Lola Kiepja

Lola Kiepja, pencil on paper, 14x11 inches, 2020

Lola Kiepja was about 90 years old when she died in October of 1966. She had survived her two husbands, all of her nine children and most of her grandchildren as well. She actually survived most all of her people, the Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego, and was, in 1965 and 1966 when ethnologist Anne Chapman befriended and recorded her, the only surviving member who knew their language and customs. Lola Kiepja was, like mother and maternal grandfather, a shaman who had been instructed on the secrets of Selk'nam mythology. She had been born just before the onslaught of disease, fracticide, and a genocide had reduced the numbers of Selk'nam from about 4,000 to about 300 in just a few decades. Anne Chapman recorded 92 chants by Kiepja, The Guanaco Myth Chant, one of Kipeja's favorites, was recorded more than once and featured in last year's top 100 as well as this year's. The myth (and lyrics to the chant) goes as follows:

I am about to die. Bury me in the white earth (where the guanacos often sleep and rub their backs to rid themselves of vermin) but do not bury me deep in the earth, leave my head and shoulders free. After I die you must perform tachira (the mourning rite) and as you are going away singing of your grief, a man will approach you. He will look exactly like me but he will not be me. He will ask to make love to you, do as he says.

"When he died the daughters did just as their father had ordered. As they walked away, while they were still singing the lament, the father jumped out of his grave, hot with desire to make love to his daughters. He sniffed their tracks and chased wildly after them, urinating as he ran (as if he had already been metamorphosed into a guanaco). When he caught up to them he said: "I am the one your father told you about. Come let us make love." One of his daughters ran on. When he made love to the other both became transformed into guanacos." [Anne Chapman, The End of the World, Buenos Aires, 1988]

A guanaco, a camelid related to the Llama, was a main food staple of the Selk'nam. Check here for more information and other portrait paintings of Lola Kiepja.

Yekuana Revisited

Medicine Woman of the Yekuana People (from Los juegos de la Yekuana)

Tawaniwechi is a second track from Music of the Venezuelan Yekuanan Indians [Folkways, 1975] in this year's list. This particular recording of a Yekuana shaman, the last on the record, was not recorded by neither musicologist listed in the credits on the record, but is rather a historic recording from 1912 by the German anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg. Walter Coppens, Barbara Brandli, and Jean Francois Nothomb, who recorded all other music on the collection decided to include the old wax cylinder recording for historical context. In the recording made in Nauakuna in the South of Venezuela, a shaman is heard using the voice of the spirit Tawani. Even though Tawani is a defunct spirit, the voice of Tawani, invoked in this recording, sounds much like it did one hundred years later as can be witnessed in the film Los juegos de los Yekuana by Enrique Blein. The image above is based on a still from the film.

Two New Ink Drawings

Topoke line dance, 11 x 14, ink on paper, 2020

I've completed two new ink drawings this week. Both represent seconds, musicians or peoples I already painted for this year's top 100. The two drawings represent numbers 39 & 40 in the Top 100 2020. For more information on the Topoke people I encourage you to watch the video chronicling the previous Topoke drawing from earlier this year. The link to it can be found here. The second Topoke track in the list is a mourning song sung by women, the second Nina Simone track in the list is Sinnerman and comes from the album Pastel Blues.

 Nina Simone, 14 x 11, ink on paper, 2020

Thelonious Mingus

Charles Mingus, ink on paper, 2020

 

My appreciation for certain jazz musicians active in the 1960s never wanes. In the midst of exploring new musical styles, eras, and geographic locations the old jazz favorites, such as Mingus and Monk, never cease to impress me. A Rolling Stone article Wynton Marsalis on 12 Essential Jazz Recording introduced me to this recording of Meditations on Integration made in Oslo in 1964. Flutist Eric Dolphy had just informed Mingus he was going to stay behind in Europe and the two of them have a little conversation on stage before starting the song. Mingus asks Dolphy how long he is planning to stay in Europe, a poignant exchange as Dolphy dies just a few months later. The approach of the drawing reminded me of how I did a series of Jazz drawings for the Top 100 of 1999, the first one of many that was exhibited publicly. The local Columbus newspaper The Other Paper chose Thelonious Monk to feature the cover of their events section. 

Thelonious Monk, The Other Paper, 2000

I Light the Fire

Sivugun und Nunana, 11x14 inches, 2020

Pic-eine'rkin is a form of throat singing related to the katajjait of the Canadian Inuits and the Rehbuhkara of the Japanese Ainu people. Not many recordings of Pic-eine'rkin exist as the form is near extinct. Until two year ago I've only read about it but then I found some videos on OPOS (Open Planet of Sound), a Swiss research institute, that featured the ensemble Kiighwyak, a Chukchi group recorded in 1991 and 1993 in Sireniki in the extreme eastern part of Siberia. One of the videos ended up as #10 in the Top 100 2019 (here's a link.) Sivugun and Nunana are two elderly Chukchi women who also performed in these videos. They were once part of the Kiighwyak Ensemble but retired. Recently I found more pic-eine'rkin recordings: Three examples of pic-eine'rkin appear on La Voz Humana en la musica, parte I, a project by the scholar Carlos Reynoso. Reynoso had pulled the recordings from The Russian Far North, a source that I have not been able to track down. There are no data for the recordings of which I Light the Fire appears at #36 in the Top 100 2020. The above drawing was completed over the course of four days, incessantly scribbling my way through.