Metal Heart, Amazing Grace

Cat Power
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

She has a brand new look, a brand brand new hair style, a brand new music style too. She's Cat Power. Her song Metal Heart has been in the the Top 100 before, before I even blogged about those songs. I really thought of Cat Power back then as her having a metal heart (metal as in heavy metal). Can't be so sure anymore as she seems to have traded it for a hip hop heart now. Metal Heart is a Cat Power song that quotes from the classic Amazing Grace hymn. It's a blues song really (years ago I also likened Cat Power's music to the oral history of the blues traditions in American music). Metal Heart was featured on her third recording, an LP called What Would the Community Think, as well as on her second to last one Jukebox, recorded with the Dirty Dozen Blues Band. I've heard claims made that hip-hop is the linear ancestor to the blues, and that Grandmaster Flash and the Wu-Tang Clan could be considered as part of the same long line of African-American oral history traditions as Son House, and Muddy Waters would have been. I've done about 28 or so Cat Power paintings over the years, enough that you would think it's a career in and of itself but even the 2,000+ musicians overall that I've painted still don't add up to much of a career... There is still hope, the hobby continues, I'm still that fan.

Faiza Ahmed

Faiza Ahmed
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Faiza Ahmed (1934-1983) was an Egyptian singer of Syrian and Lebanese ancestry. Her top 100 song Set El Habayeb Yahabieba that was featured in an item on Faiza Ahmed in Bodaga Pop, is one of her best known songs, apparently a Mother's Day favorite. I went out of my way this time in preparation for the painting. I took a bunch of photographs of my banana plant in the early morning sun and planned the composition with superimposing a photograph of Faiza Ahmed onto one of the banana pictures's. The painting totally existed in my head (and on paper as well) before I started applying the first paint. I was after a lushness of both vegetation and singer's expression that I think in the end only partly materialized. Mother's Day in Egypt falls on March 21st, which was my father's birthday, and also the date the Top 100 2012 will be played. That day in 2013, when days have the same length as nights all around the world, I intend to play the Top 100—radio show style—live on line. I'll keep you posted on this.

Bocet in my back yard

Bocet: Lament for a dead father, Romania
12" x 12", oil on luan, 2012

It's all happening in my back yard. All my favorite musicians have been visiting and they came from all over the world. I had Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix over to play some soccer, just a week ago I had some girls from Borneo prepare the rice. I had tons of live music happening, from Guatemalan street musicians to a performance by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, there's been naked people, Muslim women that only showed their eyes, Siberian people dressed to withstand extreme (cold) temperatures, cannibals, and pacifists, and now there's a funeral going on. Maybe it's time to do some further landscaping, to make the background more inviting. Especially since one of my next visitors will be my sister, and she is for real. What I really need to do is to make the house presentable, because my sister, unlike all the luminaries I've painted, will also come inside. The three sisters in the painting, lamenting the death of their father, are not the same Romanian women that lamented their brother on a 1930s recording by the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, that will feature in this year's Top 100. There's actually only one woman singing the Lament for a dead brother. The song is, of course, also represented on the CD Keening Songs and Death Wails I recently compiled. The following text accompanies the Romanian Bartok recordings:

"The woman designated at the funeral to bewail the death in Romania is called a bocitorre (comp. voceratrice in Corsica), and the lament a bocet (vocerata in Corsica). The tradition of funeral lamentation in Romania is similar to those of other catholic countries. The laments are often sung by relatives of the deceased but sometimes a professional wailer is hired. The bocitorres on the LP Folk Music of Rumania (as Romania was spelled) are relatives of the deceased except in Lament for the dead which is sung by a professional. It is also the only bocet that has a musical accompaniment (in the form of a flute). All bocitorres are anonymous on the LP that was released by the Folkways label of Moses Asch in 1968. The recordings however, all made by the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, are much older. (Smithsonian-Folkways on their website, gives 1951 as recording year, but this can’t be true: Bela Bartok died in 1945. He was living at this time in New York City. I suspect the recordings stem from the 1930s, or even earlier)."

Rosa Balistreri

Rosa Balistreri

24" x 12"

oil on luan, 2012

I don't speak Italian, so the lyrics to the song Buttano di to mà by Sicilian singer Rosa Balistreri don't really make an impact on me but the song certainly did. It's clearly one of Balistreri's more dramatic songs. Not I'm an expert though, I had never heard of Rosa Balistreri until just a week ago when I picked up a copy of her album Amore tu lo sai,la vita è amara. I have since heard about twenty of her songs, 12 on the album and an additional eight or so songs on YouTube (the site that pretty much has everything you can think of). Buttano di to mà was not on the album, but it was the song that stood out for me most upon my first introductions to the music of the Sicilian singer. The blog(ger) Kalliope Amorphous states that the song "is quite possibly the most powerful 'fuck you' song ever recorded." Kalliope also states that Balistreri deserves more attention outside of Italy. In Rosa Balistreri: The Sicilian Folk Singer You Should Know About she writes: "I have been listening to Rosa Balistreri for many years, but was surprised to find very little mention of her in English speaking articles and reviews. It is unfortunate that these voices can become so easily lost in the miasma of what passes for music in our culture." Despite that there is "very little mention of her in English speaking articles", there is plenty of presence on line. Lots of texts in Italian, and also lots of music and photographs that don't require any language skill to indulge in. Great photos too! I may have to paint some more soon (I have to, if I keep listening so much to her music). Rosa Balistreri was born in 1927, grew up in a brutal, feudal Sicily. As an escape she began to sing Sicilian folk songs but it took her through many inhumane jobs and relationships before she was, at the age of 39, able to make a recording. Balistreri fled from Sicily to Florence in the 1960s, but moved back again in the 1970s. She died in Palermo in 1990.

A Mother's Lament

Sergio, harpist
(after a photo by John Schechter)
24" x 12", oil on luan, 2012

I reported a month ago I was working on a CD with examples of weep singing. I have now finished this compilation, it contains 28 tracks and has a 20 page booklet of pictures and explanatory notes. The CD won't be released anywhere but if anyone is interested in this subject or the CD, please write me a note. The texts in this booklet were often pulled from this very blog. Now I'm returning the favor: the following text is from the booklet Keening Songs and Death Wails. Sergio, the harpist depicted above, is featured on the recording of a Quichuan mother lamenting the death of her 2-year old daughter.

Keening Songs and Death Wails
collected by Berry van Boekel
private publication, 2012

Quichuan Mother’s Lament (to her 2 year old girl)

Ecuador, January 12-13, 1980, outside Cotacachi, recorded by John Schechter.

In the educational textbook Worlds of Music ethnomusicologist John Schechter gives an account of the circumstances surrounding the recording of this Quichuan’s lament. (Summarizing 4 pages into 1 paragraph): Against a backdrop of a high infant mortality rate amongst Catholicized  Quichua Indians in Ecuador a wake is organized for the passing of a two year old girl. The wake is festive, there’s food, drink, music, and dance. The musician is harpist Sergio, he plays non stop local favorite (traditional) dance music. The girl is put on the floor, decorated with the finest adornments, and just before her casket is closed, laid on a higher table, and a ladder put against it (to symbolize the ascension to a higher realm) her mother sings a song. The song is improvised, the lyrics almost impossible to decipher because of the mother’s sobbing, halfway into the song Sergio starts playing the harp again, and the song becomes different, more joyful.

Gustave Doré: A festive child’s wake 
in the Spanish Mediterranean, 1870s

In many Latin American countries the passing  of an infant is a festive occasion. When an infant died he/she is sinless and becomes an angle. The child did not have to endure the impurities and hardships of life adults have. In 1980, when the account by Schlechter was written, the mortality rate of infants was three out of ten. Funerary lamentation is a widespread practice among catholic countries/regions. It is said to have originated in Roman times but the origins of the singing at wakes and funerals may well go further back than Christianity does. A lamentation is an improvisation of an unaccompanied female wailing voice. The singer is often a relative of the deceased but also could be a hired professional "wailing" woman. In Ireland she's called a "keener", in Romania a "bocitorre", and in Corsica "voceratrice". Laments can be divided up into two categories: that of the wakes and funerals for adults, and for those of children. The adult ones are mournful while children's laments can have a festive quality to them as it is celebrated when a child "becomes an angel" without having experienced the hardships and impurities of life. The practice has become nearly extinct now but it used to be a tradition in nearly all catholic societies. It could be found throughout the Mediterranean, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other pockets of Catholicism that existed around the globe. I grew up in the Catholic Netherlands, but I don't think lamentation was ever practiced there. It certainly wasn't  when my grandparents died while I was still a little boy in the late 1960s. The Netherlands had a sober kind of Catholicism, it had the introverted ascetic characteristics of it but not not the extroverted spirituality. The folk music in Mediterranean and Latin American countries were influenced by a rich spirituality and a cult of the death.

Source: Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's People, 4th ed., Jeff Todd Titon (ed.), Schirmer, 2002

KIRK

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Downbeat magazine "Poll Winners' Show" 1975, Rahsaan Roland Kirk is introduced by Quincy Jones as having won the award in the category of multi-instrumentalist and miscellaneous instruments. In the clarinet category he won for the 2nd consecutive year, the stritch and manzello he won for 14 consecutive years (these were instrument he devised himself), he won the flute too. As soon as Quincy Jones is done with the lauds, Kirk tears into a mesmerizing version of Pedal Up. Kirk plays multiple horns, McCoy Tyner is on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Lenny White is the drummer on this track that reaches high into the Top 100 for the 3rd consecutive year. It doesn't get old this one. I have a version on the 2LP-set Bright Moments but I prefer the Downbeat version. It's great to see him perform even just on video as I never had the chance to see him perform live in concert. Ronald Theodore Kirk was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1935, he died in 1977.

Albanian clarinettists

Laver Bariu   
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Laver Bariu (b. 1929) is a virtuoso Albanian clarinet player who is, despite his old age, still active today (as far as I can tell, I hope I'm right). There are a few videos of him performing on line, so you can check out some of his wonderful music. In the context here he's only a stand-in for his fellow clarinettist and compatriot Ajdin Asllan of whom I could find find no available image on line. Asllan was born in 1895, recorded in Albania before moving to the United States where he started a record label featuring Balkan music including some of his own. He died in 1976. I found Valle Devollice on Excavated Shellac, a site that is an authority when it comes to early recordings from 78s. The tune is a duet of Asllan's clarinet and the traditional Albanian llaute, recorded circa 1930. There is actually a lot of information concerning this obscure Albanian 78 record but rather than poorly paraphrasing I'll direct you to the source here in the words of master excavator Jonathan Ward.

Hungarian Tangos

Ilona Nagykovácsi12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Not that there are so many Hungarians where I live, not that I know of at least, but there are certainly a lot of Hungarian records to be found at local second hand stores. I got myself something that might be considered a collection. From traditional music recorded in the field, via popular gypsy orchestras, to a record full with tangos, the whole gamut of records from a certain era from a certain country is to be found. In my blog Musical Thrift Store Treasures you can read about, and listen to some of these records. So many records from one place naturally reflects the content of the yearly list of 100 songs too. Ilona Nagykovácsi (1910, Hungary-1995, Canada) was a Hungarian actress, comedienne, and singer who moved to Canada during the second World War. One of the Hungarian recordings in the list of 100 is her song Gyűlöllek, a tango featured on that album Svívbajok ellen, kisasszony, szedjen tangót! that is dedicated to tangos only.

Back to Burkino

Maurice Sempore
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Maurice Sempore is the sax player and leader of the group L'Orchestre Harmonie Voltaique from, as the name implies, Upper Volta which was renamed Burkino Faso. The group was formed in 1948 by Antoine Ouedraogo. Sempore took over from Ouedraogo in 1964 and 'africanized' the sound of the group that had a repertoire mostly consisting of French popular songs (like those of the singer Sandwidi Pierre, also in the Top 100, who I painted in May). The song Killa Naa Naa Ye Killa was recorded in 1970 and appeared as a 7" single.

A song about rice

Young Dyak women grind rice using a
 traditional technique
(after a photograph by Harrison W. Smith
 for National Geographic)
12" x 12", oil on luan, 2012

In 1951 and 1952 UNESCO and UNO recorded indigenous music of the various Dyak (or Dayak) people on the Island of Borneo (now Kalamantan) in Indonesia. A selection of these recordings can be found on The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax, Vol. VII: Indonesia, Edited by Dr. Jaap Kunst, Indisch Museum, Amsterdam. A long title indeed, but inside the titles are short and descriptive. You can read more about the record when, a while back, I painted Roro natives from Papua New Guinea. The second song from the album is a pretty one labeled Rice Song. "Dyak women sing this appeal to the spirit of the mountains to send a good harvest." It could have been a lot worse; the song after the rice song is a headhunter's dance. The practice of cannibalism had been extinct in Borneo for a good while already. Volume five of the Columbia World Library series overlap volume seven a bit, it deals with Australia and New Guinea. The record features a recording of still practicing cannibals. Alan Lomax (who does the final edit on the liner notes in the series) states in a matter of fact manner: "(...T)he warriors burst into a song. Afterwards the bodies of the dead men are cut into pieces, cooked on hot stones, and eaten." I wonder if they serve rice with it.