Gour Khepa, "madman"

Gour Khepa
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Sometimes referred to as madman or wild man, Khepa is not a name but a Bengali title more properly translated as "wise man." Gour Kyapa (as Khepa is now spelled) was a storied Baul philosopher and musician. The Bauls are an ethnic Bengali sect of wandering minstrels traveling through Bangladesh and eastern India. Their musical tradition goes back to at least the eighteenth century and was orally transmitted only (until sound recordings and subsequent transcriptions were made.) The Bauls are ascetics, renouncing material belongings and marriage. They subsist on gifts or alms in exchange for (musical) recitals that use only very basic language, including many profanities. Many documentary films have been made about the Baul, including a ninety-minute treatise on Gour Khepa, books written, and songs recorded. The LP Bengale: Chants des "fous" (Chants du Monde, 1990) is an excellent compilation. Tu n'as pu conserver le nectar d'amour by Gour Khepa is the song listed in the top 100 2019/19. Gour Khepa was born in 1947 and died after a traffic accident in 2013.

Kittoro

One from a group of Roro natives, eastern Papua New Guinea
14 x 11 inches, oil on silver ground on canvas, 2019

According to the Roro of Papua New Guinea (and many other peoples) ceremonial songs contain magical power. The particular Kittoro song illustrated here was given to the Roro by a friendly tribe from Rigo. The Roro live 130 miles further east on Yule Island in Eastern Papua New Guinea. The Rigo group can't perform the song anymore as it now belongs to the Roro. Jaap Kunst of the Indische Museum in Amsterdam introduces the song on The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music (Vol. 7: Indonesia) but quotes from Father Dupeyrat who recorded the song in 1951 in Tsiria on Yule Island. Kunst talks at length about magico-religious qualities of indigenous music in a lecture given at The Smithsonian Institute in 1959, but does not comment on the question if the magic is still contained in the recorded version (eight years old at the time and now 68 years later.) Don't get me wrong, I truly love this song but the magic doesn't work for me.

"In Your Face"

Cat Power
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

It took me a little while to warm up to Cat Power's new album Wanderer, but now I consider it one of the (her) best ever. Besides the title track camping out at number one, In Your Face and Robbin Hood have also entered the list for this year. The album is on top of the album count and Cat Power on top of the musician count for the year.

Sonny Sharrock

Sonny and Linda Sharrock
14 x 11 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2019

Even though Sonny Sharrock is a fairly well known musician and his music seems right up my alley, I had never heard of him until I picked a random title at Ubuweb's Film & Video. The movie Space Ghost Coast to Coast (1996) is a weird video that originally appeared on the Cartoon Network. The soundtrack was also weird enough for me to research the musician Sonny Sharrock (1940-1994.) Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) appears as a cameo. I bought then a digital copy of Sharrock's first solo album Black Woman of 1969. The music can be described as existing somewhere between Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono. An old Top 100 alumni Milford Graves is the percussionist and drummer. Sharrock's wife Linda is the singer. Two tracks will appear in the Top 100 this year: Peanut and Portrait of Linda in Three Colors, All Black.