African Strings: The Nyatiti and The Adungu News
…s in the bouncy performance shown in the video below of a Ugandan wedding. Using our Worldmap we can show a distribution of the Adungu and Nyatiti instruments across Eastern Africa – the Nyatiti is represented in the darker pink, the Adungu in the lighter pink: References: ‘Saharan Vibe’, (2011), ‘Luo Nyatiti Music from Kenya’, Available: http://saharanvibe.blogspot.co.uk/ Blench, Roger. Reconstructing African Music History: Methods and Results,…
Background on the Music of Northern Uganda News
…karak courtship dance in Pawili. This is one for the youth, and, lucky for us, is usually performed in the dry months of December and January. When the young people in a particular village are ready for marriage, they organize a big ceremony where all potential partners meet. As a sign of friendship, food and alcoholic drinks are served during this ceremony. Only the best dancers will get partners, so there is a lot of competition during the danci…
Day 9: Ketebul Studios with Ben Kisinja Story
…pace for videos. We recorded right through to 9PM and the ‘northern folks’ rushed to the airport. The Ketebul crew continued to work in the studio, led by Jessie who loves bringing Singing Wells musicians into the studio. Hunter and Jimmy will board our flight at about 11PM and with a 12 midnight wheels up, we will officially end the ‘field visit.’ Now the hard work begins of producing all the videos… Jimmy March 11th, Joma Kenyatta International…
Day 8: Ketebul Studios with the Otacho Young Stars Story
…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 remind you who they are – here are two clips: We focused our recording time on 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 yo…
Lugbara Tribe Profile – Music of Northern Uganda News
…known as the Madi, their current name perhaps came to be used after the intrusion of the Khartoum Arab slaves in the second half of the 19th century. Their origins are described in relation to their belief in mythology: with God’s creation of Meme and the universe. The first two human beings Gboro-Gboro (male) and Meme (female) are said to have been superhuman. Some traditions only speak of Meme, whose womb God filled with the living things in the…
Day 7: In Nairobi – sponsors, blogs and strategy Story
…ike kids everywhere, they tend to reject their parents’ and grandparents’ music, hoping to discover new music they can uniquely own. If we spent too much of our time showing only the videos of the few groups we think can be fed into more mainstream music, we are abandoning our mission to record all the styles of East Africa, so others can rediscover them. This topic became a major topic of discussion over our remaining three days and will be a key…
Day 5: Recording the Marakwet Story
…we were confused for a CNN crew! You can read more about Iten and its famous athletes here: Running with the Kenyans From Iten there is a beautiful tarmac road that leads to Nokuru travelling down the Rift Valley. We will take this ride tomorrow. For today, however, in the words of Robert Frost, we ‘took the road less travelled.’ We left Iten on a red, dirt road. The athletes ran on the sides and our car and jeep travelled in the middle. While th…
Day 4: the Pokot Tribes Story
…Kalomoywa We recorded 8 songs with them and a magic moment of wonderful chorus. The songs were: Kinyakar, Kamatakar, Chepo Nandi, Kamitoi, Kaperwo, Chemining Tie, Chepo Chepkai, Kimnakiy Mitinge, Kisech. Click here to go to Song Translations Everything Else Everything else from today can be divided into three key events. First, we survived the drive. There were a few scary moments, the first being driving to the village for the shoot – straight up…
Music of Northern Uganda News
…omance by the Alur Kingdom Troupe who are based in a village called Nyaravuru, just outside Nebbi and represent the Alur, Madi and Kebu tribes. They are well known in East Africa and have performed at various state functions in Uganda and also at the Senator Leger Festival since 2004. They play many of the traditional Ugandan instruments including the adungu, agwara, ndara, rkikriki, obilo (a horn) and the oseke (pan pipes). Alur Kingdom Troupe pl…
Day 3 continued – an interview with Steve Kivutia Story
…ng Wells in Kisumu, Lake Victoria) were amazing and more modern than most music today. The Clapperboard Today was the first day we used the ‘clapperboard’. First a little background to this…… Singing Wells has always been about the music so our initial focus was on audio recording. We invested 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 experi…
Singing Wells – Origins News
…ms to preserve, celebrate and share the unique music traditions and heritage of East Africa. Jimmy Allen, Founder Abubilla Music and Trustee of the Abubilla Music Foundation …
Day 3: Kitale to Kapsokwony, Kenya Story
…tracks with us, including a fantastic Influences track with Eddie Grey, a musician who joined Ketebul Music in 2011. https://youtu.be/ot3xNHqm7pU https://youtu.be/MPPFeuH1vF4 Please click here to read the meaning behind Ben’s songs: Song Translations of Ben Kisinja Chebonet Our second group was Chebonet, a traditional folk group with several percussionists and a wonderful young lead female vocalist. They were a great choral group with some wonderf…
Day 2: Nairobi to Kitale & an interview with Pato Story
…ey talks and the whole crew were there by 09.00. Everyone. That‘s the good news. The bad news was no one brought a key for the studio, forcing Tabu to have to drive home and back. We left an hour later. Drive good, but long (roughly 400 kms) with a few little thunder storms and the normal fun with roadworks and trucks. Nice chicken grill in Nakuru for lunch with full team. Fun fact, Nakuru is the birthplace of Nakumatt, the most successful retail…
Bill Odidi reporting on Singing Wells from London News
Bill Odidi travelled to London in August as part of Ketebul Music’s ‘Kenya @ 50’ music documentary. He teamed 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.businessdailyaf…
Day 1: In Nairobi, packing and talking to Tabu Story
…am and getting organised we headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s long drive North. Kathy Allen Trustee, Abubilla Music Foundation…
Victoria’s reflections on the music of the Batwa Story
…g trip was a last minute one. Kathy, one of our Abubilla Music Foundation trustees, had to pull out of the trip quite suddenly which left a gap in the team’s resources. Kathy was due to be videographer on ‘Roving Camera 2’ and also document the names and meanings of songs we would be recording. On Tuesday Jimmy asked if I could make any part of the trip to take on that role; on Wednesday we changed the flights into my name and on Sunday I found my…