Kirk

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
9.5 x 4.5 inches, oil on wood, 2018

The third painting of Rahsaan Roland Kirk for the Top 100 2017/18 represents his 1968 classic The Inflated Tear. The tune was a revelation for May Cobb, who is currently finishing a book about "the late, great, multi-instrumentalist." She heard The Inflated tear first in a college class on jazz history. May Cobb and I have been occasionally writing to each other about Kirk. Here's she in her own words (as published in The Rumpus): "The Inflated Tear sounded like the entire spectrum of the history of African-American music rolled into one four-minute song: old slavery spirituals, work songs, field hollers, soul, modern jazz, and early blues. It was like a Duke Ellington reed section, yet more emotional, more intimate, with a sound that ached of centuries. It was like listening to the inside of someone’s heart."

Tanya Tagaq (again)

Tanya Tagaq
10 x 8 inches, oil on canvas, 2018

The revelation for me (in music) of 2017 was Tanya Tagaq. She debuts in the top 100 with three tracks. The top one, in which she performs with the Kronos Quartet, comes in at #3. A bit further down the list is Uja and finally, the reason for this painting, a collaboration with Weaves, a Canadian indie band with Jasmyn Burke and Morgan Waters. Burke and Tagaq together do honor to the title of the song: Scream. The Top 100 2017/18 has now ended and a new one just began. I still need about 20 more paintings to have every track illustrated.

Popular Music

Florence Welch
9.5 x 4.75 inches, oil on wood, 2018

Florence + The Machine had a massive hit with the anthemic Shake it Out in 2011. I'm not much of a Pop Music aficionado but when Maria played the group performing the song on Saturday Night Live I was sold. Florence Welch clearly enjoyed being on the set of SNL as she couldn't shake a smile during her epic performance. The video was Maria's pick when she, Amy, and me presented each other with our favorite YouTube song. Mine was (talking about epic performances) the Late Show with Letterman version of M.I.A's Born Free, a song that has been my #1 for six straight years now. Amy picked Cat Power's To Be a Good Woman, already in my Top 100 list but it had never felt so intense before. I could have cried.

Tuvan Shamanism

Tuvan Shaman in full regalia
18 x 9.75 inches, oil on wood, 2017

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 privileges. 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." 

Times has changed since 1929 when Tuva was still an autonomous republic that had just been liberated from Mongolian Manchu rule. In the Soviet period, of which Tuva became part in 1944, shamanic practices were systematically repressed; the shamans, among pastoral peoples were seen as having no practical value for the state. They were removed from their homelands and often persecuted. Despite half a century of repression the shamanic practices did not die out. In hiding and secretive ceremonies, shamanic traditions sustained. After the fall of the Soviet Union Tuva, a remote and hard to reach area of Russia, has enjoyed a semi-autonomous status, and a revival of pre-Soviet traditions and culture. Shamanism now is an established cultural practice. Now there are professional shamans who have received an official government issued license to practice (healing). Some shamans however, don't let them be institutionalized and are off the government radar. It is not clear how great their numbers are but there are more than a hundred registered official shamans in Tuva. It is estimated that one in five Tuvans exhibit some aspects of shamanism. 1. Healing powers; 2 Ability to foretell the future; 3. Ability to lead ceremonies and rites; 4. Travel to the lower and upper spirit worlds. 

Had I been born in Tuva I would've had a 20% chance of having some sort of psychic ability but I was born in small town Netherlands where, I guess, the chances are the same as winning the lottery. What I've gained though is a bit of an open mind.

The top 100 track associated with this painting is: Oleg Kuular – Collection of Höömeï styles that appears on the CD listed on top, the source image of the shaman is in the booklet.

SAINKHO

Sainko Namtchylak
9.5 x 4.75 inches, oil on wood, 2018

Order to Survive and Öske Cherde (In a foreign land) are two titles Ms. Namtchylak performs live with a trio on a Russian TV channel. No information is given with the two videos on YouTube and I couldn't find the definitive circumstances of the performance either. It appears that the trio backing Namtchylak is the group Tri-O based in Moscow (1990s). The song Order to Survive appears on Namtchylak's album Stepmother City from 2002 while Öske Cherde was first released as a collaboration between Namtchylak and the Tuvan group Huur-Huur-Tu. In the comment section under the Öske Cherde video the song is referred to as Dance of Eagle by one listener. Dance of Eagle also appears on Stepmother City. 

Sainkho Namtchylak is a Tuvan singer who moved to Moscow to study composition and later to Vienna where she is still based. She was born in 1957 in the south of Tuva near the Mongolian border. There she was exposed to the local throat singing traditions, which she mastered, and studied shamanism. The source material for both paintings comes from stills of both YouTube videos superimposed on abstract backgrounds that I produced in series.