Monday, January 20, 2014

Roland Kirk (Shaman?)


Rahsaan Roland Kirk
14" x 11", oil on wood, 2014

A wisdom encircled Rahsaan that had folks believing he had something greater to say, something supreme to impart each time he spoke. Part southern preacher, part stand-up comic, part ancient-prophet—Rahsaan’s voice boomed with authority with his words always aimed at delivering the most hard-hitting truths.
       
May Cobb, Songs of Our Life: Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear,” The Rumpus, 2013.

For the last two or three years I have been following the blog The Man Who Cried Fire, dedicated to the life and music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and written and collected by Mary K. Cobb.  Kirk has been a mainstay in the Top 100s since 1999, and the more you hear and see of him, the more his place as one of the great artists’ of twentieth century music is cemented in the annals of the history of the world. I have considered Kirk a shaman, one who could traverse the mythical realms of the spirit world. As an artist and art historian I have been convinced that the true function of art is that what it was in the beginning: the intermediary of the gods. “One who is a specialist in ancient techniques of ecstacy.”
“The shaman normally is a functionary for a nonliterate community, serving as its healer, intermediary with the gods, guide of the souls of the dead to their rest, and custodian of traditional tribal lore. The typical shaman comes to this role through either heredity or having manifested idiosyncratic traits (epilepsy, sexual ambiguity, poetic sensitivity, dramatic dreams). Psychologically, shamans depend on an ability to function in two worlds, the ordinary reality of daily life and the extraordinary reality they encounter through their ecstatic journeys. As well, they serve their tribe as a defense of meaning, by incarnating a contact with the powers thought to hold the tribe's destiny.” (Carmody & Carmody 1989:33)

Andreas Lommel, in his work on shamanism (Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art), draws a distinction between a medicine person and a shaman, noting that the future shaman acts under an inner compulsion “...a psychosis that is emerging for some reason or other is so strong that the only way out open to the individual attacked by it is to escape from it into shamanistic activity, that is to say essentially by means of artistic productivity, such as dancing or singing, which always involves a state of trance.” (1967:9-10)

In Siberian Tungustic the word is "saman," meaning "one who is excited, moved, raised," and refers to individuals who, while in a trance state, visit the realm of mystical beings to communicate with them and in the process gain mystical power.
1941 saw the discovery of Paleolithic paintings in caves at Lascaux. At the time they were considered the oldest known paintings and, according to the French philosopher Georges Bataille, it represented the “birth of art.” Bataille was one of the first to see these paintings and he immediately saw in them something so profound that the whole of art history should be rewritten. 1941, of course, was during the second World War, and the dominating force of the avant-garde (what was left of it) then were the surrealists, with whom Bataille himself was briefly associated.

(Has the subject of this 17,000 year old painting been photographed in Siberia?)

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Burundi: Musiques Traditionelles

Inanga player
12" x 12"
oil on wood, 2014
The Whispering Song with "inanga" accompaniment recorded in Burundi in 1967 is one of those "classic" recordings that would make anyone's top 100 list of traditional African recordings, even any top 100 list of traditional world music recordings. It could even make anyone's list (as it did mine) of musical recordings in general. The record Burundi: Musique Traditionelles contains actually several of such classic recordings; I already mused about the Rundi Wake that's on that record that also contains a recording of drummers from Bukirasazi which was sampled by Burundi Steiphenson Black on his international 1971 hit Burundi Black. The recordings were made by Michael Vuylsteke in 1967, Wikipedia also credits Charles Duvelle as being responsible for the recording. The record now contains five tracks (from the 12) that will be included in the Top 100 2013 (That is still running for another month). The image for the painting is taken from the front cover of the record. As the size is precisely that of the record and, after it dries, it will be slipped in to the plastic protective cover to take the place of the original cover. (As it is customary with these paintings I would not throw the images of the paintings on line if they weren't at least as good as the photograph that was the source for it. You can buy the painting from me—if you would like to—but it will not come with the record that's married to it. That record is priceless!)

Friday, January 10, 2014

Rosa Balistreri – A Curuna

Rosa Balistreri
24" x 16"
oil on wood, 2014
Asira lu me beddu vinni 'i fora
supra un cavaddu d'ora ca vulava
sutta li me finestri e il barcuna
cu un fazzutettu 'nmanu e lacrimava
S'affeccianu lu re cu la regina
"A 'sta picciotta l'hamu e 'ncurunari".
"Su picciridda e non cangiu parola
a iddu vogghiu e non vogghiu curuna".

Such are the lyrics to the song A Curuna by Rosa Balistreri. Google translate didn't help much; there's a king, there's a queen, and there's weeping, but other than that...? I suspect that the lyrics aren't proper Italian. Balistreri is from Sicily and she doesn't appear to be one who would sing in proper Italian. The song, first on side B from the record Amore, tu lo sai, la vita e'amara sounds quite dramatic, like most of the songs do on the record. She wears the same dress on the painting as she did in last year's painting. I suspect the source material came from the same photographer. Here's the link to that picture. And here's the link to what I wrote when I bought the album at a local thrift store.
Arrivederci.