BaraBara.fm – A Journey into the Sound of Kenya

A short review of the 9 days trip to the western side of Kenya:
We travelled from the border to Uganda in the northern part of Nyanza to the adjacent country in the south… Read the rest

The last evening was very nice, but the night was definitely too short.
We were on the road to South Nyanza in the late evening. It was very dark and nothing was to be seen, so Agnieszka asked our companions: “I wonder how the people find home?” and scored a coup. They all doubled up laughing for ages and mentioned the joke on the next day again and again.
After quite a long drive on a road that was not really drivable (just barabara!) we arrived at Sero. There it turned out, that the hotel we had in mind was fully booked – and notabene it was quite late and we were in the middle of nowhere, at least in our perception. So we decided first to have a beer, while Sven and Tabu went to another place to figure out another possibility to stay overnight. A beer succeeded a beer and we talked about everything under the sun. The discussion went from politics in general to Kenya’s president Kibaki and his wife, to the capabilities of women in leadership, to the loss of culture in the younger generation and many other topics. It was so inspiring and warmhearted at the same time.

Finally we found a very cheap hotel in the already mentioned middle of nowhere. The rooms were simple but clean. At two o clock in the night it began to rain. The rain pattered on our corrugated iron roof so loudly, that we thought the Armageddon is drawing near.

At three o clock the rain stopped and we felt asleep again. Just under two hours later the owner of the hotel began to do his morning routine and the laundry just beside our room. And at half past five somebody started to listen to some Ohangla music at full volume….

After breakfast and tons of coffee we met with Onguko. Many years ago Onguko was one of the best and highly esteemed drummers of the whole Nyanza region but alcohol made a human wreck out of him. He was trembling the whole time. Finally Onguko sang two of his favourite traditional songs.

^Onguko

Onguko has never played on an album so far. The recording we did today is his first recording that will be published.

The 1st working day @ Goethe-Institut right in the centre of Nairobi. A lot of huge business buildings, shopping malls, small shops and restaurants make you first feel, like in many other metropolitan cities.

At the Goethe-Institut we meet… Read the rest

Today in the morning at 7 o’clock the voyage started at the Hamburg Airport. Our friend Carla took us there. At the counter we were charged a huge amount for excess baggage by Lufthansa – so be sure to have… Read the rest

Here is the first session: preparing playbacks for the field and voice recordings in Kenya:

… Read the rest

During my trip to Kenya I intend to record singers and other musicians in two different ways. First I will try to record the people as purely and as natural as possible. But second I prepared some playbacks that I… Read the rest

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