Dive Into East African Music With The Singing Wells Project

An impressive project that focuses on the traditional music of East Africa - mostly Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Africa is a big place. Yeah, no kidding. I was aware of that when I started this site. So I tried to keep things manageable and focused on a few countries in southern Africa whose music I especially like (Botswana, Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe). As time went on, I was drawn to the music of certain other countries. Including several from East Africa, mostly Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

Which is where The Singing Wells Project comes in. The short version of what they do is "recording, archiving and sharing the traditional music of East Africa." I first ran across their site when I was sharing acoustic guitar music here not long ago.

Here's a more detailed mission statement:

The Singing Wells project (SWP) is a collaboration between Abubilla Music, a record label in London and Ketebul Music in Kenya, a non-profit organisation committed to identifying, preserving and promoting the diverse music traditions of East Africa.

The project is supported by our UK charity, The Abubilla Music Foundation.

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.

As a group of sound and video engineers, producers and musicians, we set out on this mission not to become ‘fossil collectors’ and store the recordings in inaccessible archives. We work with musicians to make sure their music traditions continue to be practiced, can be shared amongst the widest audiences and become a source of inspiration for new musicians.

What that statement doesn't convey is what an amazing project this is. Read on or just start clicking around if you want to bypass my blather. Start with the home page or go right to the music at the YouTube page. There are currently 750 videos at the latter and they are being added all the time. As I write this, the last video was added two days ago and there are some premieres coming up.

If you want additional background to the music and the project, click around at the home page. There's a section for researchers, with field reports, instruments, groups, and maps. For those who just want to listen to the music and get some background, there are stories, albums, galleries, and the aforementioned YouTube page. They even have a Loop Library, where they provides snips of some of the music for use in other musician's projects.