The rainforest people of central Africa

Efé group (after a photo by Hallet), 8.5" x 11",  ink, 2013

Ethnic groups of the rainforests in central Africa include the Baka, BaAka, Ba-Benjelle, Bambinga, Mbuti, Efé, Bedzan, Bibayak. Examples of music from all of these peoples have been included in one or more of my annual lists of 100 songs. The rainforest peoples once were known by their derogatory name pygmies. Their music, and especially the polyphonic singing style, has become known throughout the world as a remarkable synthesis of human and nature. Their traditions are rapidly becoming extinct and so is the practice of their music. I've gathered quite a collection of sound recordings that feature the music of these people of central Africa and was delighted to find, at a thrift store of all places, a record with some very early recordings. Featured on the LP The Belgium Congo Records are recordings made during the 1935-36 Africa expeditions to the Congo by Armand Denis and Leila Roosevelt. On it are very early, but not the earliest, recordings of Pygmy music. My favorite track on the album is a recording by a Pigmy orchestra of Kigali, (Rwanda) which is ironically filed under the heading of Royal Watusi Drums. (The Watusis–Tutsis as they are now called, are considered to be tallest race in Africa, Pymies being the shortest.) Not long after I found the LP, I came across a recording of the Efé made in the northern Belgian Congo by Armand Hutereau between 1909 and 1912, one of the earliest to exist. The two recordings mentioned, come in at #62 and #63 in the Top 100 of 2012.

Pygmy group (after a 1923 photograph)
11" x 8.5", watercolor on paper, 2013

Kimya Dawson

Kimya Dawson
11" x 8.5"
watercolor, 2013

Here's the fifth and last Kimya Dawson of the Top 100 2012. But don't worry she'll be back in 2013. My good friend Jake Hand, who introduced me to her music just bought her newest CD Thunder Thighs of 2011. What I like about Kimya Dawson, besides the fact that she's a great songwriter, is the realism of her songs. She writes about her coming of age as a teenager and then into adult life and motherhood, all in a straightforward down to earth fashion. Sometimes she serious, sometimes happy, sometimes depressed, and sometimes goofy. Like in this song Nothing Came Out, a Moldy Peaches song elsewhere in the 100, in which she effortlessly rhymes humanity with a huge manatee. The song illustrated here is Chemistry, the opening track of her third solo album My Cute Friend Sweet Princess of 2004, a song sad and sweet. I guess what I like in her music is the same quality I find in Daniel Johnston's, of whom I am a huge fan. Unlike Daniel Johnston though, she's less obsessive, more what we could call normal, maybe a bit geeky. And unlike Daniel Johnston too, she's a woman, which makes a huge difference if it comes to writing about the experiences of coming of age.

Phil Yost

Phil Yost
11" x 8.5"
watercolor, 2013

Phil Yost is (was) a rather obscure musician. He released two records, one in 1967 and one in 1970. He's from the bay area, and plays flutes and bass. And that about all we (Ghostcapital and me) know about him. The first record Bent City was released on John Fahey's Takoma label. Pretty much every record released on that label fetches a ton of money on online auctions, especially the earlier ones. The first record ever to appear on that label was John Fahey's Blind Joe Death in 1959. It recently sold for several thousand dollars on eBay.

Epic poetry

Musician from the cover for  
Afghanistan et Iran
11" x 8.5", various drawing
materials on paper, 2013

Ten years ago I came across a recording of the epic poetry singer Avdo Međedović from Montenegro. The recording, made by Milman Parry in the 1930s, was less then a minute. But some of his songs, according to Homeric scholar Parry, were similar in length to that of the Iliad (15,690 lines), and were performed over three days. Homeric scholar Milman Parry (1902-1935) was an authority when it comes to knowledge in the field of epic poetry. He believed that the epic poetry attributed to Homer (Greek, 9 b.c.?) was based on oral traditions. Oral traditions exist where there is no written language, and Parry could not find any evidence that there was such a thing in 9 BC Greece. Through the analysis of an oral epic tradition that in the 1930s still existed in parts of the Balkan and Asia Minor, Parry showed that it was highly unlikely that a work such as the Iliad was conceived by one single person. Parry and his assistant Albert Lord (who continued Parry’s work after his untimely death) recorded thousands of discs of recordings of epic singers, made thousands more transcripts from epic poetry, and compared and analyzed the data. The implications of the research by the two scholars reached far beyond their proposed answer to the “Homeric Question”: It became the standard in the fields of folklore, anthropology, and comparative literature. In the process they questioned the concept of originality long before it became a key of Post-Modernists’ discourse. The singing of epic poetry used to be a tradition throughout Europe and Central Asia, and persisted as long as illiteracy did. Traditional epic songs are property of men, only very few women are known to have performed. I have been intrigued by the tradition of oral poetry since I came across the Parry and Lord recordings, and it became a metaphor for what it was that I liked about traditional music in general. I went as far as to apply Parry and Lord's Homeric theory to that of the blues. Needless to say that if I come across recordings from within that tradition I seek a copy. I found a CD of music from Afghanistan and Iran recorded in 1956 by J.C. and S. Lubtchansky for an expedition organized by the University of Indiana, that had a example. In it we hear a Kurd singer perform a epic poem. Unlike that of the Yugoslavian singers recorded by Parry and Lord, and Turkish recordings I have of the genre, it's without accompaniment.

Maurizio Carta

Cover of In Dialetto Sarda
11" x 8.5", 2013
watercolor, pencil, on paper

Once again I have to reference Jon Ward's writings for Excavated Shellac in order to say anything sensible about the recording La Disisperata di Tempiese made by Maurizio Carta in Sardinia in 1928. As is customary for the Excavated Shellac blog, Mr. Ward researched the circumstances of the music he writes about in depth, and together with the commentaries of those versed in the topic, a total picture is reconstructed. Despite the fact that a choir, still active today, was named after the singer Maurizio Carta, he was not a very important figure in the history of Sardinian music. Only a few recordings were made, and none appear on the various historical compilations of Sardinian music that are out there. Apparently the song La Disisperata is a "white" watered down version of the true traditional guitar and male voice Sardinian music. That said, I consider the song is a standout among a great many Italian (and Sardinian) recordings I have amassed from that time period. For a moment, when the song starts, you get the feeling the famous aria (and one of my favorite) Casta Diva is going to start playing.

Top 100 2012, #26-50

Here's the second part of the Top 100 2012. Click on an artist name to view the original post.
Part 1: Top 100 2012, #1-25
 
26. Funerary sung-weeping by Gania and Famu                  
27. Chant Funèbre de Femmes Salomon: Koleo  
28. Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Pedal Up
29. Abner Jay – My Middle Name is the Blues                      
30. Katajjak (2) (Inuit throat singing) 
31. Quichuan Mother’s Lament to Her 2 Year Old Daughter
32. Rosa Balistreri – Buttana di to mà         
33. Naza Muhović – Kaharli Sam, Večerala Nisam           
34. Hirut Bekele – Track 5             
35. Faiza Ahmed – Sat el Habayeb                   
36. The Moldy Peaches – Anyone Else But You               
37. Transylvanian Gypsy band – Elmegyek, Elmegyek               
38. Ana & Asuncion Caratello – Canta para Pilar Maiz                  
39. Beth Orton – Candles                                  
40. Ilona Nagykovácsi – Gyűlöllek                          
41. Lennie Hibbert – More Creation                 
42. Roro girl from Yule Island – Arobe                     
43. Stanko Ristić – Poziv                                   
44. Kimya Dawson – Everything’s Alright                      
45. Anastasia Nikulushkina a/o – I matushka moia                  
46. Richard Tauber – Dein ist mein ganzes Herz                     
47. Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Three for the Festival                  
48. Bikini Kill – New Radio                                   
49. Cat Power – Metal Heart                              
50. Roro Natives of Yule Island – Kittoro

Serbian shepherd's tune

Serbian svirala player
14" x 11"
oil on canvas, 2013

There are many Eastern European recordings in the list this year and four of them are from the former republics of Yugoslavia. I downloaded the Columbia World Library volume dedicated to Yugoslavia and at a thrift store I purchased the LP Serbian Folk Music. Poziv (Invitation), a shepherds flute tune played (on the svirala) by Stanco Ristić from the village of Crcavac near Leskovac, comes from the Serbian Folk Music LP. The Top 100 paintings are this year divided up into a set of 50 oil paintings for #1-50, and a set of 50 watercolors on paper for #51-100. The svirala player here is final oil painting. And while the Top 100 2013 has started more than a month ago already, I still have a bunch of watercolors left to paint for the 2012 series.

Jeannette

Tropy Zaneti
11" x 8.5", 2013
watercolor on paper

One of many tracks in the list that I pulled from the blog Excavated Shellac is this wonderful song Mpanjakan'ny Ny Lisy performed by Jeannette, Hélène, and Rasamy Guitare that was recorded in 1931 in Madagascar. The style of the song is that of French entertainment songs popular at the time but it also has a succinct African sound to it, and I believe it owes as much to South African vocal groups as to French popular song. The extremely well informed writer of Excavated Shellac, Jon Ward, is uncertain concerning the identity of the group but suspects the same people were responsible for the recording as the Troupe Jeannette, or N Tropy Jeannette, that was popular at the time in Madagascar. I had not expected to find an image of the group as the only hit for a keyword search was the Excavated Shellac site. But during my search I came across a video posted on YouTube with a song by Tropy Zaneti (translated in the tags as Troupe Jeannette). The style of singing is remarkably close to that on the 1931 recording, and I suspect that there is a connection. Either a contemporary group adopted the name, or the singing group simply continued to exist 80 years later (be it of course with different members).

Cannibals

Papua cannibal
11" x 8.5"
ink, pencil on paper, 2013

The song by Kunimaipa natives of Papua New Guinea that is listed in my Top 100 of 2012 may not be the most exciting track musically but the context makes up for it, big time. It's a cannibal song, recorded during a time when this was still common practice in certain parts of the world. And, according to the liner notes of The Columbia World Library record dedicated to Australia and Papua New Guinea, the practice of cannibalism was practiced directly after the men were done singing: "Afterwards the bodies of the dead men are cut into pieces, cooked on hot stones, and eaten." The idea of these warriors, headhunters, are about as extreme in the Western concept of otherness as you can get. Just the thought alone will strike fear in your heart. It's the moment when the romanticism of far away exotic cultures turns into nightmare. The image of the white man being cooked in the pot is the image authors in the early- and mid-twentieth century used as the ultimate depiction of the barbarian world that's out there just beyond the reaches of our civilized towns. The missionaries and musicologists that went out there, to Papua, to make recordings of such tribes must have had a very strong heart. Officially the practice of cannibalism is curtailed in Papua (as well as in other parts of the world) but some areas of the island are so inaccessible and remote that you can't be totally sure. I found an article in the Guardian with a recent account of cannibal practice: "“We ate their brains raw and took body parts such as livers, hearts, penis and others back to the hausman (traditional men’s houses) for our chief trainers to create other powers for the members to use,” one of the tribesmen has said." (July 14, 2012, The Guardian)

The image above is based on a photo the Guardian used to illustrate the story.

Elmegyek, elmegyek

Gypsy Girl with Violin
(after Gyula Asztalos)
14" x 11", oil on canvas, 2013

The small catholic village in the southeast of the Netherlands wasn’t precisely a cultural hub when I grew up there during the 1960s and 70s. The town hadn’t changed much in the previous decades of the 20th century, or the century before. Most everybody who lived in town worked in that town as well, and they didn’t travel much either. Most historical stories that went around had to do with the second world war and the only towns people I knew of who had traveled were the few men who had fought in Indonesia during that war. My dad was a carpenter but our nickname was “smith” because of the occupation of my great grandfather, grandfather, and two uncles. The town baker came by every other day to sell bread, and the milkman to sell milk. Eggs we got from the other grandfather who had a chicken coop. But there were no musicians, no artists, no galleries, and dancing happened only on special occasions such as weddings. I went to a small kindergarten school in town and there I displayed a knack for drawing. Everybody was excited about it but as soon as grade school came around (a small boy’s school led by Franciscans), drawing wasn’t part of the curriculum any more. Art, or anything cultural, was not deemed appropriate for young boys to engage in. My family’s living room graced one painting on the wall. It was a depiction of a raggedy looking gypsy boy holding a guitar with a tear in his eye. That the boy was a gypsy you couldn’t tell but I just knew. Some other families also had a similar painting on their wall. My cultural experience then, in my formative years, was formed around those gypsy paintings, and the notion that gypsies made music. They were the proverbial “other”, they were exuberant, they liked glitter and gold, played music and they danced wildly to it. We learned to live by the opposite, that sobriety and restraint were virtues, while self-indulgence and exuberance were vices. In the late 70s things were starting to change rapidly in town, but I believe that I still was one of the first local boys who pursued a college degree and moved to the big city. There I learned that that those gypsy paintings, synonymous with art in general for me, weren’t art at all, but rather kitsch. More importantly I learned that the gypsies were people just like you and me. The above painting is copied from an image of a painting similar in character as I could have encountered in my home town in the 60s. The song it illustrates is Elmegyek, elmegyek, sung and performed by a group of Hungarian Rom people from Transylvania.

Three for the Festival

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
16" x 12"
oil on canvas board, 2013

Another song (see previous post) that was also featured in the 100 Greatest Recordings Ever. Three for the Festival, together with Pedal Up, is one of a pair of Kirk recordings in The Greatest list as well as in the last three consecutive Top 100 lists. Three for the Festival is an early work of Kirk's from the album We Free Kings, he had not adopted the name Rahsaan yet but had changed his name Ronald to Roland. The tune continued to be on his repertoire as a showpiece for his trademark of playing three saxophones (as well as other instruments) at the same time. A score of live recordings can be seen on YouTube, one even more spectacular than the other. It's a classic great melody and composition, paired with Kirk's virtuoso.

Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse
11" x 8.5", 2013,
watercolor on paper

This past year was for me the 30th anniversary of the Top 100. For the occasion I compiled a list of the 100 most important recordings throughout those thirty years of record keeping. I made watercolors to illustrate this list of 100, and I also played the whole list. I had expected a larger percentage of recordings from that list to be included in the Top 100 2012 but only few made it in. One of these is the work Ionisation by the French composer Edgard Varèse, which came in at #6 in my very first top 100 of 1983. I hadn't listened to the composition for over 25 years but it jumped out at me when I played it again. The following link is to the list of the 100 greatest recordings over the 30 years, and this is the entry about Varese. I made the 100 watercolors between May and September of 2012, and there is a post for each of them in ascending order in those months.

Ionisation is a piece for 13 percussionists written by Varèse between 1929 and 1932. It was first performed in France in 1933. The version I have was recorded in 1960 by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra directed by Robert Craft. Edgard Varèse was born in Paris in 1883 and died in New York in 1965.

Cossacks from the Caucasus

Nekrasov Cossacks women's group
(from Old Believers cd jacket)
16" x 12"
oil on canvas panel, 2013

Anastasia Nikulushkina, Elena Gulina, and Varvara Gorina – I matushka moia

In the late nineties one of the first library holdings I browsed in order to find my “keening song of the banshee” was the Ohio State University Music Library. I found several theses dedicated to weep-singing and one even to keening in Ireland specifically. They did not come with sound recordings however. At the time I worked at the Ohio State University but I wasn’t brave or ambitious enough to contact the writers of such pieces, neither did I contact their underwriter directly. She was Margarita Mazo, professor in ethnomusicology, head of the Music Cognition program at the university and an authority on the subject of weep singing. At that library I did read up on various analyses of lamenting techniques and social circumstances of such practices and it was there where I found the CD Old Believers, which was the start of my collection, the very first sound example of funeral lamentation I had found. The recordings were made by Professor Mazo in her native Russia in 1989. Years later I did get it in touch with Margarita Mazo, when I was curating an exhibition of 12” vinyl record sleeves. I had invited several record collectors to display a selection of their collection. Mazo one of them, chose to display about 20 Russian folk albums for the occasion. The song I matushka moia translates as “Oh. Mother of Mine”. Professor Mazo was not able to record at an actual wake but encouraged singers to perform laments in the memory of deceased relatives, the emotion came through nevertheless: “Though their lament began somewhat reserved, as the women gradually became absorbed and involved emotionally, memories seized them entirely, and they cried” writes Mazo in the liner notes.

Unlike the custom in most other Catholic communities, the Cossacks of the Caucasus do not employ professional wailers to sing at wakes, or funerals. Laments are always sung by close relatives of the deceased.

Richard Tauber

Richard Tauber
16" x 12",
oil on canvas board, 2013

Dein ist mein ganzes Herz is the opening track of an LP, a sort of greatest hits album with the same title as the opening song, by the Austrian born lyrical tenor Richard Tauber (1891-1948). Of course I was familiar with the name Richard Tauber, but I had never bothered to listen to him before. Operettas in fact had always been a genre I avoided. But as it goes with so much music you think you don't like (without ever even considering it with an open ear), it comes back at you and blow you away. It seems to happen mostly with music that I have the strongest aversions to. I don't know what got into me, why I decided to buy this Tauber record at a second hand store but yet I did it anyways. It could have been this rather sympathetic face looking at me from the photo on the sleeve, or because of my occasional infatuation with German language art songs (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was once in the my Top 100), or it could have been that there was nothing else of interest for me in the store to buy, I don't know. I was still so disinterested in the record that I don't think I even played it for several weeks after I bought it. And then when I finally did: Wow! I knew Tauber was a well known singer but I had no idea that he is acclaimed as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. Not only that, he was also the author of many of his best known songs. Dein ist mein ganzes Herz was written by Franz Lehár though, the famous opera and operetta composer who wrote many lieder just for Tauber. The song comes from the operetta Das Land des Lächelns. Lehár is also the conductor of Das Orchester der Staatsoper Berlin heard behind Tauber in this historic recording from 1929.

Bodega Pop 101

Mariko Gotō (Midori)
8.5" x 11", 2013
watercolor, pencil

We blijven nog even bij de bodegas bezocht door Gary Sullivan. De specialiteit van zijn collectie zit 'em in de orientale popmuziek en al helemaal als die dan door mooie meiden met zwoele stemmen bedreven word. Ik had zelf al het een en ander verzameld in die categorie maar ik kwam niet verder dan Shonen Knife, Melt Banana, Hang on the Box, en nog wat anderen die iedereen nu zo'n beetje wel kent. Dank zij Bodega Pop heb ik de afgelopen twee jaar een heuse cursus orientale pop genomen en kan nu op mijn curriculum vitae bijschrijven dat ik de nodige kennis heb op dat gebied. Soms is dat gebied zeker wel een beetje Hello Kittie, een beetje anime of manga, maar soms is het ook geweldige muziek. Midori, een band uit Japan wiens gezicht is de zangeres en gitarist Mariko Gotō, valt zeker in die laatste categorie met muziek die meer met jazz van doen heeft dan met bubbelthee. Hoewel het genre wat ondervertegenwoordigd is dit jaar (het vorig jaar—het eerste jaar in de bodega cursus—had ik er wat meer) is het nummer ㇼㇲㇺ toch wel een hoogtepunt te noemen. Ik zal je hier naar het artikel in Bodega Pop leiden zodat je het met je eigen oren ook kunt beluisteren. Best wel de moeite waard hè!

Los Grandes Exitos

Maxima Mejia
11" x 8.5", 2013,
ink, pencil, watercolor

The year 2012 saw a great increase in that part of my record collection labelled Latin, South America, and the Caribbean. I bought records of so many wonderful singers of songs in the Spanish language that I had never heard of before. All very cheap; I seemed to have moved the land where you can find all these Latin records for a buck or less at the thrift stores. Many of such records have a title that goes like: Los Grandes Exitos de... but the one of the greatest "greatest hits" records I came across last year was not from my own collection but from that of Gary Sullivan, proprietor of the wonderful Bodega Pop: Los Grandes Exitos de Maxima Mejia. One of these "grandes exitos" is Imploratión de Amor, a very passionately sung love-ballad. Maxima Mejia is from Ecuador, and that's about all Gary and me know about her.

The Moldy Peaches (3)

The Moldy Peaches:
Adam Green and Kimya Dawson
11" x 14"
oil on canvas, 2013

One year ago, almost to the date I was browsing through a box of CDs at a friend's house. Out of curiosity I pulled out the CD The Moldy Peaches (Rough Trade, 2001). I borrowed the CD and several tracks ended up in the Top 100 2012. The Moldy Peaches were a band formed in 1999 around friends Adam Green and Kimya Dawson. They formed in New York, moved to Washington (state) and back again. A host of musicians, friends were part of the band, but they quit in 2004. They had made a name for themselves in the anti-folk scene that was happening in New York but their breakthrough came from the inclusion of the song Nobody Else But You in the soundtrack for the film Juno. This was in 2007, and the song hit the charts in 2008, seven years after it was recorded and four after they broke up (but still four years before I first heard of it).

A Roro Song

Roro Girl
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2013

The second Roro song in the Top 100 provided me once again with the opportunity to paint portraits of people who weren't affected yet by Western civilization. I gotta say that these are my favorite subjects to paint. Had I lived a Century earlier I probably would have been a painter of just such portraits, and it would have been respectful then too. But now I can only indulge when the concept of the larger series prompt me do do so. The girl depicted here may well be the singer of the Aroba song she illustrates as the image appears right with the description of the song in the liner notes from The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Volume V: Australia and New Guinea. Both the photo (taken by Dupeyrat) and the singer of the Aroba remain anonymous. I singled out the Roro recordings made in 1952 from that album, and from the volume of the Columbia World Library on Indonesia as well, because they're just too wonderful. The beautiful singing voices, melodic instrumentation, yet brutally uncivilized aura, make these recordings the most fascinating of all that I've encountered in 2012.

Kid Baltan and Tom Disselvelt

Kid Baltan and Tom Disselvelt
11" x 8.5", ink, watercolor, pencil, 2013

My record collection houses records from all over the world and I have a fair share from that little Netherlands country I was born and raised in. I buy records predominantly at thrift stores these days and usually I scoop up all the international vinyl I find there. But records from the Netherlands you don't find much in thrift stores and those that occasionally show up I mostly leave behind. Heintje is the one that most frequently appears at a thrift store, and sometimes you'll find a draaiorgel (mechanic organ) record, or one by the few international pop stars such as Herman Brood or the Golden Earring. I'm not interested in any of those, but if I would find more sophisticated ones, like free jazz records, or modern classical, or experimental, I certainly would be a happy taker. The last Dutch musician I bought music of was Willem Breuker, when I saw a CD of his at a thrift store some years ago. I was excited about it but I didn't like the CD. I've never even seen a record by Dick Raaijmakers or by his alias Kid Baltan (I was familiar with the music of Dick Raaijmakers but never heard of Kid Baltan—Tom Disselvelt I had never heard of either—until I chanced upon their music on YouTube.) So naturally it's been a while since I had some music from my own country in the Top 100. Dick Raaijmakers as Kid Baltan produced a number of experimental electronic recordings together with Tom Disselvelt in the years between 1954 and 1960. Quite a few of these can be heard on YouTube and it is the first one I ever heard that features in the Top 100 2012: Vibration from the extended play single Electronic Movements (Phillips, 1962—originally released on the LP Electronic Music under the moniker Elektrosonics in 1957).