Following on from the recent performances by the Entenga drums, Prof. James Isabirye has informed us that the Bigwala trumpets performed last Wednesday (13th September) at the coronation anniversary of Kyabazinga William Gabula Nadiope IV of the Busoga kingdom. The trumpets can be seen here performing at Budhumbula in front of the Kyabazinga (the elected ruler…
We’re delighted to annouce that our esteemed colleague and Singing Wells partner Prof James Isabirye has been featured in an article in Uganda’s Daily Monitor about his work to revive the Entenga Royal Drums. Read now. You can watch the full documentary of our initiative to save the Royal Drums here.
I’m new to Singing Wells and I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to pretty much every song on the site, getting to know the amazing traditional music of East Africa! It was tough to pick, but for my first blog post I thought I’d share my top 5 songs so far. 1. Otacho Young…
The history of African music recording and archiving can be seen most clearly and compellingly by detailing the history of a few key individuals, who were pioneers in their field. At the turn of the 20th Century, a colonised Africa was viewed as backward and void of any real culture worth preserving, which is why…
At Singing Wells, our goal is “to record, archive and share the traditional music of East Africa for two important reasons – to sustain and celebrate the extraordinary cultural music heritage of the region and to help make this legacy relevant and fresh to today’s audiences.” And it is always great to hear of stories…
November 2013 sees the Singing Wells team come back together for another week of live field recordings. On this trip we will be working in East and Central Uganda, visiting musicians and music groups from the Baganda, Basigu, Bagwere, Basoga and Banyoli communities. In September, Steve and Tabu from Ketebul Music travelled to Uganda to…
As we reflect on what we’ve learned with Singing Wells over the last 5 years, maybe, just maybe, music is a lot more important that we originally thought (and Lord knows we love music)
This is a transcript of a report received from UOBDU, following the visit made by the Singing Wells project to record the music of the Batwa in Kisoro, Uganda in December 2011. United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda (UOBDU) Narrative Report on the Promotion of Batwa Cultural Music Since April 2012, UOBDU started implementing…
