Several of my friends are off to Uganda today to record the music of the Batwa tribes on behalf of the Singing Wells Project – as you do….it really is an extraordinary thing they are doing. I’m hoping they will send me some updates/photographs whilst they are there. The Batwa are a forest people, almost completely dispossessed of their ancestoral territories, in part due to efforts to protect the Mountain Gorillas in the forest of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. They now live at the fringes of society with inadequate medical and social care, but no access to their traditional herbal treatments. They are often called “Conservation Refugees”. My friends are aiming to record their history and current situation through their music, dance and oral histories.
Here is a video of their global remix of one of their songs. The gorgeous girl in the video is the daughter of some friends of mine and I suggest you watch till the end to see them incorporate a verse in Swahili and introduce some of the village music. It’s brilliant and explains very simply exactly what the Singing Wells project is all about:-
