Tuesday, March 20, 2012

13 more paintings makes 100


Okay, that's all of them. I'm off to Ohio to hang all these paintings and meet you back here for the Top 100 2012!
Some info on these paintings, from left to right, top to bottom:

Anne Grimes, 12" x 12", oil on wood.
For many years the second best represented US state in the Top 100, after New York, has been Ohio. It is no different this year, and than I’m not even considering the four tunes by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was born in Columbus, as from Ohio. Not that I keep charts of where people are from, but since I brought it up, I consider Kirk a New Yorker. What’s new about Ohio this year is that there’s, beside the regular home town rockers, traditional music as well. One of my last loans as a member of the Columbus Metropolitan Library was this handsome book with a cd tucked inside of it called Stories from the Anne Grimes Collection of American Folk Music. All the stories and all the music are from Ohio and were recorded on location by Anne Grimes. A few songs she performs herself on a dulcimer but most songs are sung by older Ohioans who learned the songs from even older Ohioans. The first track on the cd (and maybe therefor also the top 100 song) is The Homestead Strike performed by Rueben Allen. The song was recorded in Zanesville in 1953.

Delia Derbyshire, 10" x 8", oil on canvas board.
The BBC launched an eight part series about the live and work of Ms. Derbyshire that I watched with great pleasure. She worked for the BBC as a composer and sound engineer throughout the sixties and into the seventies and is best known for her collaboration with Ron Grainer on the theme for the BBC series Doctor Who. To refresh one's ties with universal consciousness you should watch the Doctor Who theme on YouTube. (Play it loud for the best connection!). Pink Floyd more than just quoted from this on their classic One of These Days. While you're at it...

Malcolm Mooney, 4" x 4", oil on wood.
I’ve hardly seen any live music the past year. It’s a shame, I should go out more, but I live in a city with nothing much going on. If I were in New York I would surely see a lot more music. The last time I was in New York, almost a year ago, I saw Michael Mooney at an art opening at White Columns. One of the featured artists was Mr. Mooney himself. Sculptures. Malcolm Mooney was vocalist and one of the original members of the legendary German band Can. He now heads a band called The Tenth Planet but the performance was him assisted by just one of Tenth Planet. Earlier that day I bought a picture disc by Malcolm Mooney at the White Columns booth at the International Art Fair in Chelsea. I took it to the gallery to have him sign it. I was not the only one. A German collector, an artist too, who sells records for supplemental income brought along the complete set of Can records Mooney performs on to sign. I ended up drinking with the German dude, forgot his name, sorry...

Issa Coulibaly, 10" x 7.25", oil on wood, 2012.
There is some confusion about the identity of the Issa Coulibaly whose tape Dit Trih Issa was published by Brian Shimkovitz for Awesome Tapes from Africa. In the notes to the music, Brian Shimkovitz writes that this cassette is from Guinea. There is however another Issa Coulibaly from Mali, who lives (and performs) now in the US. The readers’ comments to the post seem to suggest that the two are the very same person. I have to say that images of Issa Coulibaly (who teaches at Brown University) don’t look a whole lot like the Issa Coulibaly on the tape. But it’s sometimes hard to tell— individuals’ appearances can change over the years. It has to be two different people though. Prof. Coulibaly is a Master Djembe Drummer while our Coulibaly plays a balafon (which is sort of  drum too, I guess).
The balafon is yet another instrument I hadn’t painted yet.

Tony Schwartz, 10" x 6.25", oil on wood, 2012
The sound recording is taken from yet another Folkways’ release, in full– Nueva York: A tape documentary of Puerto Rican New Yorkers. Conceived, recorded and edited by Tony Schwartz. The recording of the church performance here is an outtake of a section that follows and interviews the congregation on a Sunday in 1956. After his spell with Folkways Schwartz (1923-2008) went on to become a guru of the new electronic media in the early 1970s.


Lotte Lenya, 10" x 8", oil on canvas board, 2012.
My friend Sue Harshe of the band Fort Shame, and formerly with Scrawl played a concert featuring compositions by Kurt Weill. She had arranged the music for piano solo while translating some of the lyrics in English. I have quite a collection of Lotte Lenya (married to Kurt Weill, and the most important interpreter of his music) records and I decided that I would pass on the most famous of these records to Sue. It’s the one featuring on the sleeve to Bob Dylan’s masterpiece Bringing it All Back Home. One of my favorite tracks on the record is Seerauber Jenny from the Dreigroschen Oper. Not having the record anymore I recorded the original 1930 version for the top 100 tape. Nothing wrong with that either.

Asakawa Maki, 8" x 5", oil on wood, 2012.
Strange Fruit was once, a long time ago, a number one in my top 100. Billie Holiday was the singer. Nina Simone did it too, she hit the list just two years ago with that song (be it far from #1). And now it’s back, and the singer is… Asakawa Maki. Ms. Maki (1942-2010) is a blues singer, some cult hero in her native Japan. She’s done House of the Rising Sun too, as well as many other standards. But she wrote her own too, and sang it all with her trademark smoky voice. In almost all her photos on line she smokes a cigarette. In all her photos she maintains a sort of James Dean kind of cool. In the video for Strange Fruit she tries to looks like Billie Holiday and even without the gardenia she does manage to look like her a lot. Lots of the credit on Strange Fruit goes to that wonderful three minute piano intro by Yamashita Yosuke.


Miki Tanabe of Guitar Vader, 7" x 4", oil on wood, 2012.
I’ve been slacking a while on my upkeep of Japanese pop music but since following the Bodega Pop blog last month I’ve taken a crash course to get up to date. I Love I Love Love Love You by Guitar Vader but it is actually more than ten years old! Where have I been! It comes from the cd Die Happy!

Kipsigis woman in traditional dress, 20" x 10", oil on canvas, 2012.
One of three tapes that I copied from Awesome Tapes from Africa in 2011. I could not find any information about Solomon Monori or his Chemaner Band, or the cassette Chepkunyuk, not at the Awesome Tapes from Africa comment section, not on the entire web, except that they’re Kipsigis, and the Kipsigis are my friends (see #21, Chemirocha). Together with the lady in the Chemirocha painting this young woman depicted here makes a dancing Kipsigis duo. The Kipsigis, by the way, live in Kenya.

SKVLT, 10" x 5.25", oil on wood, 2012.
This track kind of functions as a vestige of the black metal, punk, and noise recordings in previous editions of the Top 100. When I still lived in Columbus I often attended some of the many noise concerts in town. SKVLT is from Massachusets and was brought to my attention by Ryan J. from Columbus through his blog Friends and Wieners. He posted this song after a concert SKVLT did in Columbus.


Image from Kroncong: Early Indonesian Pop Music, 10" x 8", oil on canvas board, 2012.
The last post ever published by the beloved Holy Warbles site was an item on the cd Kroncong: Early Indonesian Pop Music, Vol. 1. After Holy Warbles went down their friends at Ghost Capital picked up where they had left it, and the lady in the painting came along with. I assume they found her inside the booklet of the cd. I don’t know if it’s one of the singers on the cd or just any woman. Who knows, it may even be an image of Ismanto, the singer in my top 100 list.

Oliver Lake, 11.5" x 8.25", oil on wood, 2012.
After After Jeremiah’s Wed (#10), A Little Tom’s a Dangerous Thing is the second track from that curious record by Children of the Sun called Ofamfa. Children of the Sun was a BAG (Black Artists Group) project out of St. Louis, MO. Other notorieties (Joseph Bowie for example) are affiliated with BAG but Oliver Lake is the only well known musician on the Ofamfa record.

Michael Hurley, 4" x 4", oil on wood, 2012.
The customary Michael Hurley song this year is the closing track of the cd Ancestral Swamp. Hurley (b. 1941, Bucks County, PA) is a singer songwriter on the fringes of the music industry. His first record was First Songs recorded on the same reel to reel equipment that recorded Leadbelly’s last sessions by Moses Asch for Folkways Records. I saw and met Michael Hurley during a music festival in Nelsonville, Ohio.

A Pint of Blood

Jolie Holland
15" x 10"
oil on wood, 2011
All Those Girls is the first song on Jolie Holland’s new cd A Pint of Blood. Unlike some other top 100 muses (both Beth Orton’s an Cat Power’s new cd’s have been promised but not delivered) I didn’t have to wait many years before a new cd of hers came out. The painting of Jolie Holland in concert I did for–and at the dead of–last year’s top 100 but never put it up the blog. Because I still wanted to publish the image and I’m really fond of it, I decided I use it for All Those Girls at the dead of this year’s. You can read more about my interactions with Ms. Holland by clicking on her name in the right sidebar☛

Friday, March 16, 2012

Daira

Sangio (Comora Islands)
22" x 30"
watercolor on paper, 2012
Save for a few, all the paintings for the Top 100 2011 are finished. Posting about them, in this location, is mostly down to second tracks of albums that I've already written about. After the Love Song with Gabus, Daira is a second track from the collection of field recordings that make up the album Music of the Comoro Islands. Second track or not, it didn't keep me from spending a lot of time making an image for it. A little more information then about Music fom the Comono Islands:
Harriet and Martin Ottenheimer are a husband and wife anthropology team who visited the Comoro Islands in 1976. They recorded the music for the Folkways album Music of the Comoro Islands in the capitol Domoni on the island of Anjouan. The last track on the record is titled Daira which means circle. Heard are prayers inside a mosque performed by the Shadhiliya sect of Sunni Islam. They commemorate a deceased relative. Prayers by definition are not considered music in Domoni. The Comoro Islands are situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Madagascar and Mozambique. 

Thursday, March 15, 2012

The DJ

Christ Menist
4" x 4", oil on wood, 2012
A while back I was musing about instruments I had never painted before and with this miniature painting of Christ Menist I realized I had never painted "the turn table" before. Many a contemporary band has a DJ (or deejay, disc jockey, or turntablist) in their line up. The turntable as a musical instrument has its roots all the way back to the 1930s when composers such as Edgar Varese and John Cage experimented with the medium but was never considered as such until the advent of hip-hop in the 1970s. Hip-hop in turn owed a lot to Jamaican dub that started in the late 1950s. DJ Babu then coined the term turntablist in 1995 to describe the difference between a DJ, who spins discs, and someone who manipulates the turntable to create new sounds. Christ Menist together with Maft Sai are the "curators" of the East London Soundway label. They created a mix for the Quietus magazine that contains the track Mor Khaen Ha Ku by the Bangkok musician Prasai Jaegunkaew (with Piek and the Band). The musicians are completely obscure hence the choice for the DJs that played the song for an illustration of it. Christ Menist, an authority on the Thai music scene, was also the one who dug up the disc somewhere in Bangkok. The disc was a privately cut vinyl in an edition of not more than a few hundred copies. In an article (Paradise Found, Part 9: It's the Grooves that Count) about Thai records made in the mid 20th Century Menist explains the dynamics of the industry in Thailand.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Bela Bartok (2)

Cover for Folk Music of Rumania
(after a photo by Bela Bartok)
30" x 20", oil on canvas, 2012
Hungarian girls in traditional dress
(after a photo by Bela Bartok)
32" x 25", oil on canvas, 2012





















In the late eighties playing the countdown of 100 songs could take up to 24 hours. I had orchestral symphonies in the list that I would play whole. Bela Bartok was a Top 100 regular those days. There are no symphonies in the Top 100 2011. That is not to say I don't like classical music anymore, there is still, and always has been, classical music in my list. These days I divide up the lengthy works into their passages, movements, acts, or selected arias. I'm also drawn to classical works that don't rely on long orchestral movements (such as my infatuation with medieval music). Playing the 100 songs this year takes up a modest six hours.
I always liked the music of Bela Bartok but his presence in my top 100s have been limited to his function as a ethnomusicologist who extensively recorded in the field in Eastern Europe. And as a photographer! With four of his photographs used to model my paintings after, he is this year's most used visual source. The four photographs are equally divided between Romania and his native Hungary. It is quite possible that Bartok took the photograph of the six Romanian boys on Palm Sunday (which will be coming up soon).
The last two canvases of the Top 100 2011 on top a back yard landscape are paintings to illustrate second tracks from both Folk Music of Rumania and Hungarian Folk Music. The Romanian song is called Lament for a dead brother and resides at precisely the other end of the spectrum as the first one, which was a lively and fast Hora dance performed by village (gypsy) musicians (see Rumania, July 2011).  The lament from the Romanian LP was recorded by Bartok. The Hungarian song Elmegyek, elmegyek was not recorded by him but comes from the official academic Hungarian research title mentioned above. The Hungarian image comes from the booklet inside Bartok's Folk Music of Hungary LP.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

The Top 100 of 2002

 Top 100 2001: Anonymous 
street performer in Java
11" x 5", ink and pastel on
wood, 2002 (retouched, 2012)
They say taste evolves, that it is something you acquire over time. While this may be true I would say it also revolves. Looking at the list of my 100 favorite songs for the year I notice it has as much in common with the Top 100s of 2001 and 2002 as it does with last year's pick. I notice, looking at the nine to ten year old lists, a very diverse international selection (more so than last year) with many recordings made in the field by anonymous musicians. The Top 100 of 2002 features recordings made by musicologist Hugh Tracey, a recording of a Siberian shaman, music from the Ethiopiques series, several songs from the CD Street Music of Java, Bulgarian choir music, pygmy polyphonic singing, as well as many other more obvious similarities such as Bob Dylan, or Roland Kirk. In the meantime the out-of-print-cd Street Music of Java has been re-issued as Street Musicians of Yogyakarta. The cd features a joyful bunch of songs that were recorded on the streets of Yogyakarta by Jack Brody in 1978. It was released by John Storm Roberts' Original label in 1990 and now licensed and re-released by Mississippi records. The musicians, even in the new reissue, remain anonymous. 
The following text was written by MaeMaiPleng on the blog End(-)of(-)World Music and I could have written it myself (had I been a better writer):

"The highlight for me is the folksy dangdut track Kuda Lumping. With a lilting bounce in the drums, the loosely-strung twang of a cheap guitar and tambourines offer some rapid rhythmic propulsion. Meanwhile the shrill squawking vocals dance along the line of the songs ridiculously catchy and playful melody. Strangely I'm left with the thought that you could almost hear an Indonesian version of the Slits covering this song plugged-in!"

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Teeme Muusikat

Raimo Kangro
12" x 9"
oil on canvas board, 2012
Teeme Muusikat (Let's Make Music) is also the title of a page on the blog Toys and Techniques written by Ben. Teeme Muusikat is a series of Estonian folk music records, made largely made for and by children for the purpose of classroom instruction, containing both traditional and composed music. If I understand Ben's logic right the song Laul juurviljadest is from a Teeme Muusikat record by the Estonian composer Raimo Kangro. Wonderful music! Ben's comment (in parenthesis) "the yelping on one of the R. Kangro tracks sounds a bit like a parallel universe Lizzy Mercier Descloux". I love Lizzy and I have a large Baltic collection myself consisting mostly of Latvian records that I would love to expand. I would certainly pick up any of the Teeme Muusikat series if I'd come across it.

About the Raimo Kangro painting:
It's so late in the game trying to get all 100 paintings done so every painting surface is fair game these days. It only seemed appropriate to paint Kangro's portrait on top of a portrait of a 14-year old student that I painted for the purpose of instruction but never finished. It was my intention to paint Kangro in one transparent layer so the girl that was already on the surface would still be visible. It' didn't quite work out that way and it hurt me to obscure the girl, but it had to be done. There is only a very faint hint of the previous portrait on the board that probably only I can recognize. Yet the girl painting has not been in vain, it clearly maintained a function even if her face disappeared.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Top 100 2011

It all starts at 1:30 PM with a gallery talk. Then at 2:00 the countdown starts culminating at playing #1 at around 8:30 PM. This all takes on Monday March 26 at the Ohio State University's Swing Space Gallery in Columbus, Ohio.

Swing Space Gallery
1556 North High Street
Columbus, OH 43201
614.292.0234
Here's the list of songs that will be played in reverse order, starting with Malcolm Mooney at 2:00 and ending with Beth Orton's Sopping Trolley at 8:30.
  1. Beth Orton - Shopping Trolley                                                                                               
  2. Folk Dance in Hora Style (Romania)                                                                                      
  3. Francis Bebey - Akwaaba                                                            
  4. Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Three for the Festival                                                                   
  5. Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Pedal Up                                                                                           
  6. Erika Marozsán - Szomolá Vasárnap                                        
  7. Muchatera Mujuru - Nyamoropa Yevana Vava Muchonga    
  8. Beth Orton - Stolen Car                                                           
  9. The Alwood Sisters - Summer Wind                                                 
  10. Children of the Sun - After Jeremiah’s Wed                                                                         
  11. Shankar Jaikishan and Rais Khan - Raga Todi  
  12. Afghanistan: Rebab solo                       
  13. György Ligeti - Requiem II: Kyrie                                                                     
  14. Francis Bebey - La Condition Masculine  
  15. Inuit Troat Singing (Katajjaq)               
  16. N’Goundi girls‘ Song                                                                          
  17. Be Good Tanyas - Waiting Around to Die                         
  18. Hungary North: lament - Jaj, jaj énnekem bánatos anyának   
  19. Reet Hendrikson - Karjase pühapäev    
  20. Gato Barbieri - El Pampero                                                               
  21. Kipsigis Woman - Chemirocha                                
  22. India National Sitar Ensemble - Suite for Two Sitars and Indian Folk Ensemble
  23. Siberia: Chukchi Shamanic Ritual                                                                     
  24. Bolivia, Aymara - Quenita                  
  25. Time and Temperature - It Trails     
  26. Hungarian Folk Music: Elmegyek, elmegyek
  27. Ilunga Patrice & Misomba Victor - Mama Josefine 
  28. Watazumido–Shuso - Rinmon              
  29. Lata Mangeshkar - Aayega Aane Wale                                                                   
  30. Cold Storage Band - Skokiaan                                 
  31. Thelonious Monk – Blue Monk
  32. Sado Okesa (love song from Okayama)
  33. Ayşe - Zazaca Bir Parca  
  34. Maŕia Paillalef - Farewell Song       
  35. David Munrow/Early Music Consort of London - Jolivé té et bone amor (Jehan d’Esquiri)
  36. Phương Dung - Hàn Măc Từ                               
  37. John Lee Hooker - One of These Days
  38. Tétos Dimitriades - Misirlou                                                                                                   
  39. Franzsepp Inauen - Appenzeller Yodel                                                                       
  40. Comoro Islands: Love Song with Gabus                             
  41. Greenham women keening at Parliament Square   
  42. Maritsuki-Uta (ball-bouncing song, sung by Kitaki girls)                    
  43. Shadhiliya sect of Sunni Islam - Daira
  44. Rueben Allen - The Homestead Strike                                                                                
  45. Nihavent Longo (Turkey, Çumbus player)   
  46. Cat Power - King Rides By
  47. Babinga Pygmies - Yeli         
  48. Romania (Anon.) - Lament for a dead brother                                                
  49. Prasai Jaegunkwaen with Piek & the Band - Mor Khean Ha Ku
  50. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black   
  51. Bob Stewart - Moorish Dance      
  52. Guitar Vader - I Love Love Love You                                                                                     
  53. Rahsaan Roland Kirk – You’ll Never Get to Heaven   
  54. Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Many Blessings   
  55. Livinia Jere – Mangondo Azipita
  56. Iso-Polymorphic singing: women’s duet, Albania   
  57. Princess Constance Magogo Ka Dinuzulu - Wayenga Yintab’Eshayo
  58. Chief Gideon Magak - Praise Song                                                                             
  59. Lebanon (title and artist in Arabic script)                                                         
  60. Mulatu Astatqé - Mètché Dershé                                                                            
  61. Robert “Nighthawk” Johnson w/Johnson Sisters - You Got to Give an Account           
  62. S.E. Rogie - Please Go Easy With Me     
  63. Jesus Rodriguez - El Gavilan Cjaropo   
  64. Maria Callas - Casta Diva (Bellini)        
  65. Street musicians from Santa Clara la Lagua performing in La Antigua
  66. Robert Johnson - Hellhound on My Trail  
  67. Guitar Slim Green - Shake ‘em up                     
  68. Stefka Sabatinova - Pritouritze Planinata
  69. Yoselle Rosenblatt - Akavyo Ben Mahallalel   
  70. György Ligeti - Atmospheres
  71. Jim Carroll Band - People Who Died 
  72. Townes van Zandt - Waitin’ Around to Die
  73. Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head
  74. King Stitt - Diana
  75. Rita Abatzi - Apopse ta Mesanyhta
  76. Anonymous street performer from Yogyakarta - Kuda Lumping
  77. Ismanto - Sedjak Kita Berpisah   
  78. Issa Coulibaly - Kono Kambora                                                     
  79. Los Indios - A Gerardito                                      
  80. Anna Thorhallsdottir - Sortnar thū Sky
  81. Joe Hezoucky - Kdo Valchik Mival Rat   
  82. Asakawa Maki - Strange Fruit       
  83. Children of the Sun - A Little Tom’s a Dangerous Thing                    
  84. Shabba Ranks - Woman Tangle
  85. Wu-Tang Clan feat. Junior Reid - Jah World
  86. Paul Ngozi - The Ghetto
  87. Bob Dylan - Jokerman
  88. Jolie Holland - All Those Girls
  89. Solomon Manori and Chemaker Band - Chepkorir
  90. Skvlt - Blacksmith
  91. The Notorious B.I.G. - One More Chance
  92. John Holt - Ali Baba
  93. Raimo Kangro - Laul Juurviljadest
  94. Puerto Rican New York Store Front Church
  95. Duke of Iron - Man Smart, Woman Smarter
  96. Michael Hurley - When I Get Back Home
  97. Lotte Lenya - Seerauber Jenny
  98. Ron Grainer - Dr. Who Theme
  99. Macedonia: Love Song
  100. Malcolm Mooney and the Tenth Planet - Mogadishu
John Holt
4" x 4"
oil on wood, 2012

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Phương Dung

Phương Dung
24" x 20" 
oil on canvas, 2012
If I were to include index tags to my posts, the name "Bodega Pop" would have topped the list in recent months. The latest singer to go straight from the Bodega Pop site to mine is the Vietnamese star of the 60s and 70s Phương Dung. Gary Sullivan, who writes Bodega Pop, had this to say about the singer: "Phương Dung's career began in 1959 when she was just 12; the next year she recorded her first album. By the time she was 21 she had recorded more than 300 records and was, until the mid-70s, one of the most popular singers in Vietnam". I've never met met Gary Sullivan but something tells me that we would get along great.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Top 8 Music blogs

Bob Stewart
8" x 6"
oil on wood, 2012
Top 8 Music Blogs 2011

I’d like to forward some thanks and credits to my virtual friends whose musical tastes and finds I’ve been following through their daily, weekly or bi-weekly updates. Thanks to my co-bloggers I’ve found more new music to listen to in a year’s time than ever before. There are exactly ten blogs that I follow, whose new posts I automatically receive links to the moment they are published. Two deal with art, eight with music. Eagerly I await their every new post they publish. Of course I know there are so many more to explore, the (blog) universe is ever expanding in an ever increasing rate. I would get lost in that universe if I were to search all over the place. So I stick with the eight music blogs. Some of these form a kind of core group of music exploration. They all have a similar attitude to what’s cool, they refer to each other, and on occasion they overlap one another.
I saw a spoof on blogger awards by comedian Tracy Ullman that gave me the idea to to make this blogger’s top eight.
  1. Toys and Techniques—A very recognizable aesthetic that totally epitomizes the shifts in my musical choices  compared to last year’s Top 100. Reet Hendrikson and Bob Stewart, among others came directly from his blog into my Top 100 this year.
  2. Holy Warbles—Maybe an indication that the blog universe may not longer accelerate the way it did as Holy Marbles was taken off line by their host Blogspot.com. I wrote about it a few weeks back. Their very last post about Kroncong music is only one of many in my list Holy Warbles attended me to.
  3. Awesome tapes from Africa—Last year’s #1 blog also provided multiple musicians for my list this year. Most importantly Francis Bebey.
  4. Friends and Wieners—From my old city of Columbus, they tackle both local and (inter)national underground music. Many musicians they discuss I’ve seen live, some I’ve met.
  5. Bodega Pop—A collector after my own heart. I’ve come to re-appreciate East-Asian pop through it’s many new updates. Through them I found Phương Dung, Guitar Vader, and many many more.
  6. Ghost Capitol—Somewhat similar as Holy Warbles once was. Their picks are great, to me they’re going to be the ideal blog to take Warbles’ place.
  7. Does Your House Have Lions?—A blog dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, my #1 musician this year.
  8. Soft Film—Last year’s #2 blog about Chinese singers and actresses went into retirement. I’ll miss it.

And since I have his portrait up top, a little bit more about the Scot Bob Stewart. This is what Toy’s and Techniques had to say about a record named The Art of the Psaltry from which Top 100 2011 #51, Moorish Dance is taken.

"Fascinating. The modern and medieval joust across the centuries as one of the most ancient musical instruments known is paired with a synthesizer. Bob Stewart is a self-taught musician, composer and writer of over forty books on the olde magick. On this album he plays the psaltery, a 73-stringed instrument played on a table, an instrument so old even King David is supposed to have played one".

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The Divos* of the Top 100

The Notorious B.I.G.
4" x 4", oil on wood, 2012
Bob Dylan
4" x 4", oil on wood, 2012














After all this talk about the divas in the top 100 it is due time to pay some attention the male superstars in this year's top 100. Not as plentiful as their female counterparts but not to be ignored either. How much bigger do they get than Bob Dylan and The Notorious B.I.G.? The paintings are actually little, miniatures really. A friend gave me a stack of 4x4 art boards that were left behind at his work. "Do you paint that small?", he asked, and I said I would paint on anything, especially in these last days before the opening of the top 100 2011, when I have to average more than one a day, "Yes, I paint that small". I never had done them that small though, calling the paintings little wasn't an understatement, they are L.I.T.T.L.E. Bob Dylan and The Notorious B.I.G. are the next two picks from my list of top tens from last year in order to finalize a list of 100 songs.
  • I got the Notorious B.I.G. CD Ready to Die for free at a yard sale. At first listening I liked a few tracks. My initial favorite was One More Chance hence the inclusion of it in the Top 100. But after repeated listening I realized that One More Chance is only the most accessible song on the disc and that I'd liked other parts better. I ended up really liking the CD and playing it multiple times. I don't find B.I.G. that offensive at all (as I had expected from his reputation according to some news media) but rather compassionate. And the disc acts like a modern sound play or radio drama with a score of contemporary issues tackled in it. Quite intriguing! My main exposure to hip-hop this year is from within bypassing cars on our street. The music is rather distorted with the bass turned up so loud that the whole house shakes up, and words become disfigured. It seems like the only words I can make out coming from those cars is either pussy, motherfucker, or bitch. Still it can't make me hate the style of music.
  • With Bob Dylan I had several 9 point songs options to pick from. I chose Jokerman from the LP Infidels because of the vivid memory when I heard it last year. The same friend who gave me the 4x4s played the song in his car during a small road trip. Dylan needs no further Top 100 list introduction as he has been in that list for the last 25 years or so.
*Divo is the masculine version of the Italian word diva. Not generally used the same way as diva but still was the great Enrico Caruso  awarded the title in his day. If Beyoncé proclaims that a diva is a female hustler, I can award the divo title at least to Notorious.