Garifuna Celebration

Garifuna Settlement Day Festival
14 x 11 inches, oil/mixed media on canvas, 2019

The Garifuna are descendants of West Africans and the Carib and Arawak peoples. The song Abelagudahami appears on The Spirit Cries: Music of the Rainforests of South America & The Caribbean (Smithsonian, Library of Congress, 1993). It was the first album of the Endangered Music Project series initiated by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. As with so many indiginous Americans the history of the Garifuna is one of persecution and displacement. Native to what is now the Virgin Islands they ended up in Honduras and spread to neighboring Belize and Nicaragua. The Garifuna heard on Abelagudahami are from Belize. Despite the 'endangered' label on the cd they are today thriving in Belize.

This will be the last painting and posting of the year. I didn't paint quite a hundred pictures. Happy New Year, dear readers!

South African Politics

Princess Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu 
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The image above appears on the cover of the LP The Zulu Songs of Princess Constance Magogo KaDinuzulu as part of The Music of Africa Series produced in the 1960s by Hugh Tracey. The album is number 37 in the series and was also recorded by Hugh Tracey. The recordings are from 1939. The song in top 100 this year is from that album and is called Helele! Yiliphe Ielyiani? meaning 'which regiment is that?' in the Zulu language. I have no clue what the song is really about but the word regiment hints at a political subject. The princess was the daughter of King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo of the semi autonomous Zulu Nation (r. 1884-1913) and sister of King Solomon kaDinuzulu (r. 1913-1933). Her son Mangosuthu Buthelezi (b. 1928) is a politician and Zulu leader who founded the Inkatha Freedom Party (1971) and remained in the South African Parliament until just a few months ago. Princess Constance remained an advocate for Zulu culture and music throughout her life. You can read more on Princess Constance here.

Tibetan Monks

Tibetan Monks, 1903
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The monks presented here were originally photographed by William Hayman during a controversial British military expedition into Tibet in 1903. Tibet was then still a secretive mysterious country and the British set out to remove Russian influence. The expedition also introduced the first images of Mount Everest to a western audience. I've painted them to illustrate a lament sung by Tibetan monks. Lament for the Dead: Chant appears on a 1951 compilation on Folkways titled Music of the World's Peoples, Vol. 1. The following paragraph appeared in the online VAN magazine:

This field recording from the Smithsonian Music of the World’s Peoples series, captures, according to the liner notes, “Lamas chanting in unison with percussion and bells accompaniment.” The deeply resonant baritone voices, combined with the barely audible, overtone-rich bells, create an almost unbearably chilling sound. This is a lament for the dead by the living, but the sound seems more to emanate from somewhere beneath the earth—from the dead themselves. [Jake Romm – A Giacinto Scelsi Playlist: Sacred Sounds and Sacred Syllables, 2017]

Safari

André Didier
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The 1946 Ogooué-Congo Mission, led by the 23-year old ethnologist Noël Ballif is best known for recordings of Babinga Pygmies made by Gilbert Rouget. They were one of the first recordings ever made of Pygmy music, perhaps the most popular of all ethnomusicological recordings. Many recordings made during the expedition landed on Music of Equatorial Africa on Moses Asch's Folkway label that was released in 1947. The recordings on the LP however, weren't made by Rouget but by another member of the 12 headed Mission, André Didier. At the time the region in what is current day Republic of the Congo, aka Congo-Brazzaville (not to be confused with The Demoncratic Republic of the Congo or Congo-Kinshasa) was part of French Equatorial Africa and the section that is now Congo-Brazaville was then Congo Moyen (Middle Congo). The Middle Congo also included parts of what is now Gabon and the Central African Republic. There are various recordings of the Babinga on the record as well as a host from other ethnicity. One such group are the Bongili, whose "Work Song" is part of the Top 100 2019. Not much is found online today about this ethnic group but their language also called Bongili, is a know and common Bantu language in the Congo. The work in "Work Song" refers to the labor of beaten out bananas (both fruit and peel) for the purpose of a banana paste. A girls chorus and pestles are heard behind a soloist (the chorus takes turns). The notes on the album were written by Rouget.

Maranao Lullaby

Maranao Woman and Child
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The LP Music from the Mountain Provinces contains a lullaby that was recorded in 1988 by David Blair Stiffler while he was held captive in the Philippines. Stiffler and his travel companions were abducted at gunpoint by an MNLF rebel group. They were taken to a hut in the mountains on the island of Mindanao and held for over two weeks before they managed to escape. He was given permission by his captors to record a woman he heard singing a lullaby to her baby but later all his equipment was confiscated. They escaped with only the clothes on their backs, their lives, and one cassette tape. Music from the Mountain Provinces was intended for Folkways but after its founder's passing it remained on the shelves until it The Numero Group eventually released it in 2011. The woman, and her baby, in the painting are from the Lanao Province on Mindanao. She was photographed inside a refugee camp. The Maranao are a Muslim minority in the Philippines. Political unrest, rebel groups and ethnic fighting have been the norm in the Philippines for decades especially on Mindanao.

A Qiarpa

Group of Inuit Women
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The Qiarpa (chorus) this painting represents was recorded at Eskimo Point by Ramon Pelinski in 1980. It can be found on the cd Canada: Jeux Vocaux des Inuit (Inuit de Caribou, Netsilik et Igloolik (Disques Ocora, 1989). The performers on most of the 90(!) tracks on the cd are credited by name but not this particular track. The chorus of the heading appears to be a class of young students being instructed on the traditional singing styles of the Inuit, demonstrating just how much the indigenous culture is alive in contemporary times. The painting shows half of a group of female throat singing (kattajaq) singers who were invited to perform in Strasbourg, France for the occasion of an exhibition of Inuit sculpture in 1984. A video of the performance is embedded on a site selling the cd.

Torres Strait Expedition

Malo Ceremonial Dance

14 x 11 inches, 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.

Weaving

From the cover of Aboriginal Music from Australia
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

Continuing the playing card format using the mirroring in two directions/diagonal symmetry (see previous post) I now added the element of weaving. Not using a linear axis of symmetry the arms of the figure continue as if they embrace its own mirrored image. The image of an Aboriginal preparing food I used comes from the LP Aboriginal Music from Australia on the Phillips label. The source of the music this image represents is a cd however, a reissue on UNESCO's Collection of Traditional Music now named: Australia: Aboriginal Music. The cd has the texts and music of the original LP but not the photographs. I can not identify the images on the LP cover. I'm not certain about the gender either but the breast shown seems to indicate a woman. There is only one track sung by women on the record but it does not necessarily mean that a photo on the cover illustrates a song on the record. The song is a type of Wu-unka song sung by Utekn and Yaimuk in the Wik-ngatara language in northern Queensland. The song was recorded in 1966 by Alice M. Moyle, who I assume was also responsible for the photograph on the sleeve.

The Kmhmu Highlands

Kmhmu
14 x 11 inches, 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. (Two other musicians from the same photograph—there's five of individuals—I've painted before to represent the same song. I'm again not quite sure concerning the gender of any 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 first in a stencil print of Alvin Lucier and I will experiment further on this concept. Possibilities galore but not enough to create a full deck.

Inuktitut

Mary Sivuaraapik and Audia throat singing

14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The track Katajjait on "Hamma" 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. Katajjait are secular song but were banned by encroaching Christianity for a hundred years. Many cultural traditions Inuit have disappeared and exist only in museums and literature but katajjaq vocal games somehow survived and are now practiced widely in Nunavut, the semi-autonomous state under Inuit rule in Northern Canada.

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Intersex

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. Depicted is an Évenk shaman who appears on the cover of the cd as photographed by Lecomte. Since five out of six recordings in the section "shamanic chants" are of Savelij Vasilev I must assume it is he. While working on this painting for some but no particular reason I was uncertain about the gender of the individual. The same uncertainty has come upon me a number of times in recent months, enough so that I must ask myself questions: Does it even matter which gender an individual belongs to? Does the gender of an individual influence how I paint? Why does this question even come up and how does it reflect me? A number of associations come to mind when attempting answers. First is my approach to painting. I usually aim for a personality to come through, a person's spirit. The race of a person is often ambiguous in this process—I paint a person of color with the same colors and intend as I do non-colored—thus it would only make sense the same approach is used in the issue of gender. Perhaps a person's gender isn't as important to me as it once was; getting older and producing less testosterone may just take away the sexual aspect when considering an individual. I believe that genders aren't as binary as culture conceives. That any individual has a certain masculinity as well as femininity, that there is a spectrum within which each of us occupies at different times different places. That no individual at any time as it the very extreme of this spectrum. (Genghis Khan perhaps approached ultimate masculinity.) The shaman, in cultures around the world, is often preordained because of ideosyncrasies of character, including gender ambiguity. The shaman becomes a shaman because of an even distribution of feminine and masculine aspects. The male shaman could recite in falsetto while the female shaman could use the technique of throat singing (a technique where there's no distinction in gender characteristics.) Shamanism is not gender specific in the same way early childhood and perhaps old age isn't gender specific either. While painting the male shaman here the melody of the folk song by Oktjabrina Vladimirovna and Svetlana Naumeva (who sing with distinct feminine voices) continued to be in the back of my head.

Throat singing in the shower

Dumagat woman and child 

14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

"While singing, the Dumagat woman in this recording vibrated her throat with her hand" 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 year's Top 100 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 or Dumagat throats are stronger than mine. The mountain provinces in question are situated in the Philippines where Stiffler recorded in between 1986 and 1988.

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