The Tribal and Musical Structure of East Africa – Worldmap Research News
…e to someone coming to this field of study for the first time – they don’t need to know where all of the tribes in East Africa are to understand the general distribution of musical styles or instruments, anyone can relate to a map of the world. Fipa Tribe identified – embedded information shown How did you make Worldmap work for Singing Wells? As Worldmap is open source we were able to use a map of the distribution of tribes in Africa created by a…
Northern Uganda: Day 0 – London to Entebbe Story
…All bags were gratefully recovered and we took a taxi for an 8 minute journey to the Airport Guesthouse Entebbe, where we were greeted by our old friends, Jan Willem Van De Kamp (the owner of this hotel and the Travelers Rest in Kisoro), Charles and Simba (the Rottweiler who feast on Kisoro 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…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…n 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 Nina working on back up vocals. They were a huge amount of fun, smiling throughout it all. Other than recording, we continued to blog our little hearts out, write up trip reports, strategies, lessons learned, etc… The good news is…
Day 6: Recording the Tugen & back to Nairobi Story
…yre. This 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…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…time 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…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…an influences session. The dancers were already pretty amused by the microphones and the video cameras. But they were far more amused by the computer on a table during their dance, playing guitar. Third key event: we travelled back to Eldoret and are staying at the Eldoret Club. This gave Jimmy time to do detailed interviews with Eddie and Nick. There are separate blogs here, which provide some more observations on what Ketebul Music and and now…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…female vocalist who, he says, showed him that African tribal music didn’t need to be ‘old.’ He feels that Singing Wells is the next part of his musical journey. He talks about it as ‘discovering the source’ and ‘training his ears.’ He pointed out that Francis Sembagare from the Birara Dancers (Music of the Batwa) was closer to Hip Hop than much of today’s music. And he also points out the Joginda Boys (recorded for Singing Wells in Kisumu, Lake V…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…s 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 these talented musicians to my Nairobi friends.’ We have developed a three year plan to record a wide selection of important…
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…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 guitarist in the typical Kalenjin style. Tabu describes this style as very traditional and the way of singing is very unique to the Sabaot clan of the Kalenjin. The guitar is called a bur…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…’ve lost. Secondly, I love the confidence it gives me to expose my friends to new music. They all love the music I bring home – it is so different from what they listen to and so much like ‘home.’ In Kenya, no matter where you live, your village is always ‘home.’ I was never raised there, but it is where I will retire. And the focus of Singing Wells is village music. It is about home. And my friends love that.” We asked Pato his favourite Singing…
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
…then onto Iten and Kapsowar to record the Marakwet and Keiyo. The last day to go to L Baringo to record the Tugen. Tabu is not sure what to expect of the tribal music in the villages we are visiting but he is always surprised by the quality of music we discover with Singing Wells. “I didn’t really know what to expect of the Batwa of Uganda, and was blown away by the musicianship. I expect to be surprised again!” The last time he was there was abou…
How to Map 3: Prepare Your Data News
…Our data is going to be regarding counties. In order for the data to be joined to the counties shapefile, i.e. administrative level 2, the names of the counties in the shapefile and the names of the counties in our data need to be identical. (The reason for that 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 shape…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…aced. In many places it had been completely dug up and was a mix of loose stones and soil. And it was raining heavily again. Water and mud was gushing at speed down the hillside onto the road. At times we were negotiating a small, fast flowing river. And the rain made visibility out front pretty poor too. Luckily, I was deep in conversation with Henry who was telling me a bit more about the plight of the Bawta. Consequently, I was largely distract…
How to Map 2: The Map Outline News
…are saved is now: C:\How To Map\Country Outlines\UK. Getting your map outline into ArcMap Open ArcMap and select Cancel – you want to create a new map rather than opening an existing one. This will give you the completely blank ArcMap screen. Before we do anything else, we’re going to save our map. Like all your other GIS files it needs to be saved on the C: drive. It’s also a good idea to put it in a folder of its own because it will start to col…
Return of the Batwa @ Ketebul Music Studios Story
…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 selection of singers to Nairobi. We told him if he left immediately he would probably make it back to Nairobi at the same time we did. We called him on Monday the 28th of November, hoping he could make it to Nairobi by the 2nd of December. It is a sign of Henry’s amazing devotion to the Batwa cause that he said yes to such…