"Jivaro"

 

As it stands today five songs from the record "Jivaro" are listed in this year's top 100. The recordings on it were made by Philippe Luzuy. I have not been able to locate an image on which Luzuy appears which makes it a challenge to stick with my concept of painting the recorder next to the musician. This painting is the second one of the five that I will have to do. On the first one I used the image on the record cover for the musician and the cover of the book Visages de bronze as a substitute for Luzuy who recorded the Jivaro in Ecuador in 1956. Visages de bronze is a collaboration between Luzuy and the photographer Pierre Allard and since the book and the recordings were made at the same time I figured the record sleeve photo was also by Allard. I have not been able to find a photo of Allard either but for this second painting illustrating songs from "Jivaro" I did find out about a documentary film that was made at the same time and is also called Visages de bronze. I did find an image of the filmmaker and he is the one portrayed in this painting. His name is Bernard Taisant. I could not find any info on him either but the documentary did win an Award at the Cannes film festival in 1958. Geneviève Vaury is credited as to appear in this film. Of her I find plenty of images but I have no idea if and how she relates to Luzuy or to the Jivaro Indians. (The Jivaro Indians are today identified as Shuar people.) The film isn't even listed in Vaury's filmography. The song this painting illustrates is the first on the album and is called Danse et chœur des hommes auteur d'une tête réduite which translates as a male choir engaged in a dance ritual surrounding a shrunken head. The image on the left is of a Jivaro Indian holding a shrunken head. It is the very same individual who appears on the record sleeve. The photo I used here, to my surprise, was not by Allard and is a older too. The photographer is credited as Bettmann and was apperently taken during the Lewis Cotlow Amazon Expedition. Getty images, who owns the photo, lists 1967 as the date but this can't be right as the last of three expeditions by Lewis Cotlow to the Amazon took place in 1952. The record "Jivaro"is from 1956. A 1951 photograph shows Cotlow together with the very same Jivaro warrior I've now painted twice. A few weeks ago, in Properly Identifying the Music of the Top 100, I discussed the problem of inaccurate data used in publishing before 1970, especially when it concerns items for a larger or popular audience. I have now ordered the book Visages de bronze by Luzuy and Allard and I'll get to the bottom of this confusion of data and credits (even though my French will not nbe good enough to properly interpret the text.) I need the book because I have to paint three more paintings of recordings by Luzuy. (The book is richly illustrated and I'm hoping there's an image of the author included too, if not I will use Geneviève Vaury  for the next Jivaro painting which will be to illustrate a woman's love song.)

Cantos de pilon (worksongs)

Canto Para Pilar Maiz has been in my top 100 twice before. Both in 2013 and in 2018 I used the image that illustrates the song in the liner of the album The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Volume 9: Venezuelan Folk and Aboriginal Music. Now I used the image as an insert (upper left corner.) In 2018 I knew more about the song and the image as I did in 2013 and now in 2021 the picture concerning the song and image becomes clearer again but also more confusing. I am not exactly sure anymore how to interpret the data provided in the liner notes with the Columbia record (of whom Alan Lomax is the final editor) as there are certain errors in the text. I am not sure if the image provided with the song is indeed Ana Caraballo (or Asuncion Caraballo—who is listed as a collaborator—for that matter.) I'm not sure anymore if the performers of the song are correctly identified. There seems to be some confusion about names involved, of the singers, the recorders, and individuals mentioned in the lyrics. On line I found another song (called Cantos de Pilon, undated but more recent than the 1949 date of Canto Para Pilar Maiz) that has almost identical lyrics (even though the lyrics of Canto Para Pilar Maiz were improvised, according to Juan Liscana, who is credited as writer of the liner notes together with Alan Lomax.) In the lyrics of Cantos de Pilon the taparo tree from Canto Para Pilar Maiz is substituted for a lime tree, and the name Alfred Caraballo, the dedicatee of Canto Para Pilar Maiz, is substituted for Asuncion(!?) One thing is certain: Canto Para Pilar Maiz is a work song. The rhythm of the song follows the rhythm of the pestle beating down on the corn inside a mortar. The job and song are typically performed by two women. The main image in the drawing comes from a photo used in a review of Cantos de Pilon. The source of the information: Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera, an important figure in the history of Venezuelan music, and folklore.

More paintings and drawings have been finished for the Top 100 2020 and 2021. The above image is to illustrate number 79 in the Top 100 2020: Cloud Chant from the album Tribal Music of Australia from 1949 that features recordings by A.P. Enkin. I would have dwelt a bit more on this one were it not that I recently talked about him in the context of a mourning song from the same album. The image is taken from the liner notes in the album. I realized I never forwarded the impression I made of the cover of the album that I used for number 71 on the same list: Djedbang-Ari.

Traveling northwest from Australia you may encounter the island of Java in Indonesia, which is another location on the world map that has seen a good many anthropological and ethnomusicological projects undertaken throughout the twentieth century. From a 1950 album, again on Folkways, comes Udan Iris, a love song by a Sundanese woman coming in at number 81 in the Top 100 2020. The music on the album was recorded by Raden Suwanto and Harold Courlander. The portrait above is of Courlander, whose main focus was on African and Haitian music. Courlander (1908-1996) today, is mostly remembered for a lawsuit in which he charged Alex Haley, the author of Roots, of plagiarism. Several anecdotes that appear in Roots were taken from Courtlanders adventure novel Africa, so he claimed. I find no evidence of Courlander actually traveling to Indonesia so I must assume the recording was made by Suwanto. That Courlander was given credit was probably because he was the main editor for the Ethnic Folkways Library label, a name devised by himself. Folkways itself was the project of Moses Asch. A great number of top 100 entries come from the Ethnic Folkways Library. And so does the next work discussed: It's from the Folkways album An Introduction to the music of Viet Nam. Geographically located about the same distance from Java as Java is from Arnhem Land in Australia, be it on a more northerly track. The 1965 album is a compilation by Stephen Addiss of historic recordings made by the famous Vietnamese composer and folklorist Pham Duy (1921-2013). The track in the Top 100 2021 is Ho Ru Con, which is a lullaby of ancient origin recorded in the north of Vietnam. "Ho" in the title stands for "work song." I have not come across the qualification of a lullaby as a work song before.

The image on the left, next to the portrait of Pham Duy, comes from the cover of the album mentioned the song appears on. The woman may or may not represent the singer of the lullaby. Seeing the painting now reproduced I find the face of the woman too narrow. I will go out later today to my studio to fix it. (This is not the first time it happens—what I need to fix, or hone rather, are my observation skills.) The country of Vietnam (in the 1960 still spelled as Viet Nam) also appears in the Top 100 2020. At number 72 in that list is a recording taken from the other main source of the music in the Top 100 2020, which is Les voix du monde, une anthologie des expressions vocales, a 3-cd set compiled by Hugo Zemp. Xi is yet another Vietnamese work song. This one sung by two boys is about the joys and troubles of daily life. The boys belong to the Nung An tribal people of again northern Vietnam and were recorded by Patrick Kersale in 1993.

Cat Power, Top 100 2021

Not nearly as prominent as in earlier years, the Top 100 2021 still retains a Cat Power presence. The song Wanderer that closes out her latest album of the same title and is listed for the third consecutive year. The decision of who to couple Cat Power with in the double portrait series was not as easy as you would think. The recording of the song in 2018 was truly a solo effort. Cat Power (Chan Marshall) wrote the song, played all the instruments and did the vocal parts as well. She also produced the record. I settled for Adeline Jasso who is part of the touring band for the series of concerts following the Wanderer release. She plays guitar in the band. I figured it would make an interesting juxtaposition as the look of Jasso is somewhat reminiscent of how Cat Power herself appeared earlier on in her career. Jasso was the guitar player when I saw Cat Power live in Tampa in 2019. I could have potentially met Cat Power following that concert as a friend of a friend is also a friend of Chan Marshall. I did not pursue to meet her then, I did not feel I would have anything to talk about. (Of course I feel pretty self-conscious about it as I have painted Cat Power about 75 times over the years.) This friend of a friend is the artist Kalup Linzy, a wonderful video and performance artist whom I met a few times. He is also the source of the photograph I used for Cat Power's portrait. I used that same photo for the Cat Power portrait that was still due for the Top 100 2020 as well. The drawing represents To Be a Good Woman at number 78 in that list. To Be a Good Woman is from the 2002 album You Are Free. Both To Be a Good Woman and Wanderer are highly ranked in my "all time" list of songs. The drawing (that I did before the painting) follows the original mid-action pose in the photograph that I changed to a more natural pose that you see in the painting.

 

 

Theoretical Girls: Margaret de Wys

 

Margaret de Wys, Glenn Branca. Oil on canvas, 11x14 inches, 2021.

For a few years now I have the CD Theoretical Record by Theoretical Girls downloaded into my iTunes folder. I'm delighted every time a song from this collection pops up when I have the iTunes library set in shuffle mode. Keyboard Etude is a second keyboard spectacle high up in the list of the Top 100 2021 (Rated X by Miles Davis is the other one.) I did regard Theoretical Girls as Glenn Branca's band and didn't think there were any women in Theoretical Girls. (I knew that Barbara Ess, who died in March of this year, was with Branca in The Static.) Theoretical Girls was formed in 1976 by Branca and Jeffrey Lohn and also included Wharton Tiers and Margaret de Wys. De Wys played keyboards in the band so I must assume it is her featuring prominently on Keyboard Etude. Margaret de Wys is a composer and sound installation artist whose promising career was drastically altered when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. She decided, at the time, to seek alternative healing methods and ended up in Ecuador in the care of a Shuar shaman named Carlos. While I was reading a long interview with de Wys in Bomb Magazine I was thinking: "Is this the same shaman I painted just a few weeks ago?" As it turns out the Shuar shaman is a different individual as the one who worked with de Wys, but it affirmed to me how interconnected and cohesive the songs and paintings of the Top 100 2021 are. Margaret de Wys has written several books on shamanism and healing since.

La Flute de Pan

Hugo Zemp, Sabine Seso, oil on canvas, 11x14 inches, 2021

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about a technique that involves simultaneously creating vocal sounds and playing a flute. I was discussing then the track Au waa recorded by Hugo Zemp in the Solomon Islands in the 1970s. In this painting you see Hugo Zemp himself playing one of those flutes made from bamboo stalks. The portrait of Zemp here though is to accompany the track Koleo sung by a woman from Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands. There are no pan flutes heard on the recording. The name of the woman singing is not listed in the liner notes and the one portrayed above is either Sabina Seso or Sylvia Saghorekao, singers who were recorded by Zemp during the same sessions on the island as Koleo currently residing at number 16 in the Top 100 2021. The image of Seso (I assume it's her) was taken by Zemp and I had used it recently to illustrate Ratsi rope sung by Seso and Saghorekao. Koleo is a type of funerary singing. The vocalizing flute technique like that of the au waa of the Solomon Islands is practiced in different parts of the world. The hindewhu of the Ba-Benzele pygmies of Central Africa is very similar to the au waa. The tune Hindewhu in the top 100 was recorded by Arom Simha in 1966 and appears on the album La musique de la pygmées Ba-Benzélé. The flute is made from the stem of a pawpaw. The image I used for this drawing is a photograph taken by Simha that appeared in the liner notes to that album. There too, in the liner notes for the album, it is illustrating this vocalizing flute technique which is called (by Hugo Zemp, when he used it in the collection Les voix du monde) hocketting. The performer on the recording is a woman though, and it may sound familiar to you because Herbie Hancock used a sample of it in the intro of his famous Watermelon Man from the album Headhunter. Or you you may have heard on Madonna's Sanctuary from Bedtime Stories. She credits Hancock for the sample but fails to identify the true source. When listening to the recording you would think it's an improvised ditty. It couldn't be farther from the truth as the very same melody appears on different Baka pygmie recordings using different names. The very same melody, note for note, is included in Louis Sarno's Bayaka CD recorded 20 years after Simha recorded Hindewhu in 1966.

Ba-Benzelle group (Hindewhu), 11x14 inches, ink, 2021

Breathing in, breathing out

L.V. Thomas, ink, watercolor, 2021

The song Last Kind Words Blues by Geeshie Wiley and L.V. Thomas has been a recurring feature of many a Top 100 list, lists that I compiled annually since 1983. In the Top 100 of 1999, Last Kind Words Blues was number 1. The song has now entered the top 10 of my all time list, it accumulated 130 points since I started counting in 1983. Listening to it still gives me the chills. In 1999, when it was number one, the two performers were still totally obscure. They had recorded six songs in Wyoming in 1930, three each as leader and three as they accompanied the other. The true identities of the two women were lost in time, while the song, as time advanced, gained mythological status.  In 2014, after many years of research, the New York Times journalist Jeremiah Sullivan was able to track down the identities of the two women. He also positively identified a photograph of L.V. Thomas, the only known image of the singer/guitarist. No photograph is known to exist of Geeshie Wiley. Last Kind Words Blues is number 76 of the Top 100 2020. I have written more about this song on my blog The Top 100. You can find it here.

Namgyal Lhamo, Serge Bourguignon, oil on canvas, 2021

Number 14 form the Top 100 2021 is a Tibetan song recorded in exile in Sikkim in Northern India. The singer of the Song of Shigatse, that appears on La Voz humana en la musica, is anonymous. The well known Tibetan singer Namgyal Lhamo functions as a stand in. She's depicted on the left. The right side is a portrait of the French New Wave film director Serge Bourguignon who is the source of the recording. I'm not sure if he actually recorded the singer in Sikkim or if he simply owned the recording. The date given by Carlos Reynoso in the liner notes of La Voz humana is 1955. Reynoso (as far as I can tell from a sketchy translation of these liner notes) suggests a relationship between the French director and the well known archeologist Erica Bourguignon, who specialized in trance singing. I don't think the two were related and neither does the song evidence a trance state. What is remarkable in the song is the continuous vocalization throughout the inhaling and exhaling of breaths.

Hugo Zemp: Les Voix du Monde

Aaresi and Il'aresi, ink on paper, 11x14 inches, 2021

The is the second painting within a brief period featuring the singers Aaresi and Il'aresi. The duo appears several times in the 1994 ethnographic documentary film 'Are'are Music by Hugo Zemp. Footage from the film was recorded mostly in  1974 and 1975 at Malaita, the largest of the Solomon Islands, the performers in the film belong the the 'Are'are ethnic group. The song illustrated here is an example of the Nuuha iisisu genre (love songs/complaints). The song illustrated less than a month ago is from the Aamamata genre of funerary songs. The two singers are also seen in the film as part of a trio performing bamboo stamping tubes as well as part of a larger group of women performing several kiro ni karusi songs, which are water games. The splashing of water provides the rhythm. Aaresi and Il'aresi are in the top 20 of individual performers in the Top 100 2020, a count that I tabulate each year. This is the first year individual performers recorded in an ethnographic context have made this particular list. I have never tabulated a list of recorders but would I have done this Hugo Zemp would, without a doubt, have topped this list in 2020. Not only was Zemp responsible for all six recordings made within the Solomon Islands in the Top 100 this year, he is also the main curator of the 3cd-set Les voix du monde: une anthologie des expressions vocales that was released in 1996 and is with great distance the winner of the albums contest that year. Directly after Aaresi and Il'aresi at number 74 comes a recording of a type of pan flute that is called au waa that features in the same 'Are'Are Music film. Au waa consists of seven bundled (bamboo) pan flutes. The performer now is Noni'ikeni. He sings a melody that is the same melody he produces on the flutes, much in the same manner as jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk is known to have played.

Noni'ikeni, 14x11 inches, 2021

The sources for both ink paintings on paper were screen shots that I took while re-watching the film 'Are're Music. A synopsis of the film, with outtakes of all the major highlights can be seen here on YouTube. I have been painting simultaneously on the top 100s from 2020 and 2021 working on one of each of the series at the same time. The painting for the Top 100 2021 I worked on while drawing the 'Are'are illustrates the song, a lullaby, Hejde Lilibe, recorded by Zoltan Kallos in 1965. The same song was also featured in the Top 100 2020 and, just two months ago, I illustrated the same song. So for the version for this year (all paintings are now on canvas) I decided I would use the very same images as I had used in March. (It's really the only image of the singer Anna Balint that is available on line.) The track is listed as Hungarian Lullaby (cancion de cuna hungara) on the collection La voz humana en la musica by Carlos Reynoso (2021.) Upon my further reading up on the work of Kallos, I realized the recording was not made in Hungary, as I had assumed, but rather by ethnic Hungarians in Romania. (Not that it makes any difference but I had to, again, update my archive to reflect this error in the data I maintain.)

Zoltan Kollas and Anna Balint, oil on canvas, 2021

Properly Identifying the Music for the Top 100

 

In ethnomusicology it is nothing short of best practice to record the name of the performer(s), date and and place of recording, the language of the lyrics, and to identify the appropriate cultural or ethnic group the performer(s) belong to. There's nothing new to this practice but a half a century ago the data are often sloppy, especially concerning material shared to a broader audience beyond the academic field. The Folkways Records label, founded in New York City in 1948 by Moses Asch, set out to "record and document the entire world of sound." [folkways.si.edu] Recordings on the Folkways label have been one of my main sources for music and knowledge of music history for many years. After Moses Asch's death the Folkways collection was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institute in 1987. The Smithsonian honored Asch's wish for the availability of all titles at all times. My own record collection contains many Folkways discs and my collection of songs in digital format bought from the Smithsonian Folkways website (where all titles are available) is rapidly growing. I've come to depend on the information provided by this website to correctly identify the recordings I'm interested in. I've come across several instances now when the provided information isn't all that accurate, and I've learned that anthologies and compilations on the Folkways label are not a reliable source for information. An error on Anthology of Central and South American Indian Music for example, caused me to misidentify a certain song in the Top 100 2020. I'm leaving the Top 100 2020 list intact, including errata, but I change data in my archive when I uncover a mistake. Number 73 from the 2020 list comes from that Indian Music Anthology and is called Yekuana Fertility Chant, a song, according to the liner notes, about the yucca planting ceremony of the Yekuana. The materials on anthologies are often abbreviated from the original record and often a different, more generic, title is used. The fertility song is referenced by number FE 4104 which is the identifying number for the album Music of the Venezuelan Yekuana Indians. That record has indeed a number of songs that involve a (yucca) fertility ceremony. None however match the mp3 file I purchased at the Smithsonian Folkways website. I finally have identified the music as one several Social Dance Songs that appear of the record Music of the Jivaro of Ecuador. Another one of those Dance Songs appears higher up the same Top 100. I was revisiting the Jivaro record in preparation to paint the Shuar Ujaj song by a chorus of women for the Top 100 2021, which is identical to the Social Dance Dance Song by the Jivaro in the Top 100 2020. I learned from the French, very well documented Voices of the World 3cd-set, that the source of that recording is actually a French disc called "Jivaro" rather than the slightly younger Folkways disc. I learned the song was recorded by Philippe Luzuy in 1956. The Smithsonian Folkways website does not credit Luzuy but rather Michael J. Harner. Upon carefully reading the liner notes for the Folkways album  that were written by Harner it turns out he does not actually take credit for the recording, just for the writing and the photographs, also from 1956. I've gotten myself into a big tangled mess of ethnomusicology data that do not match. It seems trivial to untangle this mess, but to me it's essential to the concept of the juxtaposition of recorder and recorded for the 2021 series. I could not find a photograph of the performance that was recorded in 1956 and neither could I find an image of Luzuy. I've painted Harner before and used pretty much every image from the Folkways record in earlier paintings. The one who recorded the song that is now now in the top 100 for the third consecutive year, was not Harner anyways but Luzuy. I chose to use the cover for Luzuy's "Jivaro: Indiens Shuar, Cayapa, Otavalo" (the original source of the recording) for the painting that you see above. The cover photograph was taken by Pierre Allard. As a substitute for not having an image of Luzuy, I decided to use the cover of the book Faces of Bronze (Visages de Bronze) by Luzuy that appeared in 1960 and is pretty much the only thing that can be found on line about Philippe Luzuy. The photograph again was taken by Pierre Allard who is listed as co-author for the book. The Shuar, by the way, is the more specific name currently used for the Jivaro peoples of Ecuador. For the 2020 illustration of the wrongly labelled Yekuana Fertility Chant that you see below, I used a photograph by Theodor Koch-Grünberg from 1912. A historic recording of a Yekuana shaman by Koch-Grünberg was used by Walter Coppens to include in his Music of the Venezuelan Yekuana Indians. The spelling for Yekuana has now morphed into Ye'kwana.

Q'eros, Peru

 

This is the eleventh painting in the Top 100 2021 series, and perhaps the most striking thus far. The painting captures the concepts I set out for the series; double portraits; a juxtaposition of the recorder and the one recorded. Quite often the recorder, so was my preconceived notion, is a Western white middle aged man and the one recorded a female indigenous singer. This particular coupling is actually the first one, of eleven, when this is preconceived notion turned out to be true. While the juxtapositions, in no uncertain terms, comment on the colonial attitude of the object versus subject history of western culture, I make a point of it to treat both object and subject with utmost respect. I am equally in awe of the anthropologists and ethnomusicologists who recorded indigenous cultures, and of the musicians who were recorded, and, after all, provided the music that makes up the Top 100 2021. For myself, as the artist, I'm yet one step further removed, I am the sub-subject in the equation. This painting features Andrea Quispe Chura, a Q'ero woman who was photographed by the American musician, photographer, and musicolgist John Cohen in 1977, and Cohen himself. Both images come from the book: There is No Eye: John Cohen Photographs. The song the painting illustrates was also recorded by Cohen in 1977 in Peru. The song was performed by two Q'eros women, just not (likely) the woman depicted in the painting, and in Cohen's photograph. There is No Eye starts with an anecdote from Cohen's work that really tells a lot about the significance of the work Cohen (and the 99 others in the series) are engaged in and my own infatuation with it all: "On the Voyager space craft is a recording of a young girl singing an Andean huayno. She singing in Quechua, and her song is included as a sample of the sounds of our planet." With these paintings I've come to realize how the world of academia is really a world of respect, equality, and non-bias compared to the world we experience every day. I'm pleased to have been invited to show these works, in the Spring of 2022, in a city, Columbus, Ohio, that was my own city for 17 years until 2011.