Monkeys

Cebus and Spider Monkey from the Amazon Rainforest

Top 100 2022, #52: Kayabí: Animal and Bird Imitations from the album Music from Mato Grosso, Brazil, recorded by Edward M. Weyer, Jr, 1954, Folkways Records. Two men perform imitations of an uru, a quail like bird, urutao, a poor-me-one bird, a saki monkey, a spider monkey, a giant otter, a cebus monkey, and a sclater's curassow. Neither liner notes or Google searches have any images of the two (or any) Kayabí performers or Edward Weyer, hence the opportunity for me to paint animals. 

Are animal sounds music? Are animal imitations music? Are human imitations of animal sounds more music than that of the animals themselves?
 

Try it again!

Andrea Quispe Chura/John Cohen, 2023

Andrea Quispe Chura/John Cohen, 2021

Cover of Music of Thailand/Howard Kaufman, 2023

Cover of Music of Thailand/Howard Kaufman, 2021

I'm onto the last dozen paintings for the Top 100 2022, and it gets harder to find appropriate images. Unlike last year it isn't simply one painting per one song now, but a more flexible concept. The two latest paintings are from the same source images I had used last year to illustrate the same songs that recur this year from Music of Thailand, and Mountain Music of Peru. Both double portraits illustrate well the concept I used for the Top 100 2021; that of the juxtaposition of the recorded with the recorder, and, in this case too, the photographed and photographer. The indigenous tribal person and the western academic. I don't know if I like the new paintings better or worse, what do you think?