Infanticide

Woman preparing the mesh for manioc beer
14x11 inches, watercolor, pencil, spray paint on paper, 2020

I think infanticide is pretty cruel. The whole concept of it seems very alien, but it didn't used to be that way. The practice was actually rather universal and still used among certain cultures that have not been in contact, or are independent from, the industrialized world. It's a debate of ethics I guess. We in the Western civilization would think of infanticide as unethical and the cultures who practice it as barbaric. They themselves think nothing of it. Ethics is a social construct and for most people in the world it is an effect of organized religion. Philosophy has a great deal to say about ethics too, but it is also formed on the same structures our civilization is built on. Philosophers think a lot about ethics,  they think about identity, and how and when a newborn baby becomes a person. They may consider that an infant becomes a person, a human being, at perhaps three years of age. Still philosophy will not condone infanticide. Imagine our cultural norms would shift, perhaps because of the philosophy of personhood, so that we come to think of babies becoming individuals at the age of one. This is when an infant would get "christened," named, assigned a gender, a character of its own, and so forth. The likely result of such a cultural debate would be that the general population could accept an abortion maybe a month or two later in the pregnancy than it is the case now. This, in my opinion, would be a good thing. Let them choose, and we, men, stay out of the debate altogether.

The Shuar are one of the peoples practicing infanticide, at least they did in 1984, when Michael Harner wrote Jivaro: Pepole of the Sacred Waterfalls.[Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984] They would only kill deformed babies though and not, as with some other cultures, do it as a sacred ritual, neither do they have a preference for girls or boys. As I sketched out in May life for a Shuar woman is hell. Who would blame them if they didn't want to bring a new baby girl into the world.

The photograph the above drawing is based on was taken by the same Michael J. Harner who also recorded the Social dance song and produced the record both photo and song are found on: Music of the Jivaro of Ecuador. [Ethnic Folkways, 1972]

COVID

Melakhan Langa, narh flute
11x14 inches, pencil, watercolor, flowers on paper, 2020

The Top 100 2020 series is nicknamed the COVID-19 series. This happened because when I started the series the country was under a lockdown order and people were asked to stay home because of the virus. I thought it was appropriate to make works at our living room table rather than my usual easel paintings done in the studio. To sit down and meticulously draw a picture seemed to capture the spirit of the time for for me. Then I also started to add the COVID-19 stats for the various regions the songs originated in. In that same spirit I felt the need the other day to not only make a meticulously detailed portrait of a musician but also to add flowers to it in a typical low-art-household-watercolor fashion. The wildflowers in our yard give me great joy and before I set out to photograph my drawing I decided to stick some actual flowers to the surface. The result represents for me more than any other the spirit of COVID-19. The drawing will probably look a bit more weathered tomorrow as it does in the photo (not to mention three weeks from now.) It so happened that this drawing was made on the very last blank page remaining in my sketchbook. All 27 works thus far in the Top 100 2020 are still attached to this sketchbook. I have purchased an identical book to continue the series and this full one now I could lay away with some weights on top. I wait a few weeks before I check how the flowers fared during their drying process.  

A bit about the music illustrated: The recording in the top 100 list is Flûte narh avec bourdon vocal and appears on Les voix de monde, une anthologie des expressions vocales published in 1996 by Hugo Zemp. The recording was made by Geneviève Dournon in 1993 in Rajasthan, India. The instrument used is the narh flute, cut from a kane called kar. The performer is Sherha Mahamad who belongs to the Islamic ethnic minority of Sindhi Sipahi. A vocal drone accompanies the way the flute is played. I did not have a picture so I searched for a substitute and learned some things about the flute, the tradition, and the people in the process. And I found a video of a man, Melakhan Langa, playing this flute. A beautiful video. The playing of the narh is yet another tradition in danger of dying out. 

Topoke on Video

Topoke Girl Playing Lilolo
14x11 inches, pencil, pen, watercolor on paper, 2020

Below is the step by step video of how this drawing came about. No need to write any information here as it's discussed in the video at length. It's one hour but really cool!