Ketebul Music presents Shades of Benga Online News
…music, examining external influences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the itinerant Congolese musicians Edouard Masengo and Jean Bosco Mwenda who’s intricate guitar-picking styles largely shaped the present Kenyan sound, with the Benga playing a dominant role. Currently, you can get advance copies from Ketebul Music Studios or place your or…
Singing Wells Approaches 5 Million Views News
…East Africa to a wider audience. It amazing to see the Youtube algorithm agreeing that this is a project worth showing people! We can’t wait to bring more songs and stories to the world. Keep an eye out on the Singing Wells Youtube channel for the footage and recordings from our field trip to Zanzibar and Pemba….
Central & Eastern Uganda: Day 3, Part 1- Drum Making and Palace Players Story
…d, “They would all have been made by people in our village. But for royal drums, our drum makers were invited to the palace to make the drums on site, next to the King.” He said that every child in his village loved to make drums and viewed it as a good trade to create pocket money. “If you ever need money as a child, you helped the drum makers and learned the craft.” Abass did this and was a casual drum maker with a friend of his. But then his fa…
Central and Eastern Uganda: Day 2 – Kampala to Jinja Story
…he next generation of trumpets. There are now four trumpet groups and about 20 trumpets, with many more growing in the fields in different parts of Busoga. Everything about the Bigwala model has become the inspiration for our attempts to rediscover the lost royal drums. The trumpets are thriving and young people are starting to learn the instrument again. And James Lugolole is thriving. In his interview he told us, “I am so happy. I feel now, when…
Recce to Tanzania for our 2020 Field Visit News
…est groups to record during our upcoming field visit in February. We are struck once again by the amazing talent this country has to offer, and can’t wait to capture some amazing moments with these artists when we visit again with the full team in a few weeks time. Thanks to the good people at Dhow Countries Music Academy for helping us with the information and contacts from their database. Getting a private crash course on the ganun from ganun vi…
Musisi’s Story, Part 1: The Fall of the Buganda Kingdom Story
…am now so happy and they call me The Professor because I’m teaching these drummers how to play the Royal Drums and I want to do nothing more with my life than to help this music be heard.” Musisi’s work: drummers setting up to perform And we’ll stop there. We will report more on Musisi as the week goes on, but we felt this was the right place to start, the telling of his last night at the palace, the last moments the Entenga were played at the pal…
Rediscovering the lost Royal Drums of the Buganda Kingdom: Day 1, Uganda Story
…ssional drummer who now leads the new band, they built a new set of Royal Drums, recruited a team of passionate drummers to learn how to play the drums, learned to tune the drums and ultimately learned to play new music. Over the course of their studies, the new drum students (most of whom are actually highly accomplished drummers and professors of music) starting calling Musisi ‘The Professor.’ Left: James, Right: Musisi And that is why we found…
The History Of Benga Music: A Report by Ketebul Music Story
…) of Kenya’s provincial agricultural shows and seedy small-town pubs or at rural market centres. Although clubs like the Carnivore have opened up to Benga acts, it is still an occasional thing. Save for the culturally-themed nights–‘Mugithi night’ for the Kikuyu, ‘Kililimbi night’ for the Kamba, ‘Mulembe night’ for the Luhya and ‘Ramogi night’ for the Luo – which are few and far apart, the rest of the entertainment fare is dictated by the DJs, who…
The Return of Bigwala News
…eems to be a promising future for this important thread in the tapestry of Uganda’s cultural history. Sources: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ugandan-music-bigwala https://ich.unesco.org/en/news/uganda-young-ugandans-mobilized-for-safeguarding-bigwala-music-and-dance-00251 https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1333991/bigwala-busoga-royal-music-dance…
Entenga drums perform with Akadinda Xylophone News
A year ago we brought you the news of Entenga players performing in front of King Ronald Metebi at the 25th anniversary of his coronation (available here). At this event they also performed a piece with the Akadinda xylophone in front of the Asantehene (the monarch) of the Asante people from Ghana. A recording of this performance has just become available, and is posted below https://youtu.be/CCQ72al2pEo Fore more information about the Entenga dr…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Days 5-11: Ketebul Studios, Nairobi Story
…the first ‘secular player’. He often visited Wanganangu’s homeland and recruited Wangangangu to pursue a musical career. We recorded 6 songs with Wangangangu over two sessions: Cal Wa Kadogo Ngurumo ya Saba Saba Muhiki Nyakairo Maito Njeri Rocine Kerokp Muumboro Osumba Rateng We first worked with Osumba during our trip to Nyanza in 2011; he is the founder of the Sega Sega band and ‘Flora’ remains a Singing Wells favourite. He is one of the most i…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 4 – Nkubu to Mukuuni to Nairobi Story
…ed to contain them to get good vocals, we lost the explosive force of the drums. When we let them run wild it was pretty difficult to get a good vocal or audio take. Also, we were accidentally constraining them by asking them to go through their songs one by one, when in fact, what they loved to do was race through all the songs at once, in a single act. We finally sorted through all this though. Ultimately we did three ‘takes’: Mucii: This is the…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 3 – Nkubu to Mariene to Murungurune to Nkubu Story
…knife is cutting away his old life and forcing him into a new life. Ruuji rukuru, led by John Gitoriga, means ‘old water’ and is a song to prepare a boy for manhood. Water is a cleanser so the water cleanses the boy and moves him from childhood to a new life. The boy is taken to one of the old rivers and hot mushrooming spring. Hence ‘old water.’ Remember that in all cases the boys are led to a river, covered in mud, and then are marched to a new…
Central and Eastern Kenya: Day 1 – Nairobi to Kiongwe to Muranga Story
…we find their noises the perfect backing track for all our recordings. The market structures were beautiful with the typical brick structure, light blue paint and the red earth of Africa bleeding up the walls. The market itself was nestled below a lovely hill of green, which stood 500 meters above us, stuck into the blue skies. We were here to record 4 separate women groups of the Kamba ethnic community, from the same villiage of Kiongwe, each of…
Entenga: Performing twice for the king of Buganda News
…i. https://youtu.be/HgKF14j5LrM We were first introduced to the Entenga drums in 2015 and have since been supporting James in an initiative to revive the drums and teach younger musicians how to play them (read the field reports here or watch our documentary for more information of this project). The Entenga players were mentioned in the king’s speech, which James translated for us as: “… I would like to thank especially those who played instrum…
Central Uganda: Day 7 – A Magic Day in Entebbe Story
…hank them now for their patience with us. It is also important to say that today will be more unstructured. We have one formal new group, which we’ll describe below, but we have also invited artists from two of our trips to join us and create new music. For part of the session we were joined by Brad Gibbs from The Mara Group, who had sponsored part of this trip and wanted to see how things were going. Brad was joined by a colleague, Nicolas Farah,…