive, i.e. to hard disk. Continuing the ArcMap-as-pernickety-elderly-fella analogy, it also gets terribly irritated if you change your file or folder names. This is because the links made in ArcMap (that will make more sense later) aren’t live, meaning they don’t updat…
Day 2: Focus on the Nyatiti, Orutu and DRUMS! Story
…ight: Steve, Winyo (with Bone Guitar), Andy and Tabu. After this shameless tourist stop we head out towards Siaya. We’re still roughly 1 PM on the Lake Victoria clock, 90 minutes NW from Kisumu, but on a slightly different road than Rang’ala. We’re here to focus on the Nyatiti, the core Luo instrument – as played by the best players it is a bass, drum and rhythm guitar combined. And we saw some of the best players. We want to remind you first…
Christine Kamau – “The Jazzist” News
…ge of support from Afro-Jazz trumpeter and composer, Christine Kamau….. Hello Victoria! 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/christi…