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 Nishizama – Horippa

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