Top 100 2019-7: 31-40

31. Dumagat Throat Song

Dumagat woman with child, oil on canvas, 2019

"While singing, the Dumagat woman in this recording vibrated her throat with her hand," such 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 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.

32. Uwejeje Imana (Watutsi song)

Watutsi Woman (Songs of the Watutsi cover), 14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The Watutsi (or Tutsi) belong to an ethnic group (shared by the Hutus) who live predominantly in Rwanda and neighboring Burundi. The Tutsi are among the tallest people on earth (average height 5'9") and don't live too far from the forests where pygmies live (rather Central African Foragers, a rather short people at an average of less than 4'11".) Unlike the exotic Rundi featured on a postcard I used for a 2015 painting illustrating the same song, the Tutsi woman here actually represents a Tutsi singer. The image is taken from the cover of the record Songs of the Watutsi (Ethnic Folkways, 1963) the song appears on. That song, Uwejeje Imana, is sung by women and girls from the royal court at Shyogwe. The image, also used by Wikipedia on their Tutsi page, was probably taken by Leo Verwilghen, who recorded the tracks on the album and also wrote the texts. Rwanda was a Belgian colony until 1962.

33. Ulahi and Eyo:bo sing with afternoon cicadas

Eyo:bo, 14 x 11 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2018

Ulahi starts a song and Eyo:bo repeats. Eyo:bo is an echo as it were of Ulahi, but her voice is different. The echo, together with a chorus of cicadas in the background makes for a spellbinding musical recording. Steven Field recorded it in 1977 in the Kulali area of the Bosavi rain forest in Papua New Guinea. The song appears on the second disc, Sounds and Songs of Everyday Life, of the box set Bosavi:Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea released by Smithsonian Folways Recordings in 2001.

34. The Dani of Papua: throat singing, Yo-Ayo-A-O

Un vieil homme fument un pipe en bambou, Yotali, oil on canvas, 2019

The painting is based on a photograph by Pierre Pétrequin that appears on the cover of Les Dani de Nouvelle-Guinée, Volume II. The French publisher NordSud (2001) compiled four discs with the music of the Dani. The most surprising tracks are a number of examples of throat singing, adding yet another geographic location where this age old tradition is still being practiced. The track Yo-Ayo-O by the Wayo people is one of them. Recorded by Pétrequin together with Anne-Marie Pétrequin and Olivier Weller in Yeleme.

35. Don Cherry/Krzysztof Penderecki – Humus, the Life Force

Loesje Hamel, oil on canvas, 2019
Last year I painted both Krzysztof Penderecki and Don Cherry, the two musicians responsible for Actions: Humus, the Exploring Life Force, a work for Free Jazz Orchestra. For the repeat of the work in this year's 100 I looked for someone else to paint and I settled for the vocalist featured on the track who was listed as Loes Macgillycutty. Loes Macgillycutty, it turns out, is Loesje Hamel, a compatriot from the Netherlands, who died of cancer at the age of 35. 

36. John Coltrane – My Favorite Things

John Coltrane, oil on canvas, 2019
Coltrane's last recorded concert continues to mesmerize. His concert at the Olatunji Center of African Culture on April 23rd 1967 was his penultimate one, he died a day before my third birthday on July 17th 1964. This would be the tenth painting I've done after a photograph by F. Winham that features Coltrane's last combo with Rashied Ali, Jimmy Garrison, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. The song from the concert My Favorite Things remains unchallenged at the number one spot of my continued count top 100 dating back to 1983.

37. Oktjabrina Vladimirovna and Svetlana Naumeva – Je chevanche mon rêne

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.

38. Katajjait on "Hamma"

Mary Sivuaraapik and Audia throat singing, oil on canvas, 2019

The track 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.

39. Yaʼ Ak Keodaeng and Yaʼ Seu Keodaeng – Teum song

Kmhmu, 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. 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 in a stencil print of a few years back and I will experiment further on this concept. Possibilities galore but not enough to create a full deck.

40. 1898 Torres Strait Death Wail

Malo Ceremonial Dance, 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.

Top 100 2019-6: 41-50

41. Avdo Mededovic – Bonjacke Gusle

Avdo Mededovic, oil on canvas, 2018

Avdo Međedoviƈ (1875-1953) was an illeterate epic balladeer from Montenegro, part of the Ottoman Empire and later Yugoslavia. His repertoire included several poems that counted well over 1,000 lines, similar in length to Homer's (9th century BCE, Greek) Iliad and Odyssee. The British Homeric scholars Milman Perry and Albert Lord in the 1930s, seeking to find credble evidence of their hypothesis that Homer's works were the result of oral transmission (of much older traditions), found in Međedoviƈ living evidence on the memory capabilities of illeterate communities, and their sustaining traditions. The  now fast disappearing tradition of oral poetry was in the twentieth century still found and recorded in parts of eastern Europe and in Anatolia. Despite numerous academic approaches to reconstruct how Homer would have sounded almost three-thousand years ago, I believe the Međedoviƈ recordings come much closer.

42. Nzonzi, deux femmes – Ubuhuha

Ubuhuha, Rundi women, oil on canvas, 2019

 From the liner notes by Michel Vuylsteke: "The ubuhuha (literally 'to blow') which were formerly performed by by women during wakes, have practically disappeared today." This was written in 1967 when Vuylsteke recorded these two Rundi women in Burundi. The women use their hands as an instrument, like a trumpet, "The resultant sounds vary in pitch, timbre and volume according to the position of her hands and the tension of her lips." From the LP Burundi: Musique Traditionelles on Ocora. Talking with my friend Jade before the Cat Power concert last Friday he mused that most of the musicians I painted would be unknown to her. I told him that I wouldn't be surprised if Cat Power would be much more familiar to these ethnomusicological recordings than one would expect. During the concert Cat Power used her hands to alter her singing voice on several occasions very much like the Rundi women, most poignantly during a cover of Bob Dylan's Hard Times in New York City (perhaps to mimic Dylan's nasal voice).

43. Kalinga women winnowing rice song 

Kalinga woman, oil on canvas, 2019

The Kalinga rice minnowing song that appears on Music from the Mountain Provinces is illustrated on YouTube with a vintage photograph of a bare chested woman in a field. I may assume the field is a rice field and the (young) woman is from the Philippines. David Blair Stiffler recorded the song in the mid 1980s in the Kalinga province of the mountainous northern Philippines. The photograph, that I used for the painting above, in the video is certainly not his. The photograph is much older from a time that it was deemed alright to fetishize exotic women. The woman in the photo is quite young perhaps not older as fourteen. Stiffler recorded the Kalinga women inside a bamboo stilt house, whre they certainly had their chests (breasts) covered. I doubt it if women would be working bare-chested in the field at the time the recording was made, or long before that. 

44. Anna Dimitrievna Neostoeva – Throat Song

Anna Dimitrievna Neostoeva, oil on canvas, 2018

Henri Lecomte wrote a number of papers on the subject of Siberian traditional music and his series of cd releases simply called Siberia consists of eleven volumes, all released on Buda Music (Musique de Monde) between 1991 and 2009. They're hard to get by. I have two (plus some downloads of individual tracks from other discs in the series) both ordered via amazon.fr. In front of me lies Volume 3 dedicated to the Kolyma (Chants de nature et d'animaux) which features musicians with Čukč (Chukchi), Even, and Jukaghir backgrounds. The disc is from 1995. There are seven recordings made by Henri Lecomte in the Top 100 this year, as there were last year. One of these is a throat song by Anna Neostroeva who is Chukchi. The source photo was taken by Lecomte.

45. Chukchi Shamanic Ritual

Shamans performing ritual in Pegtimel, oil on canvas, 2019

The impulse of becoming a shaman was, as it is with the artist of today, the manifestation of idiosyncratic traits. Psychosis, gender ambiguity, poetic sensibility led to an existence as an outsider in society. Unlike today, these differences yielded high respect from other members in society. Today we seek medicine to cure idiosyncrasies but back then these traits were not considered the disease but the cure. For the shaman was the doctor. It was a difficult journey, full of obstacles, crises necessary for the acquisition of knowledge, the ability to traverse various planes of consciousness. Art today assumes a similar function; the budding artist, because of her difference, goes through the ordeal of societal rejection, and through deepening crises she becomes a visionary. She shows her audience the reality beyond the mundane and thus provides her community an important service, that of spiritual equilibrium. Let’s not reject the rejects, rejoice in the manifestations of oddness, queerness, and deviance.

 

46. Tumivut: The Competition Song

Tumivut: The Competition Song, oil on canvas, 2019

Depicted is one of the two performers of Tumivut: The Competition Song at the 2010 Aboriginal Day in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It's from a video found on YouTube shot from the audience and is a persistent feature in the Top 100. The video has over 1,000,000 views, thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. I browsed through all those comments just to find out the identity of the two performers. I have not been able to do so yet.

47. David Amram – Pull My Daisy

David Amram, pen on paper, 2018 (signed by David Amram)

Pull My Daisy is a poem written in the late 1940s using the Surrealist Exquisite Corpse technique by the Beat poets Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady. The poem featured prominently in the Robert Frank and Arthur Leslie film of 1959 by the same name, narrated by Kerouac. For the film the poem was set to music by David Amram. Anita Ellis is the singer heard in the film. The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at the college I work hosted an exhibition with work of Jack Kerouac, the main feature was the manuscript to his famous novel On the Road. David Amram came in town for a special event. A great concert and a wonderful guest. I gave him a drawing I did of him performing and he signed another one.

48. Mataco Indians of Gran Chaco: String instrument

Mataco (Michí) Indian, Argentina, oil on canvas, 2019
The quest for the origins of music has lead me to listen to, and read about, recordings from the field of ethnomusicology. I have been seeking out recordings and information on the music of those cultures that have lived in relative isolation from the influence of the industrial world. More half of the 100 songs in the 2018/2019 list belong to this category. This painting represents a mataco instrumental piece on a stringed instrument and is played by a shaman. (Argentina, The Indians of the Gran Chaco, Lyrichord, 1977.)

49. Assalalaa (Inuit—Katajjait)

Rekutkar performers, oil on canvas, 2019
I assumed that the three vocal throat singing traditions, the Inuit katajjait, the Ainu rekutkar, and the Chukchi pič eynen, found within the arctic circle must be related and/or have a common ancestor. The painting for Assalalaa I was working on from a photograph found by an image search of the terms katajjait combined with Jean-Jacques Nattiez represents not Inuit but Ainu singers. I intuited this was the case since I had not seen katajjait performed sitting down while the pose was the same as in my painting of rehbuhkara (rekutka).

50. Irina Khristtoforovna and Anna Vasilevna Kolegova – Chant sur les canards

Irina Khristtoforovna Kolegova, oil on canvas, 2019
Irina Kolegova (b. 1935) is a Koryak woman from Kamchatka, the easternmost peninsula of Russia. Recordings of her appear on Sibérie 4, Kamtchatka: dance drums from the Siberian Far East. Recorded by Henri Lecomte. Kolegova's song, a duet with Anna Kolegova, is called A song about ducks in a style that is reminiscent of the pic-eine'rkin tradition of the Chukchi.

Top 100 1019-5: 51-60

51. Ainu throat singing duet "Rehbuhkara"

Two Ainu women performing "Rehbuhkara", oil on canvas, 2018

Rehbuhkara is a vocal style closely related to the Chukchi pic-eine'rkin and the Inuit katajjaq typically performed by two women. Katajjait are performed in the north of America and in Greenland, an area of land that was supposedly isolated from the old world at the end of the last ice age 14,000 years ago. The vocal styles of all three (ethnically related) peoples form yet more striking evidence that there must have been contact between the new and old world. The Ainu, considered the indigenous people of Japan, live on Japan's northernmost large island Hokkaido. The Ainu use their hands as a resonance chamber. The Inuit, as lore has it, use to sing so close together that each others mouths serve as resonance chambers. The source image from the painting is a still from a video uploaded by ainuworld. 

52. Pako Tà Ôi – A'bel, dan k'ni

A'bel performance, oil on canvas, 2018

The painting represents an example of the A'bel, a traditional instrument of the Co Tu and Ta Oi Pako peoples of Hue Province, Vietnam. A rare video of the nearly extinct tradition was uploaded to YouTube in 2013 by angklung eds, using footage from The Vietnamese Institute of Musicology, Hanoi, Vietnam.The tune shows a man playing a one string instrument, a dan k'ni, with a bow and uses his mouth as a resonance chamber. The (anonymous) performer in the painting is the musician in the video.

53. Qiarpa (chorus, Inuit)

Group of Inuit Women, oil on canvas, 2019

Recorded at Eskimo Point by Ramon Pelinski in 1980 from the cd Canada: Jeux Vocaux Des Inuit (Inuit du Caribou, Netsilik et Igloolik (Disques Ocora, 1989). The performers of most of the 90(!) tracks on the cd are credited by name but not this particular recording. The chorus of the heading appears to be class of young students being instructed in the traditional singing styles of the Inuit, demonstrating just how much the culture is alive in contemporary times. The painting shows half of a group of women who performed in Strasbourg, France at the occasion of an exhibition of Inuit sculpture in 1984. A video of this performance was uploaded on a site selling the cd.

54. Sonny Sharrock – Peanut

Sonny and Linda Sharrock, oil on canvas, 2018

Even though Sonny Sharrock is a fairly well known musician and his music seems right up my alley, I had never heard of him until I picked a random title at Ubuweb's Film & Video. The movie Space Ghost Coast to Coast (1996) is a weird video that originally appeared on the Cartoon Network. The soundtrack was also weird enough for me to research the musician Sonny Sharrock (1940-1994.) Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) appears as a cameo. I bought then a digital copy of Sharrock's first solo album Black Woman of 1969. The music can be described as existing somewhere between Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono. An old Top 100 alumni Milford Graves is the percussionist and drummer. Sharrock's wife Linda is the singer.

55. Maranao lullaby

Maranao woman and child, oil on canvas, 2019

A lullaby recorded by David Blair Stiffler in captivity in 1988 in the Mindanao Province of the Philippines. Stiffler and his travel companions were abducted by an MNLF rebel group at gunpoint. They were taken to a hut in the mountains and were held for more than two weeks before they managed to escape. He was given permission to record a woman who he heard singing a lullaby to her baby but later all his equipment was confiscated. They escaped with only their clothes, their lives, and one single cassette tape. From Music from the Mountain Provinces intended for Folkways but after its founder's passing it remained on the shelves until The Numero Group eventually released it in 2011.

56. Bongili Work Song

André Didier, oil on canvas, 2019

The 1946 Ogooué-Congo Mission 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 André Didier. 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. 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.

57. Tibet: Lament for the Dead

Tibetan Monks, 1903, oil on canvas, 2019

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 Soundsand Sacred Syllables, 2017]

58. Luiz Bonfa – Samba de Orfeu

Orfeu Negro, oil on canvas, 2019

Western culture has its roots in the Classical Greek period, whose dramas and tragedies depicted the dramatic and tragic mythologies of their deities, who in turn are metaphors for what human beings essentially are. I tried to paint a loving portrait of three young Brazilian actors, characters in the film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). The soundtrack for the 1959 French/Brazilian film came courtesy of the legendary Brazilian musicians Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfá. The story of the movie, of course, based on a screenplay by Vinicius de Moraes is an adaption of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Bonfa's Samba de Orfeu has become a bossa-nova classic.

 59. Cat Power – Nothing Really Matters

Cat Power, oil on canvas, 2019
"When I see your face in the crowd/With a look of obsession" are the opening lines to Cat Power's Nothing Really Matters from 2018s Wanderer. She will be performing at the Ritz in Tampa, close enough for me to go. It'll be the fifth time I see her live beating Townes van Zandt and (Dutch band) The Fatal Flowers for most concerts visited.

60. Princess Constance Magogo KaDinuzulu – Helele! Yiliphi leliyani

Princess Constance Magogo KaDinuzulu, oil on canvas, 2019

The Princess' name is Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye kaDinuzulu (1900-1984). Quite a name indeed but not even close to that of her fellow South African singer Miriam Makeba (1932-2008): Zenzile Makeba Qgwashu Nguvama Yiketheli Nxgowa Bantana Balomzi Xa Ufun Ubajabulisa Ubaphekeli Mbiza Yotshwala Sithi Xa Saku Qgiba Ukutja Sithathe Izitsha Sizi Khabe Singama Lawu Singama Qgwashu Singama Nqamla Nqgithi, who is of Swazi and Xhosa descend. Miriam isn't even part of that name! My name is Lambertus Gerardus Martinus van Boekel and it really falls short in comparison.

Top 100 2019-4: 61-70

61. Patti Smith – Gloria

Patti Smith, stencil print on paper, 2019

Several versions of Patti Smith rendition of the Them classic Gloria secured the entry in the top 100. Different live versions exist on YouTube, notably a 1979 Rockpalast concert but the original recording on Horses, her debut album, is picked for the top 100 playlist. The song on Horses has two movement: In Exelsis Deo written by Smith herself and Gloria (version) penned by Them frontman Van Morrison. In 2005 on its thirtieth anniversary Patti Smith rerecorded Horses live and in 2015, the 40th, she played the full album again in a series of concerts.

Patti Smith
11 x 8.5 inches, stencil print, 2019

62. Garifuna Indians: Abelagudahami

Garifuna Settlement Day Festival, oil 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 Mickey Hart (the Grateful Dead). As with so many indiginous Americans the history of the Garifuna is one of persecution and displacement. 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.

63. India>Kerala: Malayalis' Kurava

Kerala: Kurava performer, oil on canvas, 2019
From Wikipedia: "from Latin ulolo, is a long, wavering, high-pitched vocal sound resembling a howl with a trilling quality. It is produced by emitting a high pitched loud voice accompanied with a rapid back and forth movement of the tongue and the uvula." Ululation is an example of onomatopoeia (another beautiful word) "the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named."

64. Gour Khepa – You Were Unable to Keep the Love Water...

Gour Khepa, oil on canvas, 2019

Sometimes referred to as madman or wild man, Khepa is not a name but a Bengali title more properly translated as "wise man." Gour Kyapa (as Khepa is now spelled) was a storied Baul philosopher and musician. The Bauls are an ethnic Bengali sect of wandering minstrels traveling through Bangladesh and eastern India. Their musical tradition goes back to at least the eighteenth century and was orally transmitted only (until sound recordings and subsequent transcriptions were made.) The Bauls are ascetics, renouncing material belongings and marriage. They subsist on gifts or alms in exchange for (musical) recitals that use only very basic language, including many profanities. The LP Bengale: Chants des "fous" (Chants du Monde, 1990) is an excellent compilation. Tu n'as pu conserver le nectar d'amour by Gour Khepa is the song listed in the top 100 2019/19. Gour Khepa was born in 1947 and died after a traffic accident in 2013.

65. Xongorzul – The River Herlen

Ganbaararyn Khongorzul, oil on canvas, 2019
The River Herlen is found on a cd tucked into the book Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Musica and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond by Theodore Levin. Unlike the other musicians on the cd Xongorzul is not discussed as an individual but functions as a sound example of the Mongolian 'long-song' tradition. The long in long-song references the extended syllables in the text. "A four-minute song may only consist of ten words." Ganbaararyn Khongorzul performs with Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble and performed at the opening ceremony at the 2002 World Cup.

66. Utekn and Yuimuk – Women's Wu-ungka Songs

From the cover of Aboriginal Music from Australia, oil on canvas, 2019

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.

67. Nowayilethi Mbizweni, Ngqoko group recorded by Dave Dargie

Nowayilethi Mbizweni, oil on canvas, 2020

The recording is like last year's from Dave Dargie's film Umngqokolo: Thembu Xhosa, Overtone Singing 1985-1998. On the particular section in the top 100 she's not performing solo or as a duet like she was in a previous top 100 but fronts the Ngqoko group seen in the movie. The group consists of about fifteen singers, mostly women but a few men are included too. Nowayilethi sits in front next to (her sister perhaps) Nofirst Mbizweni. The rest of the group are standing behind them. The term 'umngqolo' refers to the type of throat singing Mbizweni is known for and I now learned how to properly pronounce it with the Xhosa clicking sound included.

68. Cat Power – Robbin Hood

Cat Power, pencil on paper, 2019
Talking with my friend Jade before the Cat Power concert last Friday he mused that most of the musicians I painted would be unknown to her. I told him that I wouldn't be surprised if Cat Power would be much more familiar to these ethnomusicological recordings than one would expect. During the concert Cat Power used her hands to alter her singing voice on several occasions very much like the Rundi women (#42), most poignantly during a cover of Bob Dylan's Hard Times in New York City (perhaps to mimic Dylan's nasal voice). One of my favorite tunes she performed that Friday was Robbin Hood from her latest Wanderer. The above drawing done during the concert then becomes the official illustration for the song in the Top 100.

69. Lola Kiepja – Guanaco Myth Chant

Lola Kiepja, oil on canvas, 2019

In 1964 Ann Chapman went to the Argentinian part of Tierra del Fuego to meet and record the Ona (Selk'nam) shaman Lola Kiepja. She was the last, and oldest, remaining indian who had a living memory of Selk'nam customs. Whe she died in 1966 the Selk'nam were a people of the past. Kiepja was around ninety. Chapman published eleven photos and numerous recordings of Kiepja, all made during her stay in 1964/65. A photo of a much younger Kiepja exists and was published along 47 of Chapman's recordings by Smithsonian on Selk'nam Chants of Terra del Fuego in 1972. Smithsonian released an additional 42 chants on a second volume. Guanaco Myth Chant is one of these. In the 1905 photo of Kiepja, made by Carlos Gallardo, Kiepja is seen wearing the traditional guanaco costume.

Lola Kiepja
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

70. Cat Power – Horizon

Cat Power, oil on canvas, 2019
Five of the six Cat Power songs, all from the LP Wanderer, are painted. The Cat Power portrait here, painted several months ago, belongs to Horizon. The final Cat Power portrait for the Top 100 2018/2019 exhibit, illustrating Robbin Hood, will have to wait until I go see her live in concert in Tampa in September. It'll be based on sketches done from life.

Top 100 2019-3: 71-89

71. Group led by Ahem Mediferai – Tuareg Medicinal Chant

Ahem Mediferai, oil on canvas, 2020

From the album West Africa: Drum, Chant & Instrumental Music (1976). Chant performed by three male and four female Tuareg singers led by Ahem Mediferai. Recorded in northern Mali by Stephen Jay. The strong diagonal in the photograph of Ahem Mediferai on the back of the album, and its artist's impression on the front, made me experiment once again with the diagonal 'playing card' (mirroring) axis.

72. Alena Alexeeva Uican – Chant et tambour se cadre jajar 

Tamara Ivikovna Sajnav (cover image of Sibérie 4), oil on canvas, 2020

The notes to this song by Alena Uican from the cd Sibérie 4 – Kamchatka: dance drums from the Siberian Far East are odd and short (by Henri Lecomte): "Born in Rekinniki in 1969. She does not work so she can raise her child. This song evokes movements of sea mammals, which she imitates while singing." Life is very mysterious; the more you learn, the less sense it all makes. The image in the painting is of a Koryak woman who appears on the cd cover. The cd is dedicated to the music of the Koryak, the instrument seen is shaman's frame drum as is Uican's.

73. Dillinger – Marijuana in My Brain

Dillinger, oil on canvas, 2020

Cocaine in my Brain was a huge Top 40 hit during my coming of age years in the Netherlands. It made it all the way to #1 in 1976. I'm sure the single Marijuana in My Brain from 1977 was intended to replicate that success but failed to do so. Curious given the Dutch affection for marijuana. The Dutch band Doe Maar scored a hit in 1980 with their marijuana anthem Nederwiet. I bought the Dillinger single in 1987 (I used to write a date on 45s). Dillinger, named as such by the legendary Lee Perry, was born Lester Bullock on June 25, 1953 in Kingston, Jamaica.

74. Wagogo Soothing Song

Zeze duo, oil on canvas, 2020

The zeze is a stringed instrument found throughout Tanzania. The Wagogo of central Tanzania are especially associated with the instrument. The Wagogo Soothing Song can be found on the LP Africa: Ceremonial & Folk Music [Explorer, 1975] and was recorded by David Fenshawe. Two zeze players, a drummer, and mixed choir can be heard in a song that was intended to lull a child to sleep who couldn't. I doubt it if it worked; the performance is quite ecstatic but the zeze has a very soothing sound.

75. Tanya Tagaq w/Kronos Quartet – Nunavut

Tanya Tagaq, oil on canvas, 2019

It's odd that when you believe something, have an opinion, how hard it is to let go. Beliefs are a stubborn thing. Beliefs close doors, never knowing what's beyond. I believed that I wasn't interested in "new-age" music, or rather fusion of traditional and modern music. I thought of it as faux spirituality. I concede and tend now to an opposing view: Under the umbrella of new-age are a myriad of experiments that allow an opening to investigate music's origins. Music, as art, is now probably in closer harmony with its own essence that it has been for centuries. The revelation came watching a YouTube video of the collaboration between Tanya Tagaq and The Kronos Quartette. Tanya Tagaq's background is in Canada's Inuit throat singing tradition. She went through art school and established herself as an experimental avant-garde musician. The Kronos Quartet, for reasons I stated above, I never paid much attention to. This performance opened my eyes to the possibilities of modern production techniques and electronics combined with traditional forms. The avant-garde—ethnopoetics—approaches a communion with the eternal spirit. Energy & intelligence (=imagination). 

76. Ka Ve and Vo Hoang – A'reng

Duo A'reng, oil on canvas, 2018

One man sings into a reed the other end of which ends in a woman's mouth that functions as a resonance chamber. The A'reng is traditionally performed by a mixed couple. The tradition has now become extinct. From Strange Instruments of Vietnam by Nicolas Bras: "The A'reng is a simple reed instrument played by two players, one blows into the mouth of the second (who features as the resonance chamber)." From a video by The Vietnamese Institute of Musicology, Hanoi, Vietnam.

77. Ulahi sings while scraping sago pith

Ulahi, oil on canvas, 2018

Ulahi is heard cutting sago, a staple for the inhabitants of the mountainous Bosavi rainforest in Papua New Guinea. It's a work song. Indeed singing makes work go faster, makes it easier, less tiresome. The cutting of the food becomes rhythmic as if it were a game. As a new mother Ulahi carries her child with her wherever she goes. When she has to work, the baby must be set aside. The baby cries, Ulahi sings, the baby stops crying. Ulahi was recorded by Steven Field in 1989 in the Kulali area of the Bosavi rain forest of Papua New Guinea. From the CD set: Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New Guinea, a three cd anthology by Smithsonian Folkways (1981).

78. Sun Ra All Stars – Happy Birthday/Stars that Shine Darkly

Sun Ra, oil on canvas, 2020
Sun Ra was born in Birmingham, AL as Herman Poole Blount in 1914 but he never liked to be reminded of that fact; "That is his-story, my story is my-stery." He claimed to be from Saturn but returned to Birmingham when his health was failing and died there in 1993. Searching the web for an image to paint I came across an interesting story by Mike Walsh. I settled for the illustration Walsh used, and the article directed me to the movie Space is the Place that I diligently watched. He's out there, for sure. The film features the Arkestra with singer June Tyson. The title track, which appears during the end credits, made sure that Sun Ra reappears in the top 100 2020. The entry for 2019, illustrated here, is from a concert in Berlin in 1983. The track is called Happy Birthday/Stars that Shine Darkly and the Arkestra features Archie Shepp on tenor.

79. Georgia: Greek Orthodox

Assyrian Soloists of Greek Orthodox Church Choir in Georgia, oil on canvas, 2020

Very little religious music this year. There's Tibetan monks and this track of Greek Orthodox choir music from Georgia. The painting is based on a still from a video of a mass in Georgia attended by the Pope. It's from 2016 while the recordings on the Folkways sampler Music of the World's Peoples were recorded in the 1950s. I don't think the music changed much over time. From the liner notes on the Folkways album: "Intense choral music which preserves the 'organum' style of medieval Christian music, combined with modes preserved from Byzantine culture."

80. Bapende Work Song

Bapende Chief, oil on canvas, 2020

The Bapende Work Song found on Folk Music of the Western Congo is a work song that was performed in the process of villagers building a house for their chief and was recorded by Leo A. Verwilghen in 1954. A photograph of a xylophone player is the only of the Bapende people included in the booklet that all Folkways' series come with. A Google image search on the Bapende yield an incredibly rich array of photos associated with Bapende ceremony. The song however is not a sacred song so I refrained from using any of the images showing those ceremonial masks and costumes that are associated with the Bapende. While usually shying away from using images owned by giant image databases such as Getty, I settled for a small black and white photograph made by Michel Huet and owned by Getty Images. The fabric used on the chief's hat has the same pattern as the headdress on one of the Rundi women that I painted not too long ago. The pattern is made of triangles that create intricate negative space patterns.