Image - Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno & A.Akinyi  

About:

Project title: Sustainable Nyatiti Instrument fabrication

​Concept:

This project is supported by Arts Council England under the umbrella Develop Your Creative Practice to develop skill in Sustainable Nyatiti Making. 

This project aims at research in nyatiti making to reveal innovative crafted instruments locally while preserving the integrity of the nyatiti by improving the workflow using methods practiced by luthiers in England and the United States. It also looks at some other key fundamentals like health and safety, tree species and alternatives outside its native land, improvement in tools and approach, weather etc. 

Another course of this project is to look at sustainability for artists and in respect to the environment. I am looking to source wood material either from naturally fallen trees or felled for a specific reason which might involve for example safety. Only a portion of the tree will be used so the rest can be left to facilitate the ecosystem that harbors fallen trees. Out of this project I would like to address the autonomy and freedom for nyatiti musicians to travel with their instrument. The nyatiti making community will benefit from inspiring people to take on the learning to make this ancient instrument and to find their voice. I will be sharing this experience with the large community through hands-on workshops, including schools that are looking to have empowering activities, texts/audio and images, video projection, live intimate performances at the site of the trees used to make the resonator.

I am also questioning the element of traveling with the instrument. In many tours I have had challenges with bringing the instrument on board due to the size, material involved in making the instrument to whether it meets airline requirements for carry on instruments. The idea is to see how possible these can somehow be addressed during fabrication. I believe this can be a starting point to invite professional musicians to travel with their instruments freely. 

During this time I am consulting and working with different luthiers from different parts of the world, including Charles Omenda aka - Obong’o Nyundo an accomplished nyatiti maker based in western Kenya, a guitar and mandolin luthier master Richard Osborne based in Wales UK, a banjo maker Mark Austin from the US and also a conga maker Ossi from Finland. Davey Poremba will be joining to document this process. A special thanks to the Arts Council for funding this development, to Ouseburn Trust to assist with finding logs for the resonator of the instrument, to the Domaine du Pré Jouan for letting me practice in their workshop and supplying some logs for doing so prior to this phase of the project and to Merlin, Akinyi and the Nyatiti NyaDala team for supporting me in the process.

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