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The Omong'oluk Traditional Dancers

At Atapara village of Ong’ariama sub-location within Amongura location of Teso sub-county- we met with the Omong'oluk Traditional Dancers. They were founded in the 1940s by Longinos Omong’oluk. Longinos died in 1998 at the age of 87, while the group is today led by his great grandson Ibrahim Omong’oluk. This is a group of men and women, who perform traditional Iteso music and a dance locally known as akisuk.This dance is characterized by rhythmical upright jumping.

We were particularly intrigued and impressed by the traditionally unusual composition of the instrumental ensemble, which was predominantly made up of women. They played several types of drums as follows:

AKIBABAM – a two-skin cylindric drum played with wooden sticks;
NAKAKIUMU – a cone shaped drum played with sticks and/or hands;
AKIDONG – a two-skin cylindric drum played on three metal legs, also played with woodensticks);
ABUSA – wind instrument made out of long plastic pipe and a gourd;
AMUGWARA – antelope horn;
ISMAN – metal jingles tied to dancers legs.

This trip Singing Wells was interested in the Teso traditional music. The Iteso (people of Teso) are Nilotes who live mainly in Eastern Uganda and in Western Kenya. The Iteso of Kenya are about 500,000, the majority of whom live in Busia County. Their music varies from traditional drums to string ensembles of impressive complexity and we were lucky to both witness and document this variety.

You can read the field report here: https://www.singingwells.org/stories/...

Audio recorded and mixed by Steve 64 Kivutia. Camera operators Patrick 'Sapat' Ondiek / Martin ‘Drix’ Muyeshi / Hunter Allen / Edited by Hunter Allen