Garifuna Celebration

Garifuna Settlement Day Festival
14 x 11 inches, oil/mixed media on canvas, 2019

The Garifuna are descendants of West Africans and the Carib and Arawak peoples. The song Abelagudahami appears on The Spirit Cries: Music of the Rainforests of South America & The Caribbean (Smithsonian, Library of Congress, 1993). It was the first album of the Endangered Music Project series initiated by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. As with so many indiginous Americans the history of the Garifuna is one of persecution and displacement. Native to what is now the Virgin Islands they ended up in Honduras and spread to neighboring Belize and Nicaragua. The Garifuna heard on Abelagudahami are from Belize. Despite the 'endangered' label on the cd they are today thriving in Belize.

This will be the last painting and posting of the year. I didn't paint quite a hundred pictures. Happy New Year, dear readers!

South African Politics

Princess Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu 
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The image above appears on the cover of the LP The Zulu Songs of Princess Constance Magogo KaDinuzulu as part of The Music of Africa Series produced in the 1960s by Hugh Tracey. The album is number 37 in the series and was also recorded by Hugh Tracey. The recordings are from 1939. The song in top 100 this year is from that album and is called Helele! Yiliphe Ielyiani? meaning 'which regiment is that?' in the Zulu language. I have no clue what the song is really about but the word regiment hints at a political subject. The princess was the daughter of King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo of the semi autonomous Zulu Nation (r. 1884-1913) and sister of King Solomon kaDinuzulu (r. 1913-1933). Her son Mangosuthu Buthelezi (b. 1928) is a politician and Zulu leader who founded the Inkatha Freedom Party (1971) and remained in the South African Parliament until just a few months ago. Princess Constance remained an advocate for Zulu culture and music throughout her life. You can read more on Princess Constance here.

Tibetan Monks

Tibetan Monks, 1903
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The monks presented here were originally photographed by William Hayman during a controversial British military expedition into Tibet in 1903. Tibet was then still a secretive mysterious country and the British set out to remove Russian influence. The expedition also introduced the first images of Mount Everest to a western audience. I've painted them to illustrate a lament sung by Tibetan monks. Lament for the Dead: Chant appears on a 1951 compilation on Folkways titled Music of the World's Peoples, Vol. 1. The following paragraph appeared in the online VAN magazine:

This field recording from the Smithsonian Music of the World’s Peoples series, captures, according to the liner notes, “Lamas chanting in unison with percussion and bells accompaniment.” The deeply resonant baritone voices, combined with the barely audible, overtone-rich bells, create an almost unbearably chilling sound. This is a lament for the dead by the living, but the sound seems more to emanate from somewhere beneath the earth—from the dead themselves. [Jake Romm – A Giacinto Scelsi Playlist: Sacred Sounds and Sacred Syllables, 2017]

Safari

André Didier
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The 1946 Ogooué-Congo Mission, led by the 23-year old ethnologist Noël Ballif is best known for recordings of Babinga Pygmies made by Gilbert Rouget. They were one of the first recordings ever made of Pygmy music, perhaps the most popular of all ethnomusicological recordings. Many recordings made during the expedition landed on Music of Equatorial Africa on Moses Asch's Folkway label that was released in 1947. The recordings on the LP however, weren't made by Rouget but by another member of the 12 headed Mission, André Didier. At the time the region in what is current day Republic of the Congo, aka Congo-Brazzaville (not to be confused with The Demoncratic Republic of the Congo or Congo-Kinshasa) was part of French Equatorial Africa and the section that is now Congo-Brazaville was then Congo Moyen (Middle Congo). The Middle Congo also included parts of what is now Gabon and the Central African Republic. There are various recordings of the Babinga on the record as well as a host from other ethnicity. One such group are the Bongili, whose "Work Song" is part of the Top 100 2019. Not much is found online today about this ethnic group but their language also called Bongili, is a know and common Bantu language in the Congo. The work in "Work Song" refers to the labor of beaten out bananas (both fruit and peel) for the purpose of a banana paste. A girls chorus and pestles are heard behind a soloist (the chorus takes turns). The notes on the album were written by Rouget.

Maranao Lullaby

Maranao Woman and Child
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The LP Music from the Mountain Provinces contains a lullaby that was recorded in 1988 by David Blair Stiffler while he was held captive in the Philippines. Stiffler and his travel companions were abducted at gunpoint by an MNLF rebel group. They were taken to a hut in the mountains on the island of Mindanao and held for over two weeks before they managed to escape. He was given permission by his captors to record a woman he heard singing a lullaby to her baby but later all his equipment was confiscated. They escaped with only the clothes on their backs, their lives, and one cassette tape. Music from the Mountain Provinces was intended for Folkways but after its founder's passing it remained on the shelves until it The Numero Group eventually released it in 2011. The woman, and her baby, in the painting are from the Lanao Province on Mindanao. She was photographed inside a refugee camp. The Maranao are a Muslim minority in the Philippines. Political unrest, rebel groups and ethnic fighting have been the norm in the Philippines for decades especially on Mindanao.

A Qiarpa

Group of Inuit Women
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The Qiarpa (chorus) this painting represents was recorded at Eskimo Point by Ramon Pelinski in 1980. It can be found on the cd Canada: Jeux Vocaux des Inuit (Inuit de Caribou, Netsilik et Igloolik (Disques Ocora, 1989). The performers on most of the 90(!) tracks on the cd are credited by name but not this particular track. The chorus of the heading appears to be a class of young students being instructed on the traditional singing styles of the Inuit, demonstrating just how much the indigenous culture is alive in contemporary times. The painting shows half of a group of female throat singing (kattajaq) singers who were invited to perform in Strasbourg, France for the occasion of an exhibition of Inuit sculpture in 1984. A video of the performance is embedded on a site selling the cd.

Torres Strait Expedition

Malo Ceremonial Dance

14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition (also called Torres Strait Expedition) was led by Alfred Cort Haddon in 1898. The objective was to record the customs and sounds of the indigenous Australian (aboriginal) peoples. Haddon was well aware that his work would be important because aboriginal life would soon be overwhelmed by encroaching civilization and zealous missionaries. The yearlong expedition yielded many papers, artifacts, and sound recordings now mostly housed in the British Museum. The wax cylinders, on which the music and other sounds were recorded, are now part of the BBC Sound Archive, all available to anyone interested in listening (and downloading) these valuable early recordings. The masked dancer in the painting is featured in one of several films Haddon recorded during his stay in the Torres Strait Islands.

Weaving

From the cover of Aboriginal Music from Australia
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Continuing the playing card format using the mirroring in two directions/diagonal symmetry (see previous post) I now added the element of weaving. Not using a linear axis of symmetry the arms of the figure continue as if they embrace its own mirrored image. The image of an Aboriginal preparing food I used comes from the LP Aboriginal Music from Australia on the Phillips label. The source of the music this image represents is a cd however, a reissue on UNESCO's Collection of Traditional Music now named: Australia: Aboriginal Music. The cd has the texts and music of the original LP but not the photographs. I can not identify the images on the LP cover. I'm not certain about the gender either but the breast shown seems to indicate a woman. There is only one track sung by women on the record but it does not necessarily mean that a photo on the cover illustrates a song on the record. The song is a type of Wu-unka song sung by Utekn and Yaimuk in the Wik-ngatara language in northern Queensland. The song was recorded in 1966 by Alice M. Moyle, who I assume was also responsible for the photograph on the sleeve.

The Kmhmu Highlands

Kmhmu
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The image here was sourced from the cover of the cd Bamboo on the Mountains (Smithsonian, 1999.) The original photo was taken by Frank Proschan in the Song Khwae district of northern Nan in Thailand in 1996. The teum singing by Ya' Ak ang Ya' Seu Keodaeng the painting represents comes from the same district as the source photo but the woman most likely isn't either of them. (Two other musicians from the same photograph—there's five of individuals—I've painted before to represent the same song. I'm again not quite sure concerning the gender of any of them.) The recording was made by Proschan in 1992. The symmetry of the painting is neither around a vertical axis nor a horizontal axis but is both, a diagonal axis perhaps. As in a playing card you can turn the painting around to get the same image. I played around with this concept first in a stencil print of Alvin Lucier and I will experiment further on this concept. Possibilities galore but not enough to create a full deck.

Inuktitut

Mary Sivuaraapik and Audia throat singing

14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The track Katajjait on "Hamma" features three examples of katajjait, traditional game songs of the Inuit. The word "hamma" is a syllable of the Inuktitut language, the songs represented have no words but play on the sound of hamma. The songs appear on Canada: Inuit Games and Songs on UNESCO. The performers, in order of appearance: Elijah Pudloo Mageeta, Tamegeak Pitaulassie, Marie Apaqaq, Soria Eyituk, and Napache Semaejuk Pootoogook. Recorded in Baffin Land at Cape Dorset and Sanikiluaq between 1973 and 1975 by Nicole Beaudry and Claude Charron. Katajjait are secular song but were banned by encroaching Christianity for a hundred years. Many cultural traditions Inuit have disappeared and exist only in museums and literature but katajjaq vocal games somehow survived and are now practiced widely in Nunavut, the semi-autonomous state under Inuit rule in Northern Canada.

-->

Intersex

Cover of Sibérie 8, Évenk (Savelij Vasilev?)

oil on canvas, 2019

Je chevanche mon rêne (I'm riding my reins) is a traditional Évenk folk song from the "narrative song" section on the cd Sibérie 8, Évenk: Chants rituels des nomades de la taiga on Buda Records by Henri Lecomte. The Evenks have been living on their ancestral lands in the south of Siberia near the Mongolian border since neolithic times. The culture is shamanistic and remains so to this day. Depicted is an Évenk shaman who appears on the cover of the cd as photographed by Lecomte. Since five out of six recordings in the section "shamanic chants" are of Savelij Vasilev I must assume it is he. While working on this painting for some but no particular reason I was uncertain about the gender of the individual. The same uncertainty has come upon me a number of times in recent months, enough so that I must ask myself questions: Does it even matter which gender an individual belongs to? Does the gender of an individual influence how I paint? Why does this question even come up and how does it reflect me? A number of associations come to mind when attempting answers. First is my approach to painting. I usually aim for a personality to come through, a person's spirit. The race of a person is often ambiguous in this process—I paint a person of color with the same colors and intend as I do non-colored—thus it would only make sense the same approach is used in the issue of gender. Perhaps a person's gender isn't as important to me as it once was; getting older and producing less testosterone may just take away the sexual aspect when considering an individual. I believe that genders aren't as binary as culture conceives. That any individual has a certain masculinity as well as femininity, that there is a spectrum within which each of us occupies at different times different places. That no individual at any time as it the very extreme of this spectrum. (Genghis Khan perhaps approached ultimate masculinity.) The shaman, in cultures around the world, is often preordained because of ideosyncrasies of character, including gender ambiguity. The shaman becomes a shaman because of an even distribution of feminine and masculine aspects. The male shaman could recite in falsetto while the female shaman could use the technique of throat singing (a technique where there's no distinction in gender characteristics.) Shamanism is not gender specific in the same way early childhood and perhaps old age isn't gender specific either. While painting the male shaman here the melody of the folk song by Oktjabrina Vladimirovna and Svetlana Naumeva (who sing with distinct feminine voices) continued to be in the back of my head.

Throat singing in the shower

Dumagat woman and child 

14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

"While singing, the Dumagat woman in this recording vibrated her throat with her hand" are the liner notes to the Dumagat Throat Song by David Blair Stiffler on Music from the Mountain Provinces (Numerophone 2012). The record was intended to be released on Folkways but while recording it founder and director Moses Asch had died. There are a great many throat songs on the year's Top 100 list and I've tried to imitate some but I can't get the particular breathing done. Little did I know that I had performed, as a youngster, the kind of throat singing described by Stiffler all along. I never practiced much as because it's a painful technique and each performance only lasted 20 seconds at most. The recording on the Dumagat lasts for one minute and nineteen seconds and must have been so painful, unless I did it all wrong or Dumagat throats are stronger than mine. The mountain provinces in question are situated in the Philippines where Stiffler recorded in between 1986 and 1988.

-->

Ubuhuha

Ubuhuha, Rundi Women
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

 From the liner notes by Michel Vuylsteke: "The ubuhuha (literally 'to blow') which were formerly performed by by women during wakes, have practically disappeared today." This was written in 1967 when Vuylsteke recorded these two Rundi women in Burundi. The women use their hands as an instrument, like a trumpet, "The resultant sounds vary in pitch, timbre and volume according to the position of her hands and the tension of her lips." From the LP Burundi: Musique Traditionelles on Ocora. 

Talking with my friend Jade before the Cat Power concert last Friday he mused that most of the musicians I painted would be unknown to her. I told him that I wouldn't be surprised if Cat Power would be much more familiar to these ethnomusicological recordings than one would expect. During the concert Cat Power used her hands to alter her singing voice on several occasions very much like the Rundi women, most poignantly during a cover of Bob Dylan's Hard Times in New York City (perhaps to mimic Dylan's nasal voice). One of my favorite tunes she performed that Friday was Robbin Hood from her latest Wanderer. The following drawing done during the concert then becomes the official illustration for the song in the Top 100.

Cat Power
12 x 9 inches, pencil on paper, 2019

Long-Song

Ganbaararyn Khongorzul
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The River Herlen featured on a cd tucked into the excellent book Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Musica and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond by Theodore Levin with Valentina Süzükei (Indiana University Press, 2006.) Unlike the other tracks on the cd Xongorzul, the singer of The River Herlen, is not photographed or discussed as an individual but functions as a sound example of the Mongolian 'long-song' tradition. The song is one the beyonds in "Beyond Tuva." The long in long-song clearly doesn't reference duration as the song only lasts a little over two minutes but rather the extended syllables in the text. "A four-minute song may only consist of ten words." [Wikipedia]  The Xongorzul on the disc is likely Ganbaararyn Khongorzul born September 12, 1974 in Mongolia. Ganbaararyn Khongorzul performs with Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and performed at the opening ceremony at the 2002 World Cup.

A Wake in Mindanao

 Manobo-Dulangan (Bagobo) mourners
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Two mourners from the Manobo-Dulangan tribe sing Kanta para sa patay (Song for the dead) recorded by Jenny de Vera in Mindanao, Philippines on the occassion of a wake for her departed father, Benjamin de Vera (1946-2007). Two mourners from the Manobo-Dulangan tribe sing Kanta para sa patay (Song for the dead) recorded by Jenny de Vera in Mindanao, Philippines on the occasion of a wake for her departed father, Benjamin de Vera (1946-2007). The names of the performers are not provided, they my be professional mourners hired by Jenny de Vera, but they shed real tears in the video uplaoded on YouTube. The image is based on a screenshot of the video. Benjamin de Vera was the leader of the Philippines Communist Party (CPP-NPA).

The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

Fiona Apple
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

#100 in the top 100, #1 in the last top 10 (of 74) for the year, Every Single Night—the more you listen to it, the more of an anthem it becomes—brings Fiona Apple back into the list. The singer-songwriter is steadily becoming a mainstay in my music appreciation endeavor. Thus it's time for a short biography (Wikipedia reference): Fiona Apple was born September 13, 1977, in Manhattan, classically trained on piano she started wrtng songs at age eight and released her first of four albums at seventeen. Every Single Night comes from her fourth and last The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do of 2012.

Nothing Really Matters

Cat Power
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2014

"When I see your face in the crowd/With a look of obsession" are the opening lines to Cat Power's Nothing Really Matters from 2018s Wanderer. In ten days she will be performing at the Ritz in Tampa, close enough for me to go. It'll be the fifth time I see her live beating Townes van Zandt and (Dutch band) The Fatal Flowers for most concerts visited. It's the sixth painting this year of her and for sure I will draw from life when I see her in Tampa. The backgrounds now have shifted from golden spry paint botanical designs to abstractions that were done on a golden background about a year ago. These abstractions (see The Golden Paintings) were always meant to be painted over with portraits.

Loes

Loesje Hamel
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Last year I painted both Krzysztof Penderecki and Don Cherry, the two musicians responsible for Actions: Humus, the Exploring Life Force, a work for Free Jazz Orchestra. For the repeat of the work in this year's 100 I looked for someone else to paint and I settled for the vocalist featured on the track who was listed as Loes Macgillycutty. Loes Macgillycutty, it turns out, is Loesje Hamel, a compatriot from the Netherlands, who was a model in the 1950s and died at the age of 35 of cancer. I had never heard of her before but she was connected to score of well known Dutchmen. She was the lover of the famous writer Jan Cremer and (Top 100 alumni) musician Wally Tax. She also collaborated with musicians Ramses Shaffy and Willem Breuker. Breuker's connection landed her in the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra led by Don Cherry whilst in Europe. A number of Dutch musicians contribute to the composition by the composer Penderecki, besides Hamel and Breuker, Alfred Mangelsdorff, Fred van Hove and Han Bennink can be heard, other famous European jazz musicians on the recording include Peter Brötzmann and Terje Rypdal. There were various images of Loes Hamel available to paint from and I settled on one which sees her smiling. Bad choice; while it's nice to have the person portrayed in a painting look friendly and smile, the all-out bare-your-teeth-smile is another thing altogether, it belongs to the medium of photography, which is instantaneous compared to the delay of painting. A broad smile in a painting eventually becomes an awkward grin. I spend way too many hours to transform the grin and portray someone friendly and cute. I barely succeeded.

Ululation

Kerala: Kurava performance
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

From Wikipedia: "from Latin ulolo,  is a long, wavering, high-pitched vocal sound resembling a howl with a trilling quality. It is produced by emitting a high pitched loud voice accompanied with a rapid back and forth movement of the tongue and the uvula." Ululation is an example of onomatopoeia (another beautiful word) "the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named." Sound recordings of ululation are hard to come by, most YouTube clips last for about seven seconds, I haven't heard a recording (yet) on any field recording collection. Yet, the tradition has to be included in the Origins of Music discussion. An example from Kerala (south India) on YouTube that lasts no less than 25 seconds entered the Top 100. For a second time recently I have painted an image of a performer whom I don't have a name for. For a second time too, I am not a 100% sure if I painted a man or a woman. The video on YouTube shows a close-up of one of the performers heard. I assume the image is of a woman as the tradition is usually performed by women. Ululation is referenced in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs (that's as far back as references go.) Ululations are performed on ceremonial occasions both happy and sad :(. Ululation in the Malayalam language of Southern India is called Kurava.

Aboriginal Day 2010 at The Forks in Winnipeg

Tumivut: The Competition Song
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Depicted above is one of the two performers of Tumivut: The Competition Song at the 2010 Aboriginal Day in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It's from a video found on YouTube shot from the audience and is a persistent feature in the Top 100. The video has over 1,000,000 views, thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. I browsed through all those comments just to find out the identity of the two performers. I have not been able to identify them yet. It is the third time I painted from a screenshot of the video. This time it's ten seconds into the 1:25 video and they haven't started yet. The woman on the left fram an audience perspective, is introducing The Competition Song while the one on the right smiles. The Canadian Inuits don't consider their 'katajjait' tradition music as it is merely a game. Ethnomusicolists and myself, we disagree.

Sibérie

Irina Khistoforovna Kolegova
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Slava Egorovič Kemlil
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The paintings here represent two of nine recordings from Siberia in the list of 100. Seven of these were recorded by Henri Lecomte, including the two musicians here. Irina Kolegova (b. 1935) is a Koryak woman from Kamchatka, the easternmost peninsula of Russia. Slava Kemlil (b. 1963) is a Chukchi shaman from Kolyma, a bit northwest from Kamchatka. Both recordings by Lecomte appear in a series of cds on Musique du Monde dedicated to the music of Siberia. Kolegova is found on Sibérie 4, Kamtchatka: dance drums from the Siberian Far East and Kemlil on Sibérie 3, Kolyma: Songs of nature and animals. Kemlil's songs consist of imitations of animals, throat singing, and the 'jajar' (a big shaman's frame drum.) The tundra wakes up in the spring is the title given to the recording that made my list. Kolegova's song, a duet with Anna Kolegova, is called A song about ducks in a style that is reminiscent of the pic-eine'rkin tradition of the Chukchi.

Music of Indigenous Peoples in South America

Ye'kuana (Makiritare) Indian, Venezuela
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

 

Mataco (Michí) Indian, Argentina
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The last several top 100 years have been framed by existential questioning. Why do I like what I like? Is one music better than another? Questions like these are why the Top 100 exists, they're integral to a system of ranking and filing. Last year's Top 100 was positioned around one central issue: The origins of music. Where does it come from? What, if any, is its function? The search for the origin really started when, in the 1980s, I discovered 1930s original blues songs that were popularly covered by some of my favorite bands then like Cream and Led Zeppelin. This was the onset of the Top 100 project. (I talk more about this during an interview on WGCU, Three Song Stories.)

The quest for the origins of music, subject of a series of musings on this site, has lead me to listen to, and read about, recordings from the field of ethnomusicology. I have been seeking out recordings and information on the music of those cultures that have lived in relative isolation from the influence of civilizations, the industrial world. More half of the 100 songs in the 2018/2019 list belong to this category. Naturally  I have become sympathetic to the plight and rights of such cultures. I first started to have an interest (in the political issue) in the late 1990s. This was a relatively positive time in which many governments allotted land and rights to the indigenous people living within their borders. Currently, however, the political trend is to revert back to colonial times.

The two paintings shown here are sort of a pair even though the origin of the two individuals are thousands of miles apart. The first one a Ye'kuana woman from Venezuela, below a Mataco Indian from Northern Argentina. Both images are based on anthropological images from the late nineteenth century. The Ye'kuana woman illustrates Yucca Fertility Song recorded by Walter Coppens and found on the album Anthology of Central & South American Indian Music (Folkways, 1975.) The song is a chant by women to stop evil spirits from affecting the yucca plant (the tree of life) recited during planting and harvesting. [W. Coppens] The Mataco Indian represents a mataco instrumental piece on a stringed instrument and is played by a shaman. (Argentina, The Indians of the Gran Chaco, Lyrichord, 1977.)

Many indigenous peoples, some still uncontacted, live in South American continent. The struggle of the South American Indians, as in the North, is well documented throughout this century and the last. The Selk'nam people, wiped out in a genocide courtesy of economic progress (gold was found on their territory,) I wrote about last year, is just one example of the devastating history of the fate of indigenous peoples after contact. While many protective laws are in place, the onslaught on territories held by indigenous peoples continues and is getting worse. Jair Bolsonaro, the latest Brazilian president, is emblemtic of these developments. He believes that indigenous people should be integrated and that way too much land is appropriated to them. He's firing scientists opposing his "manifest destiny" as Trump does to those defending Alaskan tribal societies. And the ecology again is victim.

Jazz in the Top 100 2018/2019

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

John Coltrane
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

There's jazz in the Top 100 2018/2019. Perhaps not quite as many as is usual but it's better than how the blues fared; there are none belonging to the latter category. (It's a first, that there's no blues. I like blues a lot, especially prewar blues, but perhaps it becomes harder to discover new old gems. There were only so many recordings made, I may have heard a good portion of it. Nevertheless I'm going to make sure blues will be back next year.) There's the same Don Cherry/Krzysztof Penderecki piece featured the previous year, there's a Sun Ra All Starts recording, and also a place for the two regulars in the Top 100: John Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The Coltrane recording is the same as it has been the last two decades: that recording of My Favorite Things that is my favorite track throughout the history of the Top 100. To read about this tune more you can follow this link. The Kirk recording, however, is one that was not previously featured: Theme for the Eulipians. I first heard the tune as an instrumental through a performance together with Gil Evans. A marvelous performance late in Kirk's life. He had already suffered a stroke and could only play with one hand. Still a virtuoso. The song, as it is a song, appears on The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man and is written by Kirk together with Betty Neals, who wrote the lyrics. Neals is also heard on the recording reciting these lyrics and Maeretha Stewart sings. The musicians, besides Kirk: Howard Johnson, Romeo Penque, Hilton Ruiz, Buster Williams, Charlie Persip, and Joe Habao Texidor, The album was recorded in 1976 (the same year as the Gil Evans concert) and released by Warner Brothers.

The Nivkh of Sakhalin Island

Antonia Vasil'evna Skalygina?
14 x 11 inches, oil and metallic on canvas, 2019

The source of the above painting is a photograph by Henri Lecomte used as the cover for the cd Nivkh, Ujl'ta, Siberie 6, Sakhaline: Musique vocale et instrumentale (Buda Records, Musique du Monde, 1996.) I do not have the cd and therefore I can't say for sure if the person depicted is indeed Antonia Skalygina or not but I like to believe it is. It makes sense. The track in the list of 100 is called Alterateur de voix Kal'ni, voice modifier. The instrument shown could indeed be that modifier but perhaps it is a jew's harp (in which case the performer would be either Ol'ga Anatol'evna Njavan or Ekatarina Cirik.) When I selected the cover image to paint from I wasn't even sure if I was going to paint a man or a woman. An image search on Sakhalin traditional dress confirmed that the image is of a woman,  the jewelry confirmed my assumption furthermore. The painting is done on top of an earlier work from a series of abstractions that were initially intended to be used for portraiture but started a life of their own. It's the first one from about fifteen such works that is appropriated for the Top 100.

Peruvian Indians

Shipibo Indian, Peru
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Asháninka (Campa) Indian, Peru
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The sources for both paintings here are two photographs by Charles Kroehle and were taken in 1885 and 1888 in the Amazon forest region of Peru. One is labeled Campa-Indian, Rio Chuchuras, East Peru the other Indien Shipivo, fleuve Pachieta, Amazonie, Perou. The tattoos on both women are very similar. I initially thought one of the two must have been mislabeled. This doesn't appear to be the case though after further research into both ethnic groups. The Asháninka tattoos are strictly linear while the Shipibo have further design elements. I assume the tattoos are ceremonial and depict the origin of the world, the people, their ancestral spirits. I want one! Charles Kroehle (German, 1876-1902?) is considered a pioneer of the photography of Peruvian Indians. One thing is strange though in the data found and that is that if the date of birth is correct and the date of the photos are correct he was nine and twelve years old when taking these photographs? He died of an arrow wound that did not heal right. The two photographs illustrate two songs in the Top 100 that were recorded by Enrique Pinello, a Peruvian ethnomusicologist and composer. The two tracks, Shipibo Song and Ashaninka Songs, appear on the CD The Spirit Cries: Music of the Rainforests of South America and the Caribbean, compiled by (Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and part of the Endangered Music Project series of the Library of Congress. The recordings were made in 1964 (much later than the photos,) the singers are not named. The Shipbo, now known as the Shipibo-Conibo people (a merging of two cultures,) live along the Amazonian Ucayali river and are known for their waeving and pottery. Both feature designs similar to the tattoos seen in Kroehle's photographs. Recent photographs, there are many, as the culture is very popular, do not show tattoos. Today's music is very much of the same tradition as the recordings of 1964, and (I assume) how it sounded in 1888. The Asháninka, or Campa Indians live nowadays scattered throughout the Amazon region that borders Brazil. No tattoos in current pictures either but they do paint very colorful lines on their faces.

Kramer

Kramer of Bongwater
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

To continue where I left off (The Woman in the Band) now to Ann Magnuson and Kramer. Together they formed Bongwater in 1986, started a relation (while his estranged wife was pregnant, hence the baby in the painting) in 1991 and disbanded when the two broke up in 1992. Kramer got back together with his wife then, and Magnuson sued Kramer for breach of contract. I recently wondered how it had happened that I never listened to Bongwater until only recently. Whereas Ann Magnuson is a fairly new addition to the Top 100, Kramer was part of many past Top 100 entries. Shockabilly featured several times, while he was also in Half Japanese, recorded with the Butthole Surfers, and was the producer of many more (most notably Daniel Johnston.) Shockabilly was a trio consisting of Kramer, Eugene Chadbourne, and David Licht, who also part of Bongwater. Kramer is Mark Kramer (born Stephen Michael Bonner in 1958). He used the single name Kramer throughout his career. (I wonder if Kramer in the hugely popular TV sitcom series Seinfeld was inspired by the musician Kramer.)

The Woman in the Band

Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

Mark E Smith and Brix Smith of the Fall
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

Gaye Advert is billed as the first female punk rock star. She played bass in the Adverts. I think she may have inspired women to pick up a rock band instrument as (I assume) Suzi Quatro inspired her to start playing bass. Many guy bands following the Adverts had a women in their line-up. Often she is or becomes married to another band member. Brix Smith Start, guitarist in the Fall was married to Mark E Smith, Tina Weymouth who plays bass for the Talking Heads to drummer Chris Frantz. Kim Gordon, bass player in Sonic Youth to Thurston Moore. In Sonic Youth all members were equal and when the marriage between Gordon and Moore ended the band split up. The Fall, however, always was Mark E's band and when Brix and him split the guitar player was simply replaced. The band finally broke up in 2017 when Mark E Smith became too sick to perform. He died in 2018. 

The punk-rock movement certainly empowered women to pick up instruments traditionally played mostly by men, and to form their own bands. The process towards gender equality in rock music started in 1976.

Hugo Zemp (cont.)

Aamamata, funerary chant
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2014

I left the previous post on Hugo Zemp with a question that I now have the answer to: Indeed panpipes are in the repertoire of traditional Solomon Islanders music. However...this is not because Hugo Zemp imported the flutes from South America but the islanders themselves invented their own pan flute and they make it out of bamboo. And I learned that the Koleo (funerary chant) that I so treasure and is at #3 in the Top 100, is a rather recent development, a synthesis of the previous weaping tradition at a funeral and the vocal imitation of bamboo panpipes. The photograph that was the source for the above painting features in a lengthy paper on bamboo flutes by Hugo Zemp. He probably took the picture. Depicted are two women performing the funerary chant Aamamata, a different recording than the Koleo that is featured on Iles Salomon: Musique de Guadalcanal (Ocora/Radio France, 1970.) Hugo Zemp now is becoming the most important ethnomusicologist in this year's top 100 as he is the producer of Les voix du monde, une anthologie des expressions vocale, a three cd-set compiling all these recordings I have been collecting (and mimicking in my own compilation The Origins of Music.) All the stuff I've been gathering over many years I suddenly find in one instant compiled on these three cds. The collection is all I have been listening to.

Charles Duvelle

Charles Duvelle and his instrument
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Earlier paintings of Charles Duvelle featured him as an old man, here he is in his prime in the 1970s working on field recordings that became his legacy. He considered himself a "westerner with a microphone" and this painting shows just that. The track he recorded that is in the top 100 is, like last year, is Wama Igini Kamu recorded in Papua New Guinea. The track comes in at #2 and appears on The Photographs of Charles Duvelle (Sublime Frequencies, 2017.) Charles Duvelle (1937-2017) was a French ethnomusicologist and composer. For a time he was associated with the record label Disques Ocora, founded by the founder of Musique Concrète Pierre Schaeffer. It is to Duvelle to whom Ocora owns its sterling reputation. [Sublime Frequencies] For Ocora Duvelle recorded the music found on the cd-set mentioned above, including Wama Igini Kamu. Duvelle rejected neocolonialism and while at Ocora put forward an effort to decolonialize the recording industry and setting up—mainly in Africa—local systems for the production and distribution of music.

Jean-Jacques Nattiez

Rekutkar performers
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Jean-Jacques Nattiez
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

For the obvious reason of similarity in style I assumed that the three vocal throat singing traditions, the Inuit katajjait, the Ainu rekutkar, and the Chukchi pič eynen, found within the arctic circle must be related and/or have a common ancestor. I recently signed up for JSTOR, an online database of scholarly research papers and lo and behold the relationships have of course been studied at length. I am now the proud owner of a wealth of information about this subject. The paper I am referencing here is Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing: A Comparative, Historical, and Semiological Approach by Jean-Jacques Nattiez. I've also downloaded the liner notes to the cd Canada: Inuit Games and Songs produced by Nattiez. In these notes I am now able to identify all singers of katajjait in the Top 100 (there are many) that were previously anonymous. The two paintings presented here are to illustrate Imitation of the Cries of Geese and Assalalaa, the recordings were made by at Baffin Land  by Nicole Beaudry and Claude Charon in the mid seventies. The painting for Assalalaa I was working on from a photograph found by an image search of the terms katajjait combined with Jean-Jacques Nattiez represents not Inuit but Ainu singers. I intuited this was the case since I had not seen katajjait performed sitting down while the pose was the same as in my painting of rekutkar. The image I used was originally taken by I. Kurosawa (used by William P. Malm in 1963) and reproduced in Nattiez' paper. There's a hint of the Scottish flag in the bottom third of the painting that appeared when the thought of painting the flag arose. I never reject a thought but I obscured it later on as both the flag in form and meaning had really nothing to do with what I was painting. What I am most interested in is the history of these three vocal styles and its (ancient) origins. Nattiez hints in his paper at a possible shamanic origin of said vocal styles but it is hard to establish sound evidence for this hypothesis. Scientific papers do not, per definition, use incidental inferences.
Jean-Jacques Nattiez was born in Amiens, France, 30 December 1945. He is a musical semiologist and professor at the Université Montréal. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1990.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. "Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing: A Comparative, Historical, and Semiological Approach." Ethnomusicology 43, no. 3 (1999): 399-418. doi:10.2307/852555.

Charles Brooks, Madagascar

Vonarino
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

So far my attention to ethnomusicologists on these pages here have been far from diverse. The three discussed so far (Duvelle, Lecomte, and Kemp) are all French speaking white males born within two years from one another. The next painting that's in the works is of Jean-Jacques Nattiez who (though a little younger) fits also in that category. As it is in many fields in the arts (and in general) the last few decades have brought many changes and the field is much more diverse now. Charles Brooks, who recorded Vonarino (above), is, like Nattiez from Montréal and speaks French, but represents a whole new generation. He is a field-recording artist (as his bio states) and also a musician and unlike the others mentioned, not associated with an institute of higher education. One change in the field of ethnomusicology over the last few decades has been to provide much more contextual information with recordings than was the case earlier. All musicians on Brook's Fanafody album are portrayed and also photographed. A photo of Vonarino (Vonarino Avaradova Amboaniotelo Tulear) made it to the cover of the album and the song in my Top 100 Mozika Mandrehita is the opener on side A. Vonarino plays a home-made three string fiddle (lokanga). Recorded in Madagascar in 2006/7.

Henri Lecomte

Henri Lecomte
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Anna Dimitrievna Neostroeva 
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2018

Henri Lecomte (1938-2018) died last year. I just figured that out while searching for biographical data on him. Darn, last year I painted and wrote about another French ethnomusicologist Charles Duvelle, he had just passed away in 2017 and I didn't even know it then. Henri Lecomte (Google keeps thinking I misspelled his name and I'm searching for the tennis star Henri Leconte) was, beside his work in the field, also a musician and director. He played a host of instruments among them many traditional central Asian ones. The last thirty years of his life were dedicated to research into the music of the Arctic Siberian regions. He wrote a number of papers on the subject and his series of cd releases simply called Siberia consists of eleven volumes, all released on Buda Music (Musique de Monde) between 1991 and 2009. They're hard to get by. I have two (plus some downloads of individual tracks from other discs in the series) both ordered via amazon.fr. In front of me lies Volume 3 dedicated to the Kolyma (Chants de nature et d'animaux) which features musicians with Čukč (Chukchi), Even, and Jukaghir backgrounds. The disc is from 1995. There are seven recordings made by Henri Lecomte in the Top 100 this year, as there were last year. One of these is a throat song by Anna Neostroeva who is Chukchi. I painted her last Fall but never posted it on these pages. The source photo was taken by Lecomte. There are still a handful of older paintings waiting to be uploaded here. I never posted on the painting I did last year (when he was still alive) of Lecomte either. The image can be seen at #43 in the post that shows thumbnails of all 100 paintings from the last year's list. This one is better.

Hugo Zemp

Hugo Zemp playing a pan flute watched by a young woman
14 x 11 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas, 2019

Most recordings (sixty-nine to be precise) in the Top 100 2018/2019 were not recorded in a studio but in the "field" by folklorists, (ethno)musicologists, hobbyists, and institutions. Not always do I, in these pages, dwell on those individuals who travel the world to record music from the most remote places in often challenging even dangerous conditions. From the sixty-nine recordings the majority were made by ethnomusicologists from France and the US. Over the next few weeks I'll single out a few of these individuals whom I will provide with a short bio and of course paint. First up is Hugo Zemp, who is represented twice in the top 10 with recordings made in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Both tracks come from the LP Iles Salomon: Music del Guadalcanal. Professor Zemp was born in Basle, Switzerland in 1937 and has recorded, written, and filmed on the subject of ethnic music. As a Swiss national (working in France) he is naturally interested in yodeling, a subject he also found in various places beside Switzerland. On the image above Zemp is seen playing a pan flute in the Solomon Islands. He must have transported that thing all the way from South America! The young woman (who may well be the individual heard on Aate: Dance le femmes) looks bewildered. I wonder if Zemp left the pan flute behind and if so, did the flutes end up in the repertoire of Solomon Islands traditional music?

The following is the full list of credits for the field recordings, they're in order of the Top 100. A few names will sound familiar (Bartok) but most are pretty obscure.

Charles Duvelle; Hugo Zemp (2); Jean-Jacquez Nattiez (2); Anne-Maria and Pierre Pétrequin (2); Béla Bartók; Ramon Pelinski (3); OPOS; Enrique Pinilla (2); David Fenshawe (2); Megan Biesele; Jaap Kunst; Dept. of Anthropology, Government of India; Theodore Levin (3); Henry Lecomte (7); Francisco Carreño and Miguel Cardona; W. Coppens; Charles Brooks (2); David Blair Stiffler (3); Leo A. Verwilghen (2); Steven Field (2); Denise Harvey; Frank Proschan; Albert Cort Haddon; Albert Lord; Michel Vuylsteke; Andrei Golovnev; unknown (7); F. Conti; Vietnamese Institute of Musicology (2); Andre Didier; Howard Keva Kaufman; Hugh Tracey; Carol Jenkins; Georges Luneau; A.P. Elkin; Dave Dargie; Anne Chapman; Stephen Jay; Gilbert Rouget and André Didier; Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin; Jenny de Vera; Center for Andean Ethnomusicology.

The Weaves and Tanya Tagaq

Tanya Tagaq
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Jasmyn Burke, The Weaves
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

As in the previous post on the Ainu both paintings here also represent songs that were in last year's Top 100. Twenty-one repeats from the previous list seems about average. All three songs in which the Canadian (Inuit) Tanya Tagaq appears were also listed last year. Twice under her own name and once as a guest in the (also) Canadian band The Weaves. I did not paint Jasmyn Burke last year as I deemed the contribution of Tanya Tagaq to the song Scream by Burke's band The Weaves the reason for its inclusion then. Now this is different as the song comes in at #12 in the Top 100 2018/2019. Punk rock meets throat singing!