Blog
Abubilla Gets its Map On
Written by Rosie
This summer the Singing Wells (aka the Abubilla Music Foundation’s most awesomest project) is developing a musical map of East Africa. This may not mean much to you. Basically it’s a map, online, which shows you where different tribes are, which tribes use which musical styles and instruments, and also has points which you can click on to see videos of music recorded by Singing Wells, as well as other East African artists. It’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself.
There are lots of reasons to do this. One is to make it easy for people to access information on East African music – take it from me, it’s harder than you’d think. We want to create a really useful resource for people doing research on the subject, because there’s no reason why we should all have to do the tricky research. We’ll do it and then you can enjoy the results.
Another is that putting something on a map so you can interpret it visually can make you see patterns you hadn’t realised existed before. For example, as we conduct our research and map it, will we find that communities in different areas belonging to one tribe have a lot in common in terms of musical styles, or will we find that geographically close groups of different tribes have more in common? We don’t know yet, and that’s what makes it so exciting.
I imagine what most people will use it for is to listen to the music itself – that’s what it’s all about, after all. There’s a lot of academic interest to be found in music, but listening to it is really where it’s at. There are already 25 videos recorded by Singing Wells embedded on the map, and countless audio files which you can listen to via SoundCloud also embedded. Besides that we’re working on getting as many other East African artists on the map – our target is 1000 musicians/bands so if you’ve got any hints for us make sure you drop them in the comments.
The map is still in progress so it’s not yet on our official Singing Wells website, but since you’ve managed to read this far, we’ll reward you with a sneak peak – this link will take you to the map. It’s not finished yet but it still has a wealth of great stuff on it so you can have a go.
http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/1838