Ayşe

Ayşe
24" x 20"
oil and pastel on canvas, 2011

In my eternal search for this sound recording I once heard of an Irish woman keening I've started collecting women's mourning songs. Laments, keening, wailing, cry-singing, are some of the terms used for these mourning songs. It's a slow growing collection but every year I find new ones that usually go straight into the Top 100. Ayşe I found during one of my YouTube browsings using some of the keywords I laid out above. The song Zazaca Bir Parka doesn't quite fit in my collection of cry-singing but comes close. The music is certainly mournful but this may be a general characteristic of certain Kurdish musical traditions, Ayşe's other songs published on YouTube have a similar melancholic feel as Zazaca Bir Parka. Ayşe sings and plays saz in the video. Trying to figure out Kurdish titles and  names from headings and comments in the videos is a challenge (for me) and I could not positively identify Ayşe's surname. Several names are placed in front of, and behind the name Ayşe. A Google search using Ayşe did not lead me to the identity of the singer, Ayşe is apparently a common given name. All the other names used together with Ayşe simply brought me back to the videos on YouTube. I narrowed it down to two names: her name is either (or both) Ayşe Sefaqi or Ayşe Felek. The country it was recorded in remains unknown to me too as Kurdistan lies within territories of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Political unrest has been ravaging the region for decades and recently violence has been escalating again. I sure hope Ayşe is alright.

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker
12" x 7"
oil on wood, 2011

Another Top 100, another John Lee Hooker painting. I hardly select to listen to any of my old favorite musicians anymore but sometimes they are selected for you. I was watching Basquiat, the Radiant Child when One of These Days by John Lee Hooker, unexpectedly and sudden, was heard in the background of the film. It has a great soundtrack, that movie, One of These Days is a great song. I have quit a few John Lee Hooker records but That's My Story: John Lee Hooker Sings the Blues (on which One of These Days is to be found) is not one of these. No matter how many John Lee Hooker records you collect there always will be some important work missing. You think you have enough of his work collected until you hear another one. John Lee Hooker is full of surprises. When John Lee Hooker entered the Top 100 last year the story that went along with it was a similar one: 

His output is such that to collect all his recordings is a task so epic that it isn't even worth a consideration. I have no ambition towards such an achievement but I will occasionally add to my substantial representation of John Lee Hooker in my record collection.

–Dec 26, 2010: The Stars of My Top 100

 

Florida

Jesus Rodriguez
11" x 6.75"
oil on wood, 2011

When I moved to Ohio from the Netherlands 14 years ago, I moved to a state with a very rich history in music. Pere Ubu from Cleveland, King Records from Cincinnati, Rahsaan Roland Kirk born in Columbus, to name a few, are just the tip of the iceberg securing Ohio an important place in the history of recorded (popular) music. It meant a lot to me. This year I left Ohio for Florida. Florida doesn't have a musical history like Ohio does. The move was clearly motivated by different motives (like the beaches, endless summers, to state the obvious). Among the people living around me in Fort Myers, there's not much of an interest in musical history, sure people like to dance, sure people like to hear music they like, and sure people play instruments like they do up north, but it's a different musical universe, music is entertainment, not at all very serious. That said I received 5 complimentary CD's in the mail from the Florida Folklife Institute, for the most part recorded during the annual Florida Folk  Festival in White Springs. One CD is dedicated to bluegrass, one to blues (with the beautiful title Where the Palm Trees Shake at Night), one to African American religious music, while the other  two are compilations, a mix of the first three plus some miscellaneous categories. Within these  miscellaneous categories the most interesting music can be found; we hear Seminole Billy Bowlegs III (named after the famous chief Billy Bowlegs, after whom the creek behind our house is named, we live at the very location the Seminoles surrendered in the 1800s), a song recorded by the famous writer (and folklorist) Zora Neale Hurston, and children's playing songs. But the first musician to hit a home run is the Venuzuelan American harpist Jesus Rodriguez. My favorite parts of the compilation CD's are the various performers whose language is Spanish.

The Florida Folklife Collection CD's are issued by a state institution. Everything is documented out the ying-yang as you would expect from an official source. My wife is in the middle of obtaining a degree in library science so I pick up more information about cataloging than I could ever dream of. Searching for a photo of Jesus Rodriguez lead me back to the very same official Florida site as I found the complimentary CD's on. Every single photograph –and there are hundreds, just in the music section roughly parallel with the 5 CD's– is named, numbered, credited, dated, located, categorized, sub-categorized, and sub-sub-categorized. Five photos from the concert in which Jesus Rodriguez played his El Gavilan Cjaropo are published on line and they're pretty much all the same photo but every single one comes with a full page of data. Just for the sheer scale of the documentation (and the enormous effort by the cataloging staff) I reproduce here the information coming with the photograph I used for my painting. (This time I strayed far away from the photo, it is hardly the same image any more.) What would it look like then to transfer and edit this information into cataloging my painting of Jesus Rodriguez? A bigger file yet than the one following I'm afraid. A numbering system I have in place: The painting of Jesus Rodriguez will be Top 100 2011, #... — blanks to be filled in after February 2012 when the list of 100 songs is complete.

Title

• Jesus Rodriguez playing the Venezuelan harp at the Traditions Festival - Miami, Florida

Image Number

• FA5871

Year

• 1986

Date Note

• Photographed on March 22 or 23, 1986.

Series Title

• General: Folklife Collection.
• Specific: Folklife Collection Series 1667, Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs Florida Folklife Archives Florida Folklife fieldwork photographs, slides, and negatives: Traditions Festival, Folder 1 of 2 ; Box 2, FF1

General Note

• The other musicians are unidentified.

Photographer

• Larsen, Eric, Collector.

Physical Description

• 1 slide - col - 35 mm.

Subject Term

• Festivals--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Manners and customs
• Recreation--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Performing arts--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Hispanic American men--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Hispanic American children--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Entertainers--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Folk musicians--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Performances
• Musical instruments--Latin America
• Stringed instruments
• Plucked instruments
• Harp
• Harpists
• Guitar
• Guitarists
• Instrumentalists
• Music--Performance
• Folk music--Latin America
• Arts (Performing)--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Songs, Ethnic
• Musical traditions, Latin American and Caribbean
• Ethnicity, Venezuelan
• Ethnicity, Latin American and Caribbean
• Practices
• Community rites--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Belief and custom
• Secular festivals--Florida--Dade County--Miami

Geographic Term

• Metropolitan Dade County (Fla)
• Miami (Fla)

Personal Subject

• Rodriguez, Jesus, 1947-

Subject Coporate

• Historical Museum of Southern Florida (Miami, Fla)

Subject Meeting

• South Florida Folklife Festival, (1986 :, Miami, Fla)

Shelf Number

• Shelf number: SNS1667B2F1.

Cassette w/Arabic script

Unidentified singer
28.5" x 16.5"
oil and pastel on canvas, 2011

Who can help me identify this singer? It's from a cassette and the only information given is in Arabic script. I can't read it. Below is a pictures of the cassette (side 1), please be so kind to translate it for me if you can. The music is generous in its detail, pathos of plenty but not kitsch. And a beautiful voice. Somehow I think the singer may be Lebanese, I don't know why I think that but the tape was filed with others from Lebanon from the day I bought it. Once, a long time ago, it must have been the late 80s, Fairuz was #1 in my Top 100. She sung Ya Ana, Ya Ana together with the Rahbani Brothers set to music of Beethoven's Für Elise. It was my first foray into the music of Lebanon. 

The background in the painting above is again of my back yard. Featured this time are three palm trees neatly lined up. The singer then, is superimposed with pastels. I didn't attempt to save too much landscape this time.

Marie Danek

Marie Danek
7.5" x 6.75"
oil on wood, 2011

A little advertisement for a new blog I started:

http://musicalthriftstoretreasures.blogspot.com/ 

It's a music blog where I post tunes from records found in thrift stores. You can download there the Top 100 tune Kdo Valcik Mival Rat sung by Marie Danek. The following text I wrote last week to accompany the first Musical Thrift Store Treasures blog.

Moving from Columbus, Ohio to Fort Myers, Florida didn't really change a whole lot in regards to what records can be found in thrift stores. They say that Southwest Florida is the place where Ohioans retire. Case in point: one of the first people I met is a retired plumber from Columbus who lives practically next door—we have become good friends.
Just as in Ohio you will find polka records here at any single thrift store, dozens in an afternoon of shopping. I had given up buying any more polka records after I purchased a 4LP box-set with the best recordings ever made. I thought that would do, never was a big fan anyhow. So why I bought yet another one is easy to explain. This one features a female vocalist, a feature not found on any track on the 4LP greatest ever recordings. This record is by far the greatest polka record I own. The vocalist is Marie Danek singing with Joe Hezoucky and his Bohemian Orchestra from Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland, with its large Eastern European community, is the polka capitol of the United States. The king of polka, Frankie Yankovic is from there too, and he too retired in Southwest Florida.

The selected tune is not really a polka but rather a waltz titled Kdo Valcik Mival Rat (Who Loves to Waltz). It was recorded in Edcom Recording Studios on Tungsten Rd. in Cleveland and released by Souvenir Records on Drake Ave. in that same city. 

"It is my sincere hope, that by listening to this album, your days will become just a bit more enjoyable. May the sun shine forever in your hearts"
                     —Joe Hezoucky, liner notes to Third Edition

They made my day :)

Misirlou

Three Egyptian (?) women with their children
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2011

According to Wikipedia the song Misirlou was composed by Michalis Patrinos together with members from his Rebitiko band in 1927. He recorded it first in 1930 and then again in 1931. The recordings were distributed in America on the Ortophonic label by a certain Titos Dimitriadis. How confusing—on YouTube I find a 1927 recording of Misirlou by Tétos Dimitriades. How, in the rich documentation of this song that became known all over the world, did this historical mix-up slip in? Misirlou was a big hit for Dick Dale who recorded it in 1962, in 1994 that version played an important part in the film Pulp Fiction. Hundreds of musicians have recorded versions of it.

Part of the painting you may have seen before. This same painting once belonged to Shankar Jaikashan that I did a month ago (see a few blogs down). In the end I didn’t like that painting and I returned it to the landscape it once was. Since I have painted a brand new Shankar Jaikishan and the landscape painting of my backyard now features the three mothers wearing niqab. The image I extracted from a slide show that was put behind the 1930 Misirlou version of Michalis Patrinos on YouTube. I’m not sure whether or not the women in the “time-piece” photograph are Greek. (They probably are Egyptian—the song Misirlou deals with a Greek man who falls in love with an Egyptian girl, Misirlou means literally Egyptian girl. They could also be Turkish—Misirl is a Turkish word.) Either way, whilst most their faces are covered up some breasts are not (I didn’t spot that upon selecting the image but only during the process of painting it.)