The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…d so it’s easy to access and share, which is exactly what we want in order to carry on building 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…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…o locusts during our locust attack). They ran a lovely hotel and greeted us warmly with Nile Specials! We handed off a pile of Batwa DVD’s for them to take back to the Traveller’s Rest and hit the sack. Jimmy (Entebbe)…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…n 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 the studio with Winyo and…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…work is used for all ceremonies. They also carry a big hollowed out gourd to carry milk. Finally, they have a stick with a tail on the end that denotes the leader of the group. They all carry black and white sticks which are mainly for herding the animals or used as a walking stick. When you get engaged you should always carry a stick, they warned, or you would look aimless. Song translations: Elimu Culture Promotors ‘Chamgi’: a greeting song whi…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…when he comes to ask a woman to marry him. One singer carries a horn used to call people to come together, if there’s an attack or a meeting of the tribe. The women wore small gourds around their necks that would contain oil used to smear on people after circumcision. They also wear beads crossing their chest which are given to them after female circumcision. Their belts are decorated with cowry shells and are used to drape over a woman’s abdomen…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…d on our progress and had an extraordinary moment when we received a Skype call from Andy in the UK and he actually joined in a live Influences session! The Location We woke up after a second night in Kitale and drove 56 km to Kapenguria to record the Pokot tribes. The country side was beautiful – very hilly, with round thatch huts peppered along the green and red hills. Like Uganda and Rwanda, the countryside here is green with slashes of deep re…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…sted in first class audio equipment and can record using 8 mics directly into Pro Tools. But during the March Pilot programme, we realised that the visual experience was as important as the audio. So for our November trip we invested in two more digital cameras and worked out our new Camera 1-3 approach. Camera 1 is static group shot. Camera 2 focuses on instruments. Camera 3 is context. This worked extremely well but created a separate issue – lo…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…recordings. In the past, one or two of them might have been invited to a local town for a simple recording. Singing Wells allows for the whole group to perform, singing and dancing in front of ten microphones and three digital cameras.’ Video engineer, 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…
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
…to interview 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 19…
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
…sserbys. That took almost an hour. Preparations at Ketebul Music studio We came to Ketebul this morning to get ready for our trip tomorrow. Ketebul is buzzing with people getting everything packed up. Steve, project manager, was cracking the whip. Pato, head of Video, was quickly learning how to use the new lighting kit (SW 4), but he was constantly distracted by the new Singing Wells Flip Camera. Nick focused on learning the Clapperboard. And Wil…
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
…the other vehicle can catch up. In the meantime, I have the camera in hand to capture the wonderful landscape of the Rwandan hills on our climb to the border. There are some prominent themes on the trip which I noted down later that evening: bustling towns, people walking everywhere, women in colourful kikoys, children playing at the roadside, motorbikes, push bikes, sacks of potatoes, lush green hills, patchwork of fields, stunning lakes and lots…
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…
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…