Top 100 2019-7: 31-40

31. Dumagat Throat Song

Dumagat woman with child, oil on canvas, 2019

"While singing, the Dumagat woman in this recording vibrated her throat with her hand," such 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 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.

32. Uwejeje Imana (Watutsi song)

Watutsi Woman (Songs of the Watutsi cover), 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The Watutsi (or Tutsi) belong to an ethnic group (shared by the Hutus) who live predominantly in Rwanda and neighboring Burundi. The Tutsi are among the tallest people on earth (average height 5'9") and don't live too far from the forests where pygmies live (rather Central African Foragers, a rather short people at an average of less than 4'11".) Unlike the exotic Rundi featured on a postcard I used for a 2015 painting illustrating the same song, the Tutsi woman here actually represents a Tutsi singer. The image is taken from the cover of the record Songs of the Watutsi (Ethnic Folkways, 1963) the song appears on. That song, Uwejeje Imana, is sung by women and girls from the royal court at Shyogwe. The image, also used by Wikipedia on their Tutsi page, was probably taken by Leo Verwilghen, who recorded the tracks on the album and also wrote the texts. Rwanda was a Belgian colony until 1962.

33. Ulahi and Eyo:bo sing with afternoon cicadas

Eyo:bo, 14 x 11 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2018

Ulahi starts a song and Eyo:bo repeats. Eyo:bo is an echo as it were of Ulahi, but her voice is different. The echo, together with a chorus of cicadas in the background makes for a spellbinding musical recording. Steven Field recorded it in 1977 in the Kulali area of the Bosavi rain forest in Papua New Guinea. The song appears on the second disc, Sounds and Songs of Everyday Life, of the box set Bosavi:Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea released by Smithsonian Folways Recordings in 2001.

34. The Dani of Papua: throat singing, Yo-Ayo-A-O

Un vieil homme fument un pipe en bambou, Yotali, oil on canvas, 2019

The painting is based on a photograph by Pierre Pétrequin that appears on the cover of Les Dani de Nouvelle-Guinée, Volume II. The French publisher NordSud (2001) compiled four discs with the music of the Dani. The most surprising tracks are a number of examples of throat singing, adding yet another geographic location where this age old tradition is still being practiced. The track Yo-Ayo-O by the Wayo people is one of them. Recorded by Pétrequin together with Anne-Marie Pétrequin and Olivier Weller in Yeleme.

35. Don Cherry/Krzysztof Penderecki – Humus, the Life Force

Loesje Hamel, 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 died of cancer at the age of 35. 

36. John Coltrane – My Favorite Things

John Coltrane, oil on canvas, 2019
Coltrane's last recorded concert continues to mesmerize. His concert at the Olatunji Center of African Culture on April 23rd 1967 was his penultimate one, he died a day before my third birthday on July 17th 1964. This would be the tenth painting I've done after a photograph by F. Winham that features Coltrane's last combo with Rashied Ali, Jimmy Garrison, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. The song from the concert My Favorite Things remains unchallenged at the number one spot of my continued count top 100 dating back to 1983.

37. Oktjabrina Vladimirovna and Svetlana Naumeva – Je chevanche mon rêne

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.

38. Katajjait on "Hamma"

Mary Sivuaraapik and Audia throat singing, oil on canvas, 2019

The track 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.

39. Yaʼ Ak Keodaeng and Yaʼ Seu Keodaeng – Teum song

Kmhmu, 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. 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 in a stencil print of a few years back and I will experiment further on this concept. Possibilities galore but not enough to create a full deck.

40. 1898 Torres Strait Death Wail

Malo Ceremonial Dance, 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.