Singing Wells Collection

Singing Wells Collection is a collaborative project between the Abubilla Music Foundation in the U.K. and Ketebul Music in Kenya. Its goal is to record, archive and share the tribal music of East Africa for two important reasons i.e. to preserve and celebrate the extraordinary cultural music heritage of the region and to help make this legacy relevant and fresh to today's musicians.

As part of the project, the organization has a team that travels around East Africa where they at times record instruments that they have never seen or heard before. In some cases they managed to purchase instruments for their own Singing Wells instrument collection back in the UK. Where they find an instrument that they have not seen before, they make sure they record it, photograph it and research it.

The first field visit was in March 2011 when they traveled from Nairobi to the Kenyan coast to record the music of the tribes of the Mijikenda. Since then, they have completed more field visits in both Kenya and Uganda.

The collection features a selection of instruments they have found so far on their travels. The instruments are tagged by their ethnicity, their recording location and the type (simply broken down into Stringed, percussion or wind at present). This also makes it easy to find links between instruments – the Rigi Rigi and the Orutu being very similar is one good example.

To achieve the goals of the Singing Wells project, they work in the field traveling to the villages of East Africa with their bespoke mobile recording studio. By taking the studio to remote communities they record the music and dance performances of individual musicians and music groups in a relaxed and authentic environment, watched by their family and friends. In fact, they usually attract large audiences from the communities they visit. Everyone from the youngest child to the most venerated elder is eager to watch the Singing Wells performances and many join in with the dances too.

A typical field visit involves, in the first instance, identifying traditional, region music styles and groups in the area they are traveling to. Once they have the final itinerary, the Singing Wells team sets out by road with the mobile recording studio and spends up to a week in the field recording the local music groups they have discovered.