Northern Uganda: Day 2 – from Gulu to Acet Story
…en. By the end, these two teams were joined by another group of 100 adults from the surrounding village. Our backdrop became not the cement buildings, but the faces and shirts of our three teams – we guess they were 350 strong at the peak. The Music Groups The main theme of the day was dance. All groups featured wonderful female dancers and two ladies in particular were stunning. The best our Singing Wells team have seen. In Acholi dance it’s all…
Northern Uganda: Day 1 – Entebbe to Gulu Story
…ately we all made it to super-market where we loaded up with money, mobile phone cards and other sundries and headed out. The William car stopped to pick up Akello, a lovely Ugandan singer/songwriter, who is joining the group as our Influences artist. The Emmanuel car headed into Kampala to pick up our press badges. We then headed off to Gulu at around 2PM (yes, we tend to spend a lot of time getting mobile phone cards!) and headed out on a 360 km…
The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…d online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia), it is Open Source and so people from all around the world can add information to make the map a very useful source of information. By creating the basics, as we have, the broad tribal and musical structure of East Africa is there, now we can only add to it! There was also the difficulty of classification. There are hundreds of different language groups and dialects between tribes in East Africa, meaning t…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…The London gang travels to Entebbe and reunites with some friends from Kisoro……
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…irobi studio. That led to 10 Batwa musicians and 5 Batwa babies travelling from Kisoro to Kampala to Nairobi and recording some great songs over the course of four days. We now want to repeat this for every field visit and decided to invite the Otacho Young Stars, the great find of our field visit to record the Luo, and Ben Kisinja, the great Kalenjin musician we recorded earlier this week. Saturday was all about the Otacho Young Stars. Let’s remi…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…moved our departure time from the two hotels (Eldoret Club and Pine Tree) from 8am to about 9.30am. The tyre had a damaged tube that just wore out. We reassembled and headed off for a spectacular trip from an altitude of 2,800m down to 1,114m at one of the floors of the Great Rift Valley. The roads were more winding and steeper than on our trip to Rwanda last November but there was no rain and there were guard rails on the roadside which made it…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…on the men’s arms represents the River Nile and where the tribe originated from. They came from Israel to Egypt along the Nile to the Sudan. This occurred in the 18th century. The women have white dots on their arms and faces representing the soil and harvest. The white paint comes from a special kind of soil and only one person in the tribe keeps this soil as the custodian. Their aprons are made out of goat or cow hide and signify prayers and ble…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…driving), long after darkness fell, we added up the day, in wonder at the numbers of songs we recorded: 5 groups, 33 songs, 3 Influences Sessions and 2 Magic Moments. Pokot music is all about the dance and vocal harmonies – most music with origins in nomadic tribes is about the dance/vocals not the instruments, because at best you could carry a horn during your endless movement. Sila Dancers Lomut Traditional Dancers This groups walked 120 kms fr…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…d loved R Kelley. He also liked Salif Keita, an afro-pop singer/songwriter from Mali, his only ‘African music’ influence. Steve’s first job at Ketebul was as an intern working with Jesse and Gabriel on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series. His feature artist was Makedem who ‘blew him away’ and he still views Ohanglaman as his favourite album. He also says Jesse was the perfect coach, so passionate about good music, but so meticulous about creating…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…d arrived at our first shoot of the trip – Kapsokwony Kenya, 56 kilometers from Kitale. We drove onto the athletic grounds of Chesamis High School to record four groups. Our fixer was ’50 Cows’ – clearly taken from 50 Cent, but taking the Kalenjin love of cattle to a new level. 50 Cows is a local journalist and student at United States International University (USIU). The Music Groups Ben Kisinja First up for recording was Ben Kisinja, a wonderful…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…neer, Patrick Ondiek, adds, ‘I love producing the final videos and getting phone calls from my friends asking me ‘how did you find these musicians?’ I feel like I’m on the cutting edge of music, bringing these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection of important tribal musicians in East Africa. We are recording music in Northern Uganda in Autumn 2012 and then we will travel to Tan…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…terview Pato about his background and his work with Ketebul Music. Pato is from the Luo tribe, from the village of Bondo (450 Km from Nairobi) , although he and his father were both born and raised in Nairobi. He is one of 6 children – he has one older sister and two older brothers and a younger brother and sister. He lives with his three brothers in an apartment in the Umoja district of Nairobi. Pato graduated from Pumwani High School in 1999 whe…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…mainly affected the 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 tom…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
…med 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/-/djb5mf/-/index.html Phot…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…his. The column called NAME_2 contains the names of all of the counties. Unfortunately I have yet to figure out a smart way of getting those names out of ArcMap and into Excel, so usually I just copy them out. Luckily for you wondermonkeys, if you’re going to be using the UK unicorn distribution data I’ve cooked up or even just the UK for your country, I’ve already done that for you! Click here to get the data. As I mentioned, ArcMap can be tricks…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…so many ways. Firstly, it’s never a bad thing to be taken out of your ‘comfort zone’ and be shown life from a completely different angle. It puts a new perspective on your own life. Hopefully it prompts some positive action. Secondly, it was so good to meet the Ketebul team after many months of emailing. And now I understand much more clearly about the impact the Singing Wells project can have in East Africa. I can see that it’s so much more than…