Thursday, May 28, 2020

There's Cat Power songs in the Top 100 2020 too!

Cat Power
14 x 11 inches, pencil and spray paint on paper, 2020
One of the few popular musicians that I continue to listen to is Cat Power. While last year saw a spike in Cat Power songs in the Top 100—a new album, Wanderer, was released—this year's contributions are less numerous but still significant. The song Wanderer was #1 last year, and currently standing at #12, it is the highest of three of her songs in this year's list. The other two are In Your Face also from the 2018 album Wanderer, and her best known song Good Woman returns as well. The latter is from her 2002 release You Are Free. The above drawing I started last week but initially it didn't click, so I started a new one from the same photograph by Christian Lantry. Both of these drawings I continued to work on with just a single pencil for several days until both satisfied me as a representation of Cat Power. The second one then is here to represent In Your Face in the Top 100 2020.

Cat Power
14 x 11 inches, pencil and tempera on paper, 2020

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Top 100 2019-10: 1-10



1. Cat Power – Wanderer
Cat Power, oil on canvas, 2018
Wanderer is out now. I had preordered a copy that came with a 45. My first Cat Power 45. The record is great and my favorite thus far is the title track Wanderer. The song appears at the beginning and the end of the album and my preference is the latter version. The source for the image of the painting was provided by a September 23 New York Times article with a photo by Ryan Pfluger. All 100 for the current top 100 will be painted on a golden acrylic ground. The blue rectangle in the background here makes it look a cover for the National Geographic. 

2. Wame Igini Kami (Papua)
Charles Duvelle with his instrument, 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, 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.) 

3. Chants funebre: Koleo 
Aamamata, funerary chant, oil on canvas, 2019
The Koleo (funerary chant) at #3 in the Top 100, is a rather recent development, a synthesis of the previous weeping tradition at a funeral and the vocal imitation of bamboo panpipes. The photograph that was the source for the 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.) 

4. Bongwater – Nick Cave Dolls
Ann Magnuson, oil on canvas, 2019
From the 1991 album The Power of Pussy LP comes the song Nick Cave Dolls. How did it happen that I didn't hear of Bongwater in the 1990s? "Wow...They have Nick Cave dolls now...I want one." Bongwater was formed by Mark Kramer and Ann Magnuson in 1985. Members of the band then also included David Licht and Dave Rick. Licht went on to form the Klezmatics, Rick to Phantom Tollbooth. Kramer founded Shimmy Disc Records in 1987. 

5. Kiyo Kurokawa, Teru NishizamaHorippa
Kiyo Kurokawa, oil on canvas, 2019
Kiyo Kurokawa and Teru Nishizama perform several duets and a few solos on the cd Chants des Ainu (Ainu Songs) from the Musique & Musiciens du Monde series (UNESCO.) Last year songs of theirs were represented by stock images of  traditional Ainu women but now I think that I've found photos that actually depict the two women. The photos were made by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who also recorded the music and are found on Ainu Songs Japan (Phillips) which was in 1980 the first release of the music recorded in 1978 in Hokkaido. I do not have the original LP and liner notes are not published on the web so I can't be sure the images depict them or who's who. Given the prominence of Kurokawa on the LP and that she's seen clapping on another photo I may assume that the individual on the record sleeve is indeed Kurokawa.

 6. Tiom, Dani: Cour d'amour, air doux
Dani woman with children, oil on canvas, 2019
The Dani who live in the western (Indonesian) part of New Guinea are known for their appearances. Men wear penis sheaths that are quite long and pointy. The sheaths look vicious but I assume they function the opposite way as it keeps men from getting an erection and therefore discourages the idea of sexual intercourse. Women, when losing a dear one cut off a digit of one of their fingers, a painful way to mourn but it helps mourning I suppose. 

7. Bocet: Lament for a Dead Brother
Bela Bartok, oil on canvas, 2019
The Top 100, in the past, featured many a Bartok composition. Bela Bartok is back now in the Top 100, not as composer but as musicologist, and collector of folk music. He is well known for his work on the folk music of his native Hungary, but also collected Central– and Eastern European music extensively. Case in point is a CD with music from his collection I picked up the other day with folk music of Rumania (as it was spelled in 1951, when the music was first published.) 

8. Aate: Dance le femmes, Rope
Hugo Zemp, oil on canvas, 2019
Hugo Zemp 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?
note: Panpipes are indeed 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.

9. Imitation of the cries of geese, Katajjait on geese cries
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, oil on canvas, 2019
Canada: Inuit Games and Songs was produced by Nattiez. The painting presented here is to illustrate Imitation of the Cries of Geese, a recording made at Baffin Land by Nicole Beaudry and Claude Charon in the mid seventies. 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. Performers of goose cries heard include: Elijah Pudloo Mageeta, Quanak Martha Meekeega, Napache Samaejuk Pootoogook, and Mary Qarjjurarjuk

10. Kiighwyaq Ensemble – Pic-eine'rkin: Ay-ay-amamay  
Kiighwyak Ensemble, oil on canvas, 2019
Ay-ay-amamay is a song seen on a video recorded by OPOS, a music program at the University of Basel, Switzerland. We see and hear seven singers who form the group Kiighwyak perform a pic-eine'rkin (a style of throat singing specific to the Siberian Chukchi). The song comes with a set of hand gestures. The movements of the hands, with an occasional clap in there, belong to the song. Traditions have withstood the ages, even when musical traditions have been repressed by political events. The Chukchi women seen in the video wear ordinary modern clothing. That traditional music isn't just performed by those peoples who haven't been in contact with civilizations, and that ancient musical traditions are performed in buckskin, or reindeer pelts belong to the world of myth.

The video for the last track (#10) is the second video shown on the page following this link: https://tales.nmc.unibas.ch/de/opos/pic-eine-rkin-7/erleben-9-54/sechs-pic-eine-rkin-182
 











Sunday, May 24, 2020

Top 100 2019-9: 11-20



11. Shipibo: Song
Shipibo Indian, Peru, oil on canvas, 2019
The Shipbo, now known as the Shipibo-Conibo people (a merging of two cultures,) live along the Amazonian Ucayali river are known for their waeving and pottery. Both feature designs similar to the tattoos seen in Kroehle's photograph of 1888 that was the source for this painting. 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 this recordings of 1964, and (I assume) how it sounded in 1888.

12. The Weaves – Scream
Jasmyn Burke, oil on canvas, 2019 
Scream was in last year's Top 100 as well. Twenty-one repeats from the previous list seems about average in top 100 history. All three songs in which the Canadian 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!

 13. Aluar horns (Ngoma music)
Aluar Horn Orchestra, oil on canvas, 2019
The record Africa: Drums Chants and Instrumental Music introduced me more than thirty years ago to the field of ethnomusicology that became my main focus in collecting music. My favorite track from the record Aluar Horns was the first ever in the field that was listed in a Top 100, this was in the late 1980s. The tune reemerged in a number of top 100s since. About sixty horn players in the royal court of the Arua in Uganda comprise the cacophony heard in the recording. Each horn is able to play one note and one note only. A photograph I found recently show eight of them, three of which feature in the painting. This painting on a silver ground is the first of six previous illustrations that show the actual musicians.

14. Kiyo Kurokawa, Teru Nishizama – Upopo
Teru Nishizama, oil on canvas, 2019
The Ainu are descendants of the indigenous Japanese Jōmon people and share many cultural characteristics with neighboring Siberian and Inuit peoples. A great number used to live (and some still do) in the easternmost Russian territory Sakhalin, an island just north of Hokkaido, the northernmost Japanese island where most Ainu live today. Sakhalin has been disputed territory between  Japan and Russia but became solidly Russian after the second World War. The two songs in the Top 100 (see #5) are both associated with the bear festival. Upopo is a sitting song and Horippa a dancing song.

15. Te bow with two women's voices, San
!Kung San Woman playing a gut pluriarc, oil on canvas, 2019
The te bow is a traditional instrument made a wooden post and played with a gut bow. A recording of it made by Megan Biesele in Botswana in 1972 appears on Instrumental Music of the Kalahari San (Ethnic Folkways, 1982) and is featured in this year's 100. The traditional instruments of the !Kung San people, all heard on the record, are, beside the te bow, the hunting bow, the plurirac (depicted above) and the sitengena (a thumb piano.)

16. Roro Natives – Kittoro
!Kung San Woman playing a gut pluriarc, oil 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 from 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.

17. Andaman Islands: Port Blair, vocals
Andaman Islands, Port Blair, oil on canvas, 2019
In November 2018 John Allen Chau, an American missionary, set foot on the northernmost of the Sentinel Islands. His mission didn't last long as he was speared by the indigenous Sentinelese. The Sentinelese inhabit the least visited of the Andaman Islands that are located in the Bay of Bengal east of India. The latest Indian census counted only thirty-nine inhabitants. The Indian government used satellite imagery to count because visits are prohibited. Chau traveled illegally. Since 1700, as far back as recorded history goes on the Andaman Islands, the Sentinelese have only been in contact with the modern world a handful of times, usually very brief as they either flee into the bushes or kill the visitors. The Indian government has decided to leave them alone. The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are believed to be members of the first wave of migrants out of Africa some 60,000 years ago. The Sentinelese, moreover, are believed to have been completely isolated from contact since 30,000 BCE when they inhabited the island they're still living at today. Their language is unintelligible. There are no sound recordings whatsoever. The related Onge share their territory and are also left to their own but are more approachable. I was surprised to find a sound recording made by the Indian Institute of Anthropology in 1960. The recording may be the closest analogy to the music of prehistoric men that exists. The recording was made in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and features a chorus of boys and girls performing a turtle hunting song.

18. Gombojav – Running Horse/Two Lovers on Horseback
Gombojav, oil on canvas, 2018
Musicians often come from musical families. This is true in popular music, classical music, folk music, but nowhere as pronounced as in traditional music. Often traditions in music hinge on the transmission from parents to children. It is rare, however, to find two generations independently featuring in a top 100 of mine. I can't think of a single occasion until this year, when Mongolian tsuur players Gombojav and his father Narantsogt, who had learned to play the instrument from his grandfather, are separately listed. A tsuur is a simple flute with three finger holes typically made from a hollowed out larch or willow. The instrument mimics, rather than imitates, the sounds of nature. Legend has it that spirits possess the instrument. The shoor (as it is called in Tuva) has completely vanished and the tsuur tradition in Mongolia has nearly died out. The instrument was forbidden during Soviet occupation in both Tuva and Mongolia. Gombojav and Narantsogt are two of only a handful of players knowing how to play the tsuur and both have now passed. Narantsogt died of old age and Gombojav of cancer at age thirty-five.

19. The Fall – Smile
Mark E Smith and Brix Smith of the Fall, oil on canvas, 2019
The Woman in the Band (1): 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 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. In some bands the woman was equal. The Fall, however, always was Mark E's band and when Brix and him split the guitar player was simply replaced.

20. Tanya Tagaq – Uja/Umingmak
Tanya Tagaq, oil on canvas, 2019
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.


Friday, May 22, 2020

Top 100 2019-8: 21-30



21. Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Theme for the Eulipions
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, oil on canvas, 2019
This Kirk recording is one that has not previously featured in a Top 100: 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 album was recorded in 1976.

22. Antonia Vasil'evna Skalygina – Alterateur de voix Kal'ni
Antonia Vasil'evna Skalygina? oil 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 probably be Ol'ga Anatol'evna Njavan.)

23. Sonic Youth – Shaking Hell
Kim Gordon, oil on canvas, 2019
The Woman in the Band (2): The punk-rock movement 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 in England. Kim Gordon, bass player in Sonic Youth was married to Thurston Moore. In Sonic Youth all members were equal and when the marriage between Gordon and Moore ended in 2011 the band split up. Shaking Hell is from SY's first album Confusion is Sex from 1983. It's Gordon's song.

24. Ana and Asuncion Caraballo – Canta para pilar maiz
Ana Caraballo, oil on canvas, 2018
Canta para Pilar Maiz is a work song from Magarita Island in Venezuela recorded by Francisco Carreño and Miguel Cardona in 1949. When I painted the same image in 2013 I must have missed the information concerning the identity of the singer when I tagged the painting as Venezuelan Girl (I should have named her woman instead of girl). I assume that the photographer responsible for this tiny black & white image in the liner notes of volume 9 of The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music would be either Carreño or Cardona. Maize is the staple of the inhabitants of Margarita Island. The authors also credited Asuncion Caraballo as musician but I have hard time making out a second person on the recording.

25. Cat Power – In Your Face
Cat Power, 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. 

26. Yekuana Fertitlty Chant
Ye'kuana (Makiritare) Indian, Venezuela, oil on canvas, 2019
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]

27. Asháninka songs
Asháninka (Campa) Indian, Peru, oil on canvas, 2019
Two photographs by Charles Kroehle taken in 1885 and 1888 were sources for two paintings. They illustrate two songs in the Top 100 that were recorded by Enrique Pinello, a Peruvian ethnomusicologist and composer. The two tracks, Shipibo Song (see #11) 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 for the Library of Congress. The Asháninka, or Campa Indians live nowadays scattered throughout the Amazon region that borders Brazil.

28. Marija Nikoforovna Ceculina – Chukc song (chant et jajar)
Henri Lecomte, oil on canvas, 2019
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 and he had just passed away in 2017, 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. There are seven recordings made by Henri Lecomte in the Top 100 this year.

29. Bongwater – The Power of Pussy
Kramer, oil on canvas, 2019
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.) With Ann Magnuson he formed Bongwater in 1986, started a relation (while his estranged wife was pregnant, hence the baby in the painting) in 1991 and disbanded the band when the two broke up in 1992. Kramer got back together with his wife then, and Magnuson sued Kramer for breach of contract.

30. Vonariva Lokanga & Tarkilava – Mozika Madrehitra
Vonarino, oil on canvas, 2019
One change in the field of ethnomusicology in the last few decades has been to provide much more contextual information with recordings than was the case earlier. All musicians on Canadian 'field-recorrding artist' Charles 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.