BaraBara.fm [v.3] - A Journey into the Sound of Kenya » Nyanza

Ogoya Nengo Long Version

Agnieszka — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:40:46 +0000

Here comes a longer version of Ogoya Nengo. After listening to her takes over and over again and again, I am still so impressed by her singing. What a voice !
For the middle section of the song I used the recordings we have done before we left the village. Everybody was dancing and singing. The husband of Ogoya played the solo drum accompanied by an amazing percussion trio. Watch the video, Agnieszka did on this unique day.
http://www.barabara.fm/videoblog/music/Ogoya24_8.mp3 ^{ogoya nengo longer version}

1st tour finished

monade — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:32:33 +0000

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 which is Tanzania.
It was great to see the landscape during the drives, the different people walking along the road and small markets in between which are located among the many small townships around. The colorfulness of all of them is impressive. You see women with beautiful suits wearing big bags or cans on their heads gracefully and lightly. Students of different schools are wearing matching school uniforms. Cows and coats graze on the edge of the roads and of course taxi drivers, shop keepers and many others engaged with their own private businesses.
As already mentioned in earlier posting we met many interesting, warmhearted musicians and made a lot of recordings and video shootings which have still to be reviewed.
In the evening we took a cab to Kisumu Airport to go back to Nairobi by plane.

http://www.barabara.fm/videoblog/music/17-3Flugzeug.mp3 ^{after the landing}

The main city of Kenya bid us welcome with one of these incessant traffic jams. Unfortunately Nairobi does not have a subway. Therefore the whole city is a never ending jam between 7.00 – 9.00 in the morning and 5 and 8 in the evening. After all the air was definitely better at Kisumu

well deserved break

monade — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:59:34 +0000

After 5 exciting days at the countryside of Nyanza we now have the time to review the results. We sat down at the swimming pool of Kisumu Hotel to listen to all of the recordings Sven did and to arrange and edit all of the foto and film material. That’s a nice
way of working!

At three o’clock we took a well deserved break and decided to take a closer look at Lake Victoria, which is only a few minutes away from the Kisumu Hotel where we are staying. In front of the hotel you can see several men with bicycles hanging around. We asked two of them to take us to the lake. This was our first ride on a bicycle taxi, which is a common transportation vehicle in Kisumu. You can see women with heavy shopping bags or men coming back from work on the bycicle racks. The drivers pedal like mad getting them up the hill, for only 20 shilling (which is about 20 Cents).
So we arrived at Kiboko Beach and paid of course much more just to overcome our quiter dash of exploitation. The Lake Victoria area is a wonderful place to relax. We sat down under a huge palm and ordered two of these delicious Kenyan mango juices.
Later on we met some children playing there. They were singing wonderful children’s songs and of course Sven asked them if he could record their singing. Instead of paying a fee we offered sweets which were well received by these four cute children.
Listen to the song a 5 years old girl from Kisumu sang to us:

http://barabara.fm/videoblog/music/15-3-5_years_old-Girl.mp3 ^{Children’s song}

a short night

monade — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:45:16 +0000

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.

http://barabara.fm/videoblog/music/onguko_voice_130309.mp3^Onguko

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

Dancing Neighbors [V.2]

monade — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:14:19 +0000

Today we went on a two-day-trip (see pictures on the left) to the south of Lake Victoria. In the late afternoon we arrived at Rongo Village, a small township. There we met with a traditional Bul-Ensemble. It took less than fifteen minutes until the whole neighborhood joined the session.
The ensemble played great but it was even better to see how more than 5 old women began to dance to the music that has been played in the red dust of Rongo Village.

http://www.barabara.fm/videoblog/music/village_crazyman_120309.mp3 ^{Sound of Rongo Village}