Waiting Room

Ian MacKaye (Fugazi)
12 x 6 inches, oil on board, 2017

Fugazi was really popular among the squatter crowd that made up my social circle in the early 1990s. The band never, however, made it into my top 100 in those years. I don't know if it's nostalgia but the band makes its first appearance in the top 100 in 2017 after Minor Threat, MacKaye's previous band, was only listed for the first time in the last top 100. The song in question is Waiting Room, perhaps the most iconic off all Fugazi's material. It originally featured on the their first release, the self titled EP sometimes called 7 Songs in 1988. There's a really cool live version of it on YouTube. There's some discussion among fans concerning the meaning of the band name. Why does nobody bring up the name of the legendary 60s anarchist band the Fugs? The lyrics to Waiting Room ring home once again: "I don't want the news, I cannot use it."

Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq
16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas, 2017

Tanya Tagaq (b. 1975, Nunavut) is a Inut Canadian throat singer who has released three albums since her first one, Sinaa, in 2005. Animism of 2014 is the most acclaimed of the four. It's a bit more theatrical than her second Auk/Blood (2009). On her latest album Retribution (2016) she expanded yet further into modern recording practices and the album seeks to entertain a larger audience. Animism was awarded the prestigious Polaris Music Prize and for the reception she performed the first two tracks, Uja and Umingmak as one. I tell you, it's a treat.

The origin of Music (6): Bibliography

Bibliography

Bataille, Georges. Inner Experience. Translated from the French by Leslie Anne Boldt, University of New York Press, 1988. Originally published as L'expèrience interieure, Gallimard, 1954.
Bergson, Henri. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated from the French by T.E. Hulme, The Library of Liberal Arts, 1949, 1956. Originally published in 1903.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated from the French by Williard R. Trask. Harcourt, Inc. Orlando, 1987.
"Ethnopoetics," Ubu Web, curated by Jerome Rothenberg. No longer available.
Graham, Dan. Rock My Religion. Video documentary, running time 55:27, 1983-1984, MoMA collection, NYC.
Lawrence, Mark. Kronos Quartet and Tanya Tagaq: A String Quartet in Her Throat. Video, running time 7:16, 2006.
The Origins of Music, Nils Lennart Wallin, Björn Merker, Steven Brown. MIT Press.
Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania. University of California Press. 1968. Revised edition, 1984.
Sheldrake, Rupert. The Sense of Being Stared at and Other Unexplained Powers of the Human Mind. Crown Publishers, New York, 2003.
Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, by Mariko Namba Walter and Eva Jane Neumann Fridner, editors, ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2004. Foreword by Lawrence E Sullivan.

Discography

Burundi: Musique Traditionelle. Ocora, 1967, recorded by Michel Vuylsteke.
Deep in the Heart of Tuva: Cowboy Music from the Wild East. Annotated by Ralph Leighton, Ellipsis Arts, 1996.
Namtchyluk, Sainkho. Lost Rivers. FMP, Germany, 1991.
The Photographs of Charles Duvelle. Disques Ocora and Selection PROPHET, 2017.
Qwii: The First People. Clear Music (South Africa), annotated by Robin Hogarth, 1999.
Tagaq, Tanya. Animism. Six Shooter Records, 2014.

The origin of music (5): Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq
9.5 x 6.5 inches,
ballpoint and color pencil in notebook, 2017

I've changed my mind. Change is good so they say. It's a strange thing that when you believe something, have an opinion, how hard it is to let go. Beliefs are a stubborn thing. Beliefs close doors, never knowing what's beyond. Your thinking is not always objective. I believed, until today, that I wasn't interested in "new-age" music, or rather fusion of traditional and modern music. I thought of it as faux spirituality. I  concede and tend to an opposing belief: Under the umbrella of new-age are a myriad of experiments that allow an opening to investigate music's origins. Music, as art, is now probably in closer harmony with its own essence that it has been for centuries. The revelation came (as it should have come years ago) watching a YouTube video of the collaboration between Tanya Tagaq and The Kronos Quartette. Tanya Tagaq's background is in Canada's Inuit throat singing tradition, a tradition much celebrated in these pages. She went through art school and established herself as an experimental avant-garde musician. The Kronos Quartet, for the reasons I reject new-age stated before, I never paid much attention to. This YouTube performance open my eyes to the possibilities of modern production techniques and electronics combined with traditional forms. The avant-garde—ethnopoetics—approaches a communion with the eternal spirit. Energy & intelligence (=imagnation.)

Origins of Music (4): Shamanism

 

 

The image on top is a photograph from an installation of my paintings at Tempus Projects earlier this year. In the exhibition over 300 paintings were shown organized into blocks of 10, top 10s. The detail here is the top 10 dedicated to shamanic music. Number 9, a Tuva shaman, is a fairly new painting and I still owe a better picture and more info on that one. The Top 10:



1. Chukchi Shaman
2. Shamanic costume
3. Veteran Minnasie Chief and Daughter-in-law
4. Maria Sabina
5. Bernard Tobal
6. Chukchi Shaman
7. Gran Chaco Indians
8. Kubu People
9. Tuvan Shaman
10. Siberian Shamanism

1. Top 100 2011, #23: Chuckchi Shamanic Ritual

I'm quite pleased with this tiny little painting of a Chukchi shaman playing his drum sitting by some palm trees at Billie's Creek that runs behind my house. It got a spot on my wall directly next to my last Siberian shaman painting that I did precisely ten years ago. Certain genetic theories have it that about 15,000 years ago a group of less than twenty Chukchi crossed what is now the Bering Street into America. They are the ancestors of the native Americans who spread as far south as South America. So this Chukchi shaman of Arctic Siberia may well have a similar genetic code as Billie Bowlegs, the Seminole after whom the creek was named and who might have very well been sitting once at the very spot as where I placed the shaman in the painting. On YouTube there exists a beautiful film of a shamanic Chukchi musical performance. If you decide to watch it please watch it until the end because the last thirty seconds features a very intriguing type of breathing-singing that made the recording propel into Top 100 land.

2. Top 100 2001, #49: D. Kosterdine – Morceau de Khe I Kheri (Musique Nganassane)

From the CD: “Voyage en URRS, Vol. 6: Caucase du Nord, Volga/Oural, Siberie, Extreme Orient/Extreme Nord”, Le Chant du Monde. Recorded in Siberia. Khe is a ceremonial (shaman) costume worn on important occasions, and upon which sixty to seventy rattles were sewn which made a noise with each gesture. On the  recording, the music of this dress is supported by the droning of the khieri, made of wood or bone, or even of the tusks of fossilized mammoths.

3. Top 100 2010, #14: Torres Strait Death Wail (Rec. by A.C. Haddon, 1898, Australia)

Recently the BBC made their complete sound archive library available for anyone to listen to.  It would take years to listen through everything so I figured I’d just start at the beginning, I have time. The beginning, of course, is the most exciting part anyway: a collection of wax cylinders from before 1900.  This one is from the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition led by Prof. A.C. Haddon of 1898, just 21 years after Edison managed to record sound.  Because it’s a wail, I assumed it was a woman (or women) singing but this assumption may be false.

4. Top 100 2017: Maria Sabina – Sacred Mushroom Chant

More ethnopoetics from Ubuweb: María Sabina is a Mexican Mazatec healer, a shaman, who became a notoriety because of a visit by American ethnomycologist Gordon Wasson who published his experiences in Life magazine in 1956. In the 1960s scores of Westerners flocked to the little village where Sabina was practicing a healing ritual that included the use of magic mushrooms. Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Keith Richards are believed among those seeking audition. Wasson recorded Sabina during one of those nightlong ceremonies in 1956 in the Oaxaca province. Recordings appeared on the Folkways label the following year. The 8:06 minute Mushroom Chant that appears on Ubuweb was made during these sessions.

5. Top 100 2007, #55: Bernardo Tobal - Warao male Wisiratu shaman’s cure

6. Top 100 2011, #23: Chuckchi Shamanic Ritual

Certain genetic theories have it that about 13,000 years ago a group of less than twenty Chukchi crossed what is now the Bering Street into America. They are the ancestors of the native Americans who spread as far south as South America. So this Chukchi shaman of Arctic Siberia may well have a similar genetic code as Billie Bowlegs, the Seminole after whom the creek behind my house was named and who might have very well been sitting once at the very spot as where I placed the shaman in the painting. On YouTube there exists a beautiful film of a shamanic Chukchi musical performance. The last thirty seconds of the shaman recording features a very intriguing type of breathing-singing that made the recording propel into Top 100 land.

7. Top 100 2002, #90: The Musical Experience of Shamans, Gran Choco Indians

From a cassette on Lyrichord Argentina: The Indians of the Gran Chaco) with wonderful titles such as The musical therapy of the Shamans, Control of atmospheric phenomena and such. In the musical expression of the Chorote shaman the world is conceptualized. By way of ecstasy shamans communicate with powers beyond.

8. Top 100 2017: Kubu shamanic healing ceremony (Kubu People, Palembang, Sumatra)

A track from the album (3CD set) Okkulte Stimmen Mediale Musik: Recordings of Unseen Intelligences, 1905-2007. The 1905 in the CD title refers to recordings the German anthropologist Bernard Hagen made in 1905 near Palembang in Sumatra. Two CD features three recordings by Hagen. Two of those are of healing ceremonies by Kubu shamans.

9. Top 100 2017: Oleg Kuular – Collection of Höömeï Styles (Tuvan Shaman)

From notes to the CD Deep In the Heart of Tuva: Cowboy Music From the Wild East

    German Explorer Otto Mănchen-Helfen observed the practices of Tuvan Shamanism in 1929. "The shaman is not a priest," he wrote, "He does not belong to a separate caste, and enjoys no separate priveleges. He is a herdsman, just like his relatives and neighbors. There are no 'professional' shamans: each shaman merely feels himself called upon to mediate between humans and spirits–and each is a very personal mediator."

10. Top 100 2000, #73: D. Kosterdine - Musique Nganassane: Morceau pour l’arc qui chante (corde pincee), Morceau pour l’arc qui chante (lancer de fleches)

Shamanism

The presumed origin of music, situated at the onset of the evolution of our species, is closely linked to that of language. Communication seemed to have played an important role in music's beginning. Be it as the communication of a mother to her child—singing to the child when she had to put the it aside because she needed to use her hands for daily chores—between members of a group, as mating calls, to accompany work, or as communion with the spirits, music was essential to the characteristics that make a human a human. The part I like to elaborate further on is that of communion with the spirits. As we've seen in art too, the impetus, the acknowledgement of death, birth, and rebirth–eternal life in essence–is the communion with that what is eternal, the spiritual realm. To commune with the spirit, to become the spirit, solves the mystery of temporal life. To become the spirit one has to overcome the ego, to emancipate ones eternality from ones temporality. Trance is vehicle to do so. Whether achieved through narcotics, dancing, chanting, or (en)acting the spirit, a trance will let you explore the realms not available to everyday chores and existence. The shaman traditionally had the function to deliver the group members to the sacred.

The shaman has a deposition towards the sacred. He (or she) was different from the others, an outsider in the community. Psychotic tendencies, sexual ambiguity, whatever differing traits were exposed as a child, the future shaman was predestined and celebrated for the role of priest, healer, and artist for the sake of the wellbeing of the community. The shaman could, or is expected to, transgress the norms and taboos of society.

Before the iron age the shaman's drum and clothing would not have metal rattles attached to them. Music is incorporated into the shamanic ritual. So are theatre and art. The shamanic ceremony is a gesamtkunstwerk. As time moves forward the field of academic research is closing in on the original condition. The term ethnopoetics, the field that is approaching the original condition, was coined in 1968. Crucial for this field of study is the communication with anthropology and ethnography. At the center of ethnopoetic investigation is the shaman and the relation to the sacred.

The shamanic ritual: speaking in tongues, at times rhythmic with the aid of the drum and rattles; breathing, increasingly deeper and faster. As the ceremony intensifies the shaman's pitch rises, the movements become increasingly erratic. The shaman transgresses the empirical world and becomes spirit, becomes eternal. His empirical state is (near) dead. There's no heartbeat, no pulse, no breathing. Audience participation: As by infection the audience is moved, they participate in music and dance. The shaman has aides, they make sure he has the tools available to make the journey into the spirit world, the catch him when he collapses, and they animate him back to life.

The Origins of Music (3): The History of Sound Recording

Fred Gaisberg and William Sinkler Darby
12 x 7 inches, oil on wood, 2017

Sound Recording

Sound recording began in 1860, when Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded Au Clair de Lune, a French folk song of the 18th century. At the time the recording could be seen but not heard. In 2008 researchers were able to produce an audible transfer of the recorded data and is now the oldest recording of the human voice. Another Frenchman, Charles Cros, is credited with the invention of recording with play back in 1877, the same year Thomas Edison recorded (and successfully played back) the 19th century American nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb. Arthur Sullivant's song The Lost Chord was recorded in 1888 and is considered the first musical recording. A recording from 1898 made by A.C. Haddon of the Torres Strait Islanders Aboriginals of Australia is the oldest ever to feature in the top 100. Emile Berliner started the Gramophone Company in Washington D.C. in 1894 and music recording quickly became big business. In the early 20th century adventurous music recording pioneers travelled all over the world and recorded the sounds of cultures that were rapidly disappearing.

Ethnomusicology is a term coined in the 1950s by Jaap Knust who recorded extensively in Indonesia. The term is usually applied to the study of the music of non-western cultures. The history of musicology starts in 1839 when Oskar Kolberg started collecting Polish folk songs. Ethnomusicological recordings, combining the fields of ethnology, anthropology, and musicology, differ from commercial recordings by delivering context. The history of the world was being mapped and recorded. One such pioneer (this is a good opportunity for a tribute) was Charles Duvelle, whom I recently wrote about. Duvelle is "one of the most important contributions to the human understanding of the rich biodiversity of our planet’s music and language." [Sublime Frequencies, who published a sort of retrospective on Duvelle's work earlier this year.] Duvelle died a few weeks ago at the age of 80.

Charles Duvelle
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

While Duvelle provided great context, he not always provided the performers' names, let alone biographical data. He often photographed them though (an invaluable asset in the context of the top 100 paintings.) The commercial world of ethnic recordings is much sloppier than that of ethnomusicology, but provided an abundance of sound recordings in the twentieth century. When names of musicians are given, they are often misspelled or misattributed. Recordings are often made in professional studios rather than in the field, and the distributers were not always upfront about the origin of the recordings. Data stored in long abandoned warehouses that once housed recording companies tend to disappear. Websites like Excavated Shellac are researching the origins of many such recordings from the earlier part of the last century.

It's Excavated Shellac who recently published the research into a 1904 disc recorded in Tbilisi, Georgia. The label on the disc from the Gramophone Company reads "Kabardinskiy Tanetz" (a dance from Abkhazia.) The identity and whereabouts of the performers is not known but host Jonathan Ward is able to retrace the history and context of the recording made by William Sinkler Darby, companion of Fred Gaisberg. Gaisberg and Darby met at Berliner's studio in Washington in 1898 to become partners at the English branch of the Gramophone Company. The company became EMI after the merger with Columbia in 1931, one of the biggest record companies in the world. The source for the above painting comes from the EMI archives and show the two Brits in furs characteristic of Central Asia. The recordings were made in February of 1902, it must have been cold in Tbilisi!

The Origin of Music (2)

Rundi women performing "Ubuhuha"
12 x 16 inches, oil on wood, 2013

 Music

We may assume that when Homo Sapiens evolved they built shelters, made art, and made music. The oldest known instruments, flutes made of femur bones of bears with holes drilled into it, were found in caves in Europe alongside the earliest known figurines. The problem with music history is that there was no sound recording available until the end of the nineteenth century. What we know of music before sound recording is musical notation, instruments that survived, literature on music, and images of musical performances and instruments in art. The earliest known example of musical notation stems from around 2,000 BCE, written in the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia. There are scenes of musical performance depicted in the art of Ancient Egypt that give us an idea of their music. A pottery chard found in Israel containing an image of musical performance related to a wedding ceremony dates from 5,000 BCE. Vedic literature contains theory of music alongside that of acting and dance. Before sound recording  came around, music was a temporal form of art and how it sounded can’t be recaptured and remains guesswork. Music can be reconstructed from non-temporal information but this is usually not without bias. The temporality of music compared to the materiality of art makes the study of music history less objective. Another difference between art and music is that folk (secular) music has a more prominent place in music history than folk art does in art history. It also appears that traditions in music are more persistent than traditions in art. Traditional music could be compared to oral poetry. Oral traditions remain virtually unchanged throughout centuries, perhaps even millennia. Towards the end of the nineteenth century when sound recording became widely available, ethnomusicology (the study of the music of various cultures) was an uncharted field. Over the next decades musicologists went around the world to record musical traditions of the various cultures they came across. The recordings of cultures that had lived in total or relative isolation are of special interest because their music provided a glimpse into the music of a distant past. The numbers of living cultures displaying characteristics typically associated with Paleolithic or Neolithic cultures were dwindling fast in the twentieth century, making the early recordings of immeasurable value.

There’s no definite answer to the question of how music started. Various hypotheses have been forwarded and debates have been going on for more than a century. Did music start from percussive or vocal traditions? If vocal, did it arrive from language or from animal imitation, or was it an autonomous evolution? If percussive, do the rhythms stem from work or from dance, or perhaps by chance? Is the origin of music ceremonial or secular? These are some questions asked that deal with the origins of music. The answer to these questions appear to be multifaceted, hinted at by recordings that seem to reflect ancient traditions. The enigma of the origin of vocal music for example, seems to lean towards an independent development, derived neither from imitation nor speech. An almost universal characteristic of ancient vocal traditions is that of the distortion of the speaking voice. Techniques include the cupping of hands (as in the 2013 painting above), the use of trumpet like instruments (such as shells) as soundboards, or the use of falsetto by male singers. The effect of voice distortion is an enactment of otherness. Sounds are created that are outside oneself, thereby allowing communion with a different plane of consciousness. The aim of which is the contact with the sacred. Shamanistic chant recitation is often performed in falsetto. The (male) shaman assumes an identity that resides in the spiritual realm. They act in accord with what seems a universal belief that the essence of nature and the ancestral spirit, is hermaphrodite or nonsexual. As in trance ceremonies, an essential and timeless function of music is the attainment of a reality different from the mundane. Some of the older musical recordings referred to here may sound outlandish or simply weird at first, but the weirder such recordings sound, the more it seems to touch a hidden compartment in our brains. There is where the sacred is found, closer to the primal source of humanity than we will find in daily routine. Music is an escape of daily routine. All human beings should start to accept that humanity is, well...weird. To accept that we’re all weird may unburden us from the restraints society puts on us. Let’s debunk the myths of beauty, beauty is an illusion, we’re all beautiful.

The Origin of Music (1)

Khoisan performer
12 x 6 inches, oil on board, 2017

Like so many other teenagers, music played a pivotal role in my coming of age years. It had a clear social function for me, it established me in a social group. In the 1970s the great lines of division were drawn along disco and rock music. Disco represented the traditional conservative right and rock the progressive left. I was on the left side. The left side claimed a more serious approach to music, whereas disco was just (commercial) entertainment, rock was interested in its own history. (The first major dent in this thought bubble came when, during a discussion in high school, a girl proclaimed that rock was just as commercial as disco.) I certainly was interested in its history and the first major experience for me towards my lifelong path in discovering the origins of music was when I stumbled upon the blues. Mesmerized I listened to original versions of Led Zeppelin, Cream, and Rolling Stones songs. The blues represented an ancient origin of music as if they were the paleolithic, the beginning of humankind. Today I'm looking at traces of music from the actual paleolithic (with the great disadvantage, comparing to the blues, of having no sound recordings available.)

Another factor too was my eventual career choice of becoming an artist, and teacher of (ancient) art history. Like my unwavering search into the origin of music, my other passion of art steered me towards its beginnings as well. Art has a material record that can be traced as far back to perhaps 75,000 BCE, roughly the same amount of time that gives material evidence (a flute carved from a bone) for the existence of music. The origin of both music and art should be dated to yet more distant times. The appearance of art however appears to be linked to our species of homo sapiens (even though there is evidence of artistic activity by Denisovan and Neanderthal cultures) and will not go further back than its appearance in Africa about 300,000 years ago. The first appearance of music is believed to go back to hominid species long extinct, perhaps as far back as two million years. Music furthermore, unlike art, is not reserved solely for hominids as it also appears in the animal kingdom.

Curiously enough both excursions into the origins of art and music lead to an investigation of the San culture in southern Africa. Lewis-Williams, in his research into paleolithic art, found in the San the closest analogy of living customs compared to what he believed customs of the paleolithic cave painters would have been like. The same analogy holds also for musical practices of the San. Thought to be isolated for 100,000 years, the San people are indeed genetically closest to the earliest modern humans. In the painting above a Khoisan woman is depicted who is part of a small group consisting of five women and two men. The group spontaneously improvise a tune, using on the spot devised instruments they hum, talk, and sing along with the rhythms created. Khoisan is a term for both Khoi ans San people who belong to the same Khoisan language branch. The Khoi, or Khoikhoi (plural) originated around what is current day Botswana, moved south into what is now South Africa. The San who live in the Kalahari desert, in Namibia and Botswana, are also known as the Kalahari Bushmen. The Khoi people, their women, and especially Saartje Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus, caused French archeologists of the nineteenth century to name the abundant prehistoric statuettes found in France, Venus figurines. The San then, in music too, provide perhaps the closest analogy of all living cultures to the music of prehistoric times. 

That music originated in Africa seems beyond any challenge.

(To be continued, soon)

Monk's Time

Thelonious Monk
12 x 6 inches, oil on board, 2017

Lulu's Back in Town by Thelonious Monk is as old as I am (a few months older actually). The tune appears on the record It's Monk's Time that I recently bought at a thrift store, further extending the collection of Monk recordings on the jazz shelf in the back. The record is perhaps not Monk's greatest but the opening tune, a classic written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren and first recorded by Fats Waller in 1935, Lulu's Back in Town is another jewel in Monk's oeuvre. Monk's starting the tune in old fashioned stride piano style before his quartet, with Charlie Rouse on sax, comes in. Monk's characteristic sense of timing sets the tune apart from the great stride piano players of yore and from Waller's version. It is perhaps Monk's unique timing that puns into the album title which more directly refers to Monk's portrait on the cover of Time Magazine that appeared around the same time. That portrait, painted by Boris Chaliapin, is the most famous Monk portrait out there. I wish to compete with Chaliapin's especially now that Time Magazine has been sold to a conservative media outlet. So keep reposting this image to make it happen!

Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple
12 x 6 inches, oil on board, 2017

Three years ago I wrote about Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel... it was her latest album two years old then, in 2014, and it it still is. She's been at it twenty plus years but only released four albums so far. The song in the Top 100 this year is "Every Single Night" a single from the 2012 album. In the meantime she has done some collaborations and some Trump bashing (which is all good, if you ask me.)

Troy

Sinéad O'Connor
16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas, 2017

Troy is really a great song,  ever since it appeared in 1987, and rose to the top in Dutch charts, I have always liked it but only now, thirty years later it appears in my Top 100 list. I never painted her before either. Sinéad O'Connor has been in the news recently drawing attention to depression and mental illness. God bless Sinéad O'Connor. So this is a tribute, way overdue.

Hidden Vagenda

Kimya Dawson
16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas, 2017

Thanks to my friend Jake, who is a big fan, I have copies of most Kimya Dawson recordings. The former member, with Adam Green) of the Moldy Peaches has since released seven solo albums and a number of other recordings with different bands. I have been listening a lot recently to her fourth: Hidden Vagenda of 2004. The cd features a number of guests of whom Daniel Johnston and Regina Spektor are the best known. Most songs however are recorded in her kitchen with her characteristic acoustc guitar and solo voice. "It's Been Raining" is one of the solo ones and one of my favorites but I also like "Anthrax" with a full rock 'n' roll band and "I Will Never Forget" featuring a chorus of friends. They may all end up in this year's 100.

My Favorite Things

John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders
20 x 16 inches, oil on canvas, 2017

Coltrane's last recorded concert continues to mesmerize. His concert at the Olatunji Center of African Culture on April 23rd 1967 was his penultimate one, he died a day before my third birthday on July 17th 1964. This would be the tenth painting I've done after a photograph by F. Winham that features Coltrane's last combo with Rashied Ali, Jimmy Garrison, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. This time I cropped the resource photo to feature Sanders and John Coltrane, Ali is represented by just an arm and a leg. The song from the concert My Favorite Things remains unchallenged at the number one spot of my continued count top 100. This and many other of my paintings are now for sale on eBay: http://stores.ebay.com/Berry-Maria-van-Boekel/VAN-BOEKEL-FINE-ART-PAINTINGS-/_i.html?_fsub=33042515011

Maria

Ever since I met this most generous and hospitable woman named Maria I'd loved the name Maria. This Maria was the partner of a classmate and hostess of a weekend long party in the Achterhoek that I attended during my college years at AKI. She was a true angel and I've regarded all Marias as angels ever since. I have now been happily married for 17 years to a Maria. (I somehow knew I was destined to marry a Maria.) Hurricane Maria however, has been no angel. She is the embodiment of this myth of the beautiful but deadly woman that since ancient Greek times (Helen) has affected the mind of Western masculine culture. The idea that a beautiful woman is also a dangerous woman has subverted the minds of men while objectifying women. Hurricane Maria ravaged the Caribbean this week but she is not supposed to cause any harm to my hometown in Florida. Two weeks ago hurricane Irma left two feet of water in my studio. About 750 records were submerged and I spent a whole week to salvage the most important ones. Most classical records and about half of the folk from around the world discs were under water. The salvage process focused on sub-collections; 25 Maria Callas records, all records from the Nonesuch label, my records from India, just had to be saved. Besides the 25 Callas records I realized just how many records I owned by singers named Maria. Coincidence or not, they all had be salvaged too. 

The history of the top 100 has not featured too many Marias though. This years list has A Mushroom Vedanta by Maria Sabina while Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot has featured several times. The most Maria paintings (besides those of my wife) have been portraits of Maria Callas, who has been in the Top 100 many times. The painting above is from the Top 100 2009, the one to the right from 2008. The song Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma is listed in the 100 Greatest Recordings of All Time. 

Just for fun I'll share some of the Marias from my record collection.

I propose a scientific hypothesis: The percentage of women named Maria who are incarcerated is significantly lower than the overall percentage of women named Maria. While so many songs about women (written by men) are full of misogyny, songs about Maria are not, I can't think of a single song that treats a Maria as evil, backhanded, cheating, or mistreating the subject (the singer) in any other way.

Savannah Rhythms

Upper Volta: After a photograph by Kathleen Johnson
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

The original image, a photo by Kathleen Johnson, was used on the CD Burkino Faso: Savannah Rhythms (2002) as an illustration for Allah Man Dogo, a marriage celebration of the Bobo-Dyala tribe. The reproduction of the photo is tiny and in black and white and I doubt if the photo has anything to do with the dancers, bride or groom, or the xylophones of the celebration. The gentleman in the picture appears to have a straw in his mouth, perhaps to prepare to weave a straw hat just like the one he's wearing. On the LP version, from 1981, the photo is slightly bigger and in color (even though there's hardly any), and not particularly associated with any particular recording. Allah Man Dogo (God is great) is the opening track on the album and was recorded in 1973/4 by the same Kathleen Johnson who took the photo.

Top 100 (Remixed): Update

Charles Duvelle
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

Deben Bhattacharya
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas, 2017

The first of two receptions for The Top 100 (Remixed) has transpired at Tempus Projects in Tampa. Thanks to curator Jade Dellinger and gallery director Tracy Midulla the reception was a great success. 323 Top 100 paintings are installed. The exhibition runs through September 21. The second reception, the second First Friday Artwalk in Tampa during the course of the exhibition, will be on September 1st from 7-9 at Tempus Projects. Large sections of what is on view right now will be replaced by other works. So for those who've seen it, the exhibition will look quite different on September 1st. The exhibition is organized in groups of ten, the curator and myself pulled works from the last 16 years and organized these into themes. Top 10s of various topics are hung in groupings. Some sections are serious and formal (like geographical locations), others less so (musicians with beards for example). A 22 page guide is available to identify the paintings and their specs. Since the opening I have been diligently working on the next sections to substitute existing ones, to the point of fixing up older paintings to complete a section or even painting brand new ones. One of the new topics to be displayed on September 1st is Ethnomusicologists. The two paintings above are both brand new, created specifically for this topic. In the case of Deben Bhattacharya I redid a painting that I simply couldn't find anywhere in my archive. Frustrated as that was I did a brand new painting from the same photograph as the lost one. I had spent two hours looking for that painting while making a whole new one only took me an hour-and-a-half, and it's better than the original too. Even though painted in 2017 this painting belongs to the Top 100 of 2013/14. Charles Duvelle's portrait however solidly belongs to the Top 100 of 2017 as it illustrates the recording of Wama Igini Kamu recorded in Papua New Guinea by Charles Duvelle, that was released only one month ago. A site I follow, Sublime Frequencies, published the book with two cds included called The Photographs of Charles Duvelle. Duvelle was also already included in this section but I never really liked my effort for the Top 100 2012.
The full top 10 of ethnomusicologists:

1. Hugh Tracey (1903-1977, South Africa). Ethnomusicologist, founder of ILAM
2. Alan Lomax (1915-2002, US). Ethnomusicologist, directer of Archive of American Folk Song.
3. Bela Bartok (1881-1945, Hungary). Composer, ethnomusicologist (one of its founders)
4. Charles Duvelle (French). Composer and musicologist, founder of Ocora (1958)
5. Paul Bowles (1910-1999, US). Composer, associated with Morocco
6. Pat Conte (US). Musician, collector, founder of The Secret Museum of Mankind
7. Alain Danielou (1907- 1994, France). Historian (of India) and musicologist. UNESCO
8. Deben Bhachattera (1921-2001, India). Ethnomusicologist, UNESCO
9. John Storm Roberts (1936-2009, UK/US). Ethnomusicologist, co-founder of Original Music
10. Joe Bussard (b. 1936, US). Record collector, founder of Fonotone

In case the selection of ten paintings don't work well together, I'm also bring three alternates;

• John Jacob Niles (1892-1980, US). Composer, singer, collector, the "Dean of American Balladeers"
• Sam Phillips (1923-2003, US). Record producer, founder of Sun Records
• Jon Ward runs the blog Excavated Shellac.

 Come check it out September 1st in Tampa if you're in the vicinity (and even if aren't).

The Top 100 (Remixed)

The Top 100 (Remixed) is a forthcoming exhibition at Tempus Projects in Tampa, Florida from August 4 until September 21, 2017. The exhibition, curated by Jade Dellinger, will feature hundreds of works from my Top 100 Archive. Jade and myself have spent many hours selecting and organizing works found in my studio for inclusion in the exhibit. It was fun to open box after box of old top 100 material and many half forgotten works surfaced in the process. Just yesterday I found in a bow with miscellaneous stuff this lovely portrait of Billy Karren. 

 Billy Karren
6 x 6 inches, oil on wood, c. 2005.

The interesting thing about this portrait is that I didn't know at the time that Billy Karren is a man, not a woman. I thought then that Bikini Kill was an all-girl band and that I was painting one of them. The Top 100 Remixed exhibit will be organized following thematic and topical top 10 lists. I selected this portrait for the Riot Grrrl top 10. Huggy Bear, another favorite Riot Grrrl band, also consists of men and women, so Billy is not the only guy represented in the Riot Grrrl top 10. About gender: The portrait paintings in the exhibit are about equal, where in the early days I painted more men, the last decade has seen more portraits of female musicians. The one top 10 that is strictly male: Men with beards. The portrait of Roky Erickson that I've just completed (see previous post) is part of this select group of outlaws and freaks (David Allan Coe is represented with a big painting here.)

Roky Erickson

 Roky Erickson
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

Roger Kynard 'Roky' Erickson turns 70 this weekend. Born in Austin, TX. Roky is a psychedelic cult hero best known as founder of the legendary 60s band 13th Floor Elevators but released, in a second career, between 1977 and 2010, a score of solo albums.  The song You Don't Love Me Yet appears on All That May Do My Rhyme from 1995. The song is clearly much older as Bongwater recorded a cover version of it in the late 1980s.

Tomboy

Princess Nokia
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

"Who that is, hoe? That girl is a tomboy." That's how Tomboy by the Bronx rapper Princess Nokia starts. Then she goes on about her "little titties and phat belly" (both of which she shows off in the video for Tomboy) boasting about her prowess. Princess Nokia is Destiny Nicole Frasqueri, an Afro-Nuyorican (that's a new one for me too—a New York Puerto Rican) hip hop recording artist. Despite offers from major labels, she decided to do it all herself. Tomboy is from the mixtape 1992, indeed named after the year she was born.

Beth Orton

Beth Orton
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

Beth Orton's new album Kidsticks is already a year old. I had forgotten to keep up with the British singer-songwriter for awhile, it took an airplane ride across the Atlantic to reengage. The interactive media display on the back of the seat in front of me offered the full album which I listened to twice. Snow is the opening track and the one going into the Top 100 2017. Just as Cat Power's latest album Sun, five years old already, Kidsticks is a departure of her earlier albums and features electronics in place of the traditional instruments. The painting, rather slick for my standards, is larger than life. Portraits larger than life are rather uncomfortable to look at and I usually make an effort to avoid this. The last time I fell in the trap was, for some odd reason, also a Beth Orton portrait.

Ralph Carney

Ralph Carney
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

I'm always happy to follow up on a recommendation, it doesn't always result in me painting a portrait of the musician, but sometimes it does, especially when the recommendation was made by an individual who knows what would interest me, and certainly when this individual knows a thing or two about what was recommended. Jade Dellinger told me to listen to Ralph Carney. It happens so often that I don't know about a musician I should know about. Ralph Carney is a legend of the Ohio (Akron) music scene and made his mark on the mainstream music scene as a longtime collaborator of Tom Waits, and with the Black Keys, Jonathan Richman, B-52's, and many others. His solo work is indeed worth every second spent exploring. No. 1 in my top 10 last week is a video posted on YouTube called Lament for Charleston. The multi-track saxophone recording the shootings at Charleston, SC and was influenced by Coltrane's Alabama.

Bongwater (2)

Ann Magnuson, Kramer (Bongwater)
12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

Bongwater was formed by Mark Kramer and Ann Magnuson in 1985. The LP The Power of Pussy is from 1991. Members of the band then included David Licht and Dave Rick. Licht went on to form the Klezmatics, Rick to Phantom Tollbooth. Kramer founded Shimmy Disc Records in 1987 and is an influential producer (Daniel Johnston, Half Japanese, among many). Kramer, Licht and Eugene Chadbourne were in Shockabilly, a band that under a different name also included John Zorn. A host of names there, a who's who of the New York music scene in the 1980s, all Top 100 luminaries. Ann Magnuson (see previous post) is an actress and performance artist. Folk Song, the next entry in this year's list, is an epic nine minute extravaganza featuring a sample of Roundabout by Yes, it closes the Power of Pussy album.

Bongwater

Ann Magnuson
Oil on canvas paper, 16 x 12 inches, 2017

One of most exciting music videos on YouTube is a recording made on David Sanborn's Night Music that ran for two seasons on NBC from 1988-1990. The program is known as "the greatest music show on TV." In this particular episode David Sanborn (himself a notable jazz musician) is talking to Bob Weir of Grateful Dead fame. Then the band comes up: It's Weir with the band Bongwater and the Pussywillows with special appearances by Screamin' Jay Hawkins(!) and Roky Erickson. After a crazy jam Hawkins disappears and Bongwater plays You Don't Love Me Yet, one of their signature tunes which is an original of Roky Erickson (of 13th Floor Elevators fame). Here's a link (I highly recommend viewing it.)

Cat Power and the Animals

Cat Power
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

Some years ago I wondered what if Beth Orton were an animal what kind of animal she'd be. I suggested she may be a crow. One year later there was a song called Magpie on her (then) new album. Now, what kind of animal would Chan Marshall be? Of course Chan Marshall's alter ego is Cat Power, but I doubt her spirit animal would be a cat. There aren't many of her songs in which animals are named. I recall (from the top of my head) the Werewolf Song, a cover of a Michael Hurley original, then she did Salty Dog, an old blues song but that one's not about a dog at all. The newest Cat Power in my Top 100 is Sad Sad Song in which a killer whale plays a prominent role. The credits are Cat Power's but the lyrics are, in good blues tradition, an amalgam of various verses, some old some new, some hers, some by others. The whale verse appears to have been written by M. Ward, a contemporary West Coast musician. I don't see Cat Power a killer whale though, perhaps a zebra.

Competition

Tumivut: The Competition Song
16 x 12 nches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

The Competition Song has now been listed in the Top 100 for three consecutive years and, because of it, also gained its place in the all time list of 500 recordings (going back to 1983). The performers are not known (to me) by name. I found them on YouTube years ago. I looked through all the comments to get information about their identity but no dice (there's one comment in which one of the singers is referred to as Charlotte). The comments to this video are mostly made by horny guys who get a boner from watching (deep throat singing is a favorite pun). There certainly is an element of eroticism embedded in the performance, and in all "katajjaq" performances, but it's not really sexual at all. The song is at the core (at least right now) of what the Top 100 is about; the search for the ultimate music recording that would illustrate the the essence of musical performance, and its origin. The competitiveness of it is an ongoing topic throughout my 35 year top 100 history, as the project itself is competitive—the ranking of music. The #1 every week is the ultimate musical recording (subjective). The video descriptor is: "Tumivut - Inuit Throat Singing - The Competiton Song at Aboriginal Day 2010 at The Forks in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada." The performance is not intended as art but it's a game. A lot of skill is required to compete but the outcome is objective—there's no jury—the winner is the one who keeps singing with a straight face, not missing a beat, no laughing.

Patti Smith

Patti Smith
12 x 16 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

To Patti Smith poems are like prayers. In an interview she said that she gave up on religion but never on prayer. Her song lyrics are like prayers, some literally so (as in Gloria). Some of her songs are introduced by a prayer and some prayers are directed at specific people. In her lyrics she talks to (and prays for) Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patty Hearst (and many others, her Rock and Roll Niggers). Patty Hearst is addressed introducing a cover of Hendrix's Hey Joe, Brian Jones is spoken to introducing Lou Reed's We're gonna have a real good time together. Collected on UbuWeb are some early recordings by Patti Smith, poetry readings basically with minimal accompaniment by her longtime collaborator Lenny Kaye. These recordings are the groundwork for a series of highly important and influential albums she produced in the late seventies and early eighties.

CocoRosie

CocoRosie (Sierra and Bianca Casady)
Oil on canvas paper, 16 x 12 inches, 2017

The sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady started CocoRosie in Paris, France, in 2003, when they were both living there. Sierra and Bianca were nicknamed Coco and Rosie by their mother, hence the name for the group that initially only consisted of the two sisters. The two of them made tape recordings in their bathroom that later became their first album La maison de mon rêve. A number of tracks from this album had been on my iTunes for about a decade but somehow they never made the list of the top 100 until the song Terrible Angels randomly started playing on my computer the other day. It was my friend Wim, way back when, who suggested I listen to CocoRosie, stating he liked them much better than Cat Power (who I was listening to a lot then.)

Zines!

Two new issues of the zine Ach Ja have just been completed in an open edition. Where the first three didn't relate well to this blog, numbers 4 and 5 fit right in. The latest Ach Ja #5: The Awkward  Relationship Between Rock Music and Art is full of text with few images. The zine is a material record of a talk that I recently presented at the Center for the Arts at Bonita Springs. Ach Ja #4: Record Sleeve Selfies on the other hand has little text and lots of artwork. The content is a sampling of the record sleeve self portraits that I've been working on since the beginning of this year. Several new portraits (not included in the posts on this blog) feature in this 24 page zine including this Bengal: Songs of the Madmen. 

If you're interested in a copy of these zines, shoot me an email. These, as well as the first three, you can own for ten bucks (plus some postage). Ach Ja: Surrealist Techniques; Ach Ja #2: Art and Poetry in a Hostile Climate; Ach Ja #3: Shamanism, Artists, Healers, Priests, have been produced in 2015 and 2016.