The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…ng the Singing Wells community. Rosie has made some ‘how-to’ guides on how to add to a map yourself which you can access easily on our website too, in a few steps, ‘Housekeeping’, ‘The Map Outline’, ‘Prepare Your Data’. I met with Rosie to talk about her experience using the map for the benefit of Singing Wells. How did you discover the mapping software? I am currently reading medicine at UCL, but during my gap year I spend time doing work experie…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…ute shopping for essential supplies (alcohol, sunglasses, papers) and then took the train to C57, where we boarded our flight and left pretty much on time. Jimmy sat next to Andrew who lives in Kampala and married to a Uganda woman with whom he’s had a one year old son. He was passionate about West African music and did a paper on drumming in Ghana. So Vicki switched seats with Jimmy and talked to Andrew about the Singing Wells project for an hour…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…cused our recording time on Mr Manager, their quite sincere thank you song to a factory manager that came to their factory and actually did a good job. We always found this song amazing – the group is deadly serious in their thank you to the manager. But in many ways, we kept thinking it is sad that they find it so rare for someone to essentially do his job that they need to write a song. Johnnie, Bishop and Eddie all joined in to support them in…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…leg. ‘Arap Oloo’ : about a wife who thinks her husband is lost. She wants to look for him because she can’t be responsible for all her children and animals without him. ‘Chang’komen’ : about a woman who is married to a man in a different village. She comes home bringing specialities to eat and drink. ‘Nerekan Evyline’ : Evyline was left by a man who flew away. The song is asking about what she’s going to do. She’ll tell her father to build a hous…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…with the Marakwet tribes. The drive was long but spectacular. Our journey took us from Eldoret to Iten, the home of Kenya’s world class athletes. The Journey Most the Olympic gold medallists among Kenyan athletes live within 100 kms of Iten and it has become the legendary source of great long distance runners. Over 1,000 Kenyan runners train here and the roads are filled with athletes training for London 2012. In addition, over 300 foreigners tra…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…essed in striking blue costumes. We recorded 10 songs with them: Kaseta, Kitok Pokot, Chepo Ktpsot, Chelimo, Kech, Chepng’aror, Kalokeya, Suma Agenge and then returned to do an Influences session on Kech and a Magic Moment. The Magic Moment focused on their extraordinary ‘pogo’ style dancing, jumping up to 20 inches off the dirt floor in the homestead. Throughout the recordings, a lovely woman of about 70 could not keep from dancing. We loved it,…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…a Blondy, a reggae artist from the Ivory Coast, but also loved Hip Hop. He took a gap year and the joined a university to take computer classes in 2002-3. He tried to join the Air Force but his mother wouldn’t let him sign up so he joined Creative Edge a graphics design firm, and then Smoke and Mirrors a multi-media company in 2003-2004. In 2005 Steve moved to Eye 4 Design but later that same year he met Tabu through a friend who sang with Tabu’s…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…oject. We both knew we wanted to do something to preserve the music but it took us a while to define exactly what to do. Finally there was a eureka moment – the best thing we could do was to go the musicians, to their villages, to their homes and record them with their families. We would record them singing their songs to their children, three generations dancing together in their village. Andy Patterson, who helped design the mobile studio, noted…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…Sigerer’. Kathy interviewed him about all his songs and this is a classic (to go to Kathy’s Blog on Songs from Day 1, click here). Sigerer tells the story of two bulls in Teriet’s family that we were stolen and taken to Uganda. The family dog was able to follow the scent and led a posse of 20 armed men 75kms to a butchers where sadly one bull had been killed. The surviving bull, Sigerer, was re-taken and brought back to Kitale. In celebration, the…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…ve (Stevo), Singing Wells Project Manager and Chief Sound Engineer, Throat to Choke Patrick (Pato), Chief Video Engineer, Camera 1 (fixed centre) Willie, Sound Engineer Eddie, Sound Engineer, Influences Musician Nick, Intern & Trainee Video Engineer, Photographer (stills) Jimmy, Video Engineer, Camera 2 (instruments) Hunter, Video Engineer, Camera 3 (performance, context, audience) Kathy, Video Engineer, Stills and Interviewer Kiplagat, Fixer We a…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…www.businessdailyafrica.com/Where+the+world+got+real+flavour+of+Kenya+in+London/-/1248928/1480860/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Photos from Kenya House …
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…poor areas of Nairobi. One of the artists, Uncle Subu, from the Art Centre took corrugated iron from the slums after they burned and has made life size cut outs of people in various happy and natural poses. He wants to be sure we are reminded of this terrible time so it won’t happen again. After a busy day of packing, meeting the whole team and getting organised we headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s long drive N…
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…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…t-have’). The officials at the actual border post (a rope across the road) took a good look at both us and the vehicles, but we were waved through and no money changed hands. We arrived at the Traveller’s Rest in Kisoro at 7pm. Unfortunately, due to my last minute travel plans, there was ‘no room at the inn’ for me that night so I would spend my second night in Africa on my own at the Kisoro Tourist Hotel just down the road! TUESDAY The alarm goes…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…is case, GBR_adm.zip. Open it up and take a look. What you will see is a crazy number of files, none of which your computer seems to really recognise. Don’t panic. What you’re seeing is just a few shapefiles (remember shapefiles? No? Let me jog your memory). As we’re looking at the shapefiles in the C: drive rather than in ArcMap itself, you can see the six individual files which make up the one shapefile. In fact, in this case you’re looking at 1…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…Western Kenya, we made a decision to bring some of the Batwa singers back from Kisoro to Uganda. We spent Saturday and Sunday recording them and the results are fantastic. The whole way back from Kisoro to Kisumu we talked about the Batwa and how much we loved the singers. We thought about bringing them to Nairobi sometime in the future. We then decided the future is now and called Henry Neza to see if he would be willing to travel with a selecti…