Happy New Year

Efé Pygmies
18" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2011

Goodbye to 2011 everybody and a Happy New Year, have a great new musical year and keep in touch. Love you all.

Berry

Chukchi Shaman

Chukchi Shaman
8.5" x 6.5"
oil on wood, 2011

I'm quite pleased with this tiny little painting of a Chukchi shaman playing his drum sitting by some palm trees at Billie's Creek that runs behind my house. It got a spot on my wall directly next to my last Siberian shaman painting that I did precisely ten years ago. Certain genetic theories have it that about 13,000 years ago a group of less than twenty Chukchi crossed what is now the Bering Street into America. They are the ancestors of the native Americans who spread as far south as South America. So this Chukchi shaman of Arctic Siberia may well have a similar genetic code as Billie Bowlegs, the Seminole after whom the creek was named and who might have very well been sitting once at the very spot as where I placed the shaman in the painting. On YouTube there exists a beautiful film of a shamanic Chukchi musical performance. Click on the link below to watch it. If you decide to do so please watch it until the end because the last thirty seconds features a very intriguing type of breathing-singing that made the recording propel into Top 100 land.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JJw5bTfUL8

Cantorial records

Cantor Jossele Rosenblatt
12" x 8", oil on wood, 2011

People don't seem to care too much about collecting records down here, I don't have competition. My collection has been really taking off since I got here .  Take cantorial records for example; I had never even seen one up north but down here I find four, by three different cantors, in a two week period, in three different thrift stores. I had always thought of cantorial music as esoteric, that you would only hear in temples, not on vinyl records produced for a mass audience. But I learn that there was a golden age of cantorial music, that the music was played in concert halls for general audiences, and that cantor Jossele Rosenblatt was considered one of the best tenors of his time throughout the world. The title of the Rosenblatt LP I bought says all: Cantor Jossele Rosenblatt Sings His Most Famous Cantorial Compositions, Volume 8. The record is from 1969, Rosenblatt died in 1933, so his fame lasted well beyond his own time.

Reading up on my subject, on the back of the record sleeves, from Wikipedia, as well as from other sources, I got a history lesson beyond the cantorial realm as well. I learned what the restrictions of the sabbath are and when they are observed. I learned about the atrocities against the Jewish people in World War I. My eclectic (I don't really like that word but I can't think of an alternative—it presumes a hierarchical idea of taste) record collection sure makes me a better informed citizen. I needed to read up on the Sabbath topic because of a request on one of the records: "Please do not play this record on the Sabbath".

The Mystery

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares
24" x 18", oil on canvas, 2011

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares was one of the first examples of field recordings that found a mainstream audience. I was one of that audience and the Bulgarian recordings were also the first field recordings in my Top 100 lists. Producer Ivo Watts-Russell was responsible for all this by re-releasing the original 1975 album on his intensely popular label 4AD in 1986. Scott, my brother-in-law, forwarded me a link to an interview by Richie Troughton with 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell on The Quietes online music magazine. Watts-Russell elaborates how he was introduced, became entranced, and licensed the music of the Bulgarian choirs. The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the 4AD release. The recordings were a result of 15 years of field work by Marcel Cellier who released a selection of the best tracks on his own small Disques Cellier in 1975. At the time of release I bought both 4AD's LPs (a year after the first one they released Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, Volume 2 which won a Grammy award in 1990) and now 25 years later I dug 'em up again. These will be great records forever.

Gloomy Sunday

Erika Maroszán
7.5" x 5.5"
oil on wood, 2011

During a game of “YouTube-off”—in which each participant selects a YouTube video within a certain category, the participants then vote on the winner,  I nominated the song Szomorú Vasárnap in the version by the Hungarian actress Erika Marozsán for the category “sad”. The video was just a still, a photograph of a statue of a woman’s sad face that was rained upon (so it looked like tears). It didn’t get any votes :_(

But I didn’t take the opportunity to elaborate on the song’s history. How it was written in the direst of circumstances and how legend has it that many people committed suicide after hearing the song. It may well be the saddest song ever written.

Szomorú Vasárnap is better known in the Western world in English as Gloomy Sunday. The music was written by the Hungarian composer Rezső Seress in 1933. As a piece for piano solo he first titled it Vége a világnak (End of the world) and became Szomolá Vasárnap when  László Jávor added the lyrics in 1935. The song was translated into many languages, the English Gloomy Sunday was first recorded in 1936 by Hal Kemp but wasn't generally known until Billie Holiday's version of 1941. The song was billed as The Hungarian Suicide Song. People had reportedly committed suicide by jumping in the Danube with a copy of the sheet music in their hands. The song then was banned in Hungary. Seress, who was Jewish, was living in poverty in Budapest when he wrote Vége a világnak against a backdrop of looming fascism. He survived Nazi labor camps and died1968, a suicide. Such is the history of Szomorú Vasárnap in a nutshell. Björk recently added her name to the long list of performers that once recorded the song.

Erika Marozsán's version is from the German–Hungarian film with the same title (Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod in German). The film is a fictional account of the history of the song. Marozsán stars as Illona in the film. The painting I did of her is small, I used a small brush for the figure. It took me two days' worth of painting after I had done the background (my back yard at night) in less than 10 minutes. The technique I applied for painting the figure is not what I consider a technique for fine art. The technique is rather amateuristic suited for a kitschy image. With a brush even finer I should have added a tear under her eye.

My backyard as a stage

Seven back yard paintings, various sizes, oil on canvas, 2011

 Here are some of the paintings from before the musicians enter into it. My backyard as a stage as it were. The concept allows me to combine my old passion of landscape painting with my ongoing musicians' portrait series.

Keening

Greenham women
24" x 18"
oil on canvas, 2011

Those of you that regularly check into the posts on this blog know about my preoccupation with mournful singing by women, keening as it is called in Ireland. Slowly I'm developing a collection of recordings from all over the world that fit this category. True keening recordings are hard to come by (officially the practice of keening is extinct) and this recording by women from Greenham is the best example I've come across yet. It's a news video made by the British newspaper The Guardian. On it the Greenham women, about thirty of them, can be seen and heard keening while protesting nuclear power on the occasion of Ronald Reagan's visit to England in 1981. The woman had marched from the Greenham military base to Parliament Square in London. Sixteen of them were arrested on arrival. The recording marks the second occurrence of a musical performance broken up by police (see "Guatemala" for the first one) in the current Top 100, and the third example of cry-singing (also keen, wail, or lament). In the painting Parliament Square is replaced with an image of my own back yard, as has become habit lately.

Guitar Slim

Guitar Slim Green
6.25" x 5"
oil on wood, 2011

This painting on a small piece of wood was at first no more than a little exercise in landscape texture I painted on the side while working on a larger canvas. But the exercise was recycled, just as the landscape painting, into a Top 100 painting. The little ones are the most fun to do. They are as spontaneous, unmediated, and unassuming as they come. Doesn't Guitar Slim look like he's really enjoying it? (For you collectors of small paintings: they are a lot cheaper too!) There are several blues musicians who recorded under the name of Guitar Slim. The best known was born as Eddie Jones and had a huge hit with The Things I Used to Do. He couldn't handle success and died at 32. His son Guitar Slim, Jr still performs his dad's songs. Norman "Guitar Slim" Green had not such trouble. He still may be alive today, he may be playing at a juke joint somewhere as I write this. His 1970 record Stone Down Blues may well be the only record he made. What we do know for sure is that the two musicians that accompany Green on the record are still alive. They are Johnny and Shuggie Otis, father and son, both with a giant career in the music biz. Stone Down Blues is a great record, it rocks!

The mainstream jazz

Gato Barbieri
14" x 6"
oil on wood 2011

Anything that produces sound is fair game these days, from the latest million selling pop hit of Lady Gaga to the kid in the neighborhood practicing his guitar to play a tune in church next Sunday. They all have the potential to be listed in my archive alongside Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, John Coltrane, and all the other greats from the long history of recorded music. Jazz has been fair game all along but not the kind of jazz creeping into my weekly lists lately. In the last three lists three different jazz musicians, all categorized as mainstream, made their first appearance. First there was the smooth jazz trumpet of Grammy nominee Chris Botti, then the flutes of New Age pioneer Paul Horn, and lastly the Latin Jazz sounds of Gato Barbieri. None of those jazz tunes are likely to make it into the final list of 100 songs for the year 2011 but in the case of Gato Barbieri I dug a little deeper and found some really great pre-Latin-pop on a Latin-free-jazz disc called El Pampero. The tracks were recorded live in Montreux, Switzerland in 1971. Gato Barbieri hails from Argentina and the song to be included in the list of the hundred for 2011 is the patriotic Mi Buenos Aires Querido, a tune that was originally a song by Argentinian tango legend Carlos Gardel.

Guatemala

Street musicians from Santa Clara la Laguna
24" x 18", oil on canvas, 2011

Arsenal set a unique record last Saturday: All 14 players (the original 11 and the maximum allowed three subs) had a different nationality. I'm a fan of Arsenal. Their international character is reflected in my top 100. The Top 100 2011 is rapidly becoming my most international list ever. The 38 songs in the list so far represent music from 23 different countries. Number 39 is from Guatemala (that makes it 24). The Guatemalan song is an old time traditional urban song (ranchera) performed by a group of indigenous street musicians from Santa Clara la Laguna. The song, in the format of a video blog, was recorded in 2008 by Rudy Girón in the city La Antigua Guatemala. The musicians were playing for some handouts from by passers, mostly tourists. Near the end of the video some policemen come over. They talk to the guitar player while the other three keep on with their song (a religious hymn). According to Girón the policemen asked them to stop playing, supposedly for not having a permit. Girón concludes that the real reason for police intervention was that the type of music they were playing was too exotic, too third world like, to be heard on the streets of a city that is so dependent on tourism. They are welcome to play in my back yard though (which is where they are situated in the painting).

Sado Okesa

Japanese dancer
9" x 12"
oil on canvas, 2011

The image of the dancing Japanese woman was originally part of a photograph of a large dancing group used on the Folkways album Traditional Folk Songs of Japan. The background was painted en plein air at Bowditch beach in Fort Myers. The song for the Top 100 2011 it represents is Sado Okesa. Sado Okesa is a love song that originates from the island of Sado. The version on Traditional Folk Songs of Japan was actually recorded on that island but the Top 100 version of the song comes from Yokohama. It appears on Folk Music of Japan, yet another Folkways release. It was sung by a Geisha in 1952 and is an urbanized version quite different from the original (de Sado version on Traditional Folk Songs could be considered the original version but was recorded nine years later in 1961—the real original is of course hundreds of years older). 

The Sado version I downloaded from the Smithsonian website for 99 cent. The Yokahama version I found on the original vinyl LP Folk Music of Japan. It cost me also 99 cents in a thrift store in Cape Coral.

N'Goundi girls

N'Goundi girls
24" x 18"
oil on canvas, 2011

The Folkways catalog, and especially the Ethnic Folkways Series, housed in the Smithsonian Library of Congress, is probably the best and broadest source of historic field recordings that exists. I consider myself a collector of these series even though I only own less than 5% of the 500 or so records in the series (of a total of 1930 titles on Folkways). The records were produced by Moses Asch and released from 1944 until Asch's death in 1986, after which the Smithsonian Institute added the label to their inventory. All Folkways' titles have always been available on vinyl during Asch's life and all titles continue to be available on CD format (or as download) through the Smithsonian Institute. Occasionally I pick one of the titles and listen to excerpts of the songs on it. I pick my favorite ones and order these as a download for 99 cents a song. The last one I explored was Music of Equatorial Africa with recordings made in the early 1950s in what was then French Equatorial Africa. My favorite pick from the recordings is a song by young N'Goundi girls. It's a chorus of girls singing accompanied by hand clapping. The lead singer uses a sort of a yodel in her singing, probably picked up through neighboring pygmy tribes. "This a satirical and licentious song. The young N'Goundi girls scoff at a young boy who has bragged too much about his capabilities."

The location of the recording is not specified but most likely made in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The N'Goundi people must be known now by a different name as all the hits on a search on line for N'Goundi come from sources before 1954, the year the record was released. 

Extensive searching for images yielded only two photographic images, both from the early 20th Century. The three girls in the painting are singled out from a larger group of N'Goundis in one of these photographs. It was found in the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives.

Robert Johnson (2)

Robert Johnson
oil on canvas
24" x 18", 2011

A hot news item recently was that some film footage of Robert Johnson was found. Everybody got very excited but the musician in the footage was to remain anonymous and was certainly not Robert Johnson, so was decided by a panel of both musicologists and people who actually knew him. There are only two known photographs of Robert Johnson; the one used to inform this painting, in the other–also taken while playing guitar–he smokes a cigarette (that was omitted when used as a US postage stamp). The proprietor of the Robert Johnson estate commissioned a video artist to animate Johnson's face using both photographs (cigarette omitted). The result is really pretty amazing, it looks like Robert Johnson is singing, the music to go along the video: Hellhound on My Trail. This is the closest thing yet to see Johnson perform on film.

The Robert Johnson I'm talking about is course the legendary, almost mythical, blues musician. It is a different blues musician, and much better known, than the Robert Johnson I mused about a few months ago.

My backyard is in the background of the painting again but you may wonder what that orange color is near the bottom of the painting. Well... it's cheese. How did it get there? That's a long story which involves an artist statement and schoolchildren from Volendam.

Chemirocha

Kipsigis woman
24" x 18", oil on canvas, 2011

Record collecting is not what it used to be. Collecting itself has lost its integrity in our Post-modern era in which the very idea of original is suspect. Through the World Wide Web you can download, copy, and order about anything that exists in this world, all from your comfy chair at home. Then there are still some fools like me that will waste a lot of time going through stacks of vinyl that are 90% trash, finally find something worthwhile and pay a lot more for it than the free download on the web which probably would sound better too. Lost an afternoon and $10.

Here’s an anecdote that explains why I am such a fool:
Just the other day after a half an hour browsing through some stacks at a local record store my eyes caught a 10” record of some African music. It looked old (50’s, early 60’s maybe) and I am a sucker for old world music recordings, so I picked it up. It said Music of Africa Series No. 2 Kenya. Nothing wrong with that, when I look further my heart starts to beat a little faster: Collected and Introduced by Hugh Tracey. 

Hugh Tracey to me is what Dick Tracey may be for some others. Hugh Tracey is the African Alan Lomax. For the sake of the preservation of disappearing cultures he founded an institution and would collect, record, and document cultural life in Africa. From the 1930’s on he recorded extensively in the field to capture the music of many cultures that are now extinct in their traditional form. Tracey first recorded many an African superstar. Tracey also introduced the world to the music of pygmy societies. Since Tracey’s death a few years ago many of his recordings were released but can only be purchased if you buy all 16 of them. That is too much for me, I did however copy every single Tracey recording I could find at the local library, and these have been standard fare of my Top 100 in the last years.

The Soul of Mbira

Muchatera Mujuru
after a photo by Paul Berliner
13" x 7.5", oil on wood, 2011

The next time I reshuffle my record collection I plan on organizing the category of traditional music from around the world by record company instead of the current geographical arrangement. It would be nice to see those records with a very specific sleeve design, such as Arion and Olympic together. It will bring together items from a single catalog as well as the field work by a single musicologist. The  Library of Congress carries most of Alan Lomax's recordings while the Nonesuch Explorer Series houses David Lewiston's. The Ethnic Folkways Series under the umbrella of the Library of Congress and the Nonesuch series are the most interesting. They have the most extensive and acclaimed collection of authentic field recordings. The Soul of Mbira: Traditions of the Shona People of Rhodesia is one of many highlights from the Nonesuch Explorer catalog. This one wasn't recorded by David Lewiston, he did some tape editing, but by Paul Berliner, who also wrote the liner notes, and supplied the photographic illustrations. I've had a copy of The Soul of Mbira on a cassette tape for a long time and was delighted to find an original vinyl copy in a local thrift store. Nyamoropa Yevana Vava Muchonga by Muchatera Mujuru was my favorite track when I first listed the album in the Top 100 back in 1991, and now 20 years later it still is my favorite and reappears in the Top 100. With my cassette I never had a copy of the liner notes and it is not until now that I learn that Nyamoropa, according to Paul Berliner, is played on "one of the few remaining varieties of an older style 25-key Mbira Dza Vadaimu, having th lowest and most traditional tunings".

The Soul of Mbira: Traditions of the Shona People of Rhodesia was first released in 1973, when it was issued on cd in 2002, the title changed to: Zimbabwe: The Soul of Mbira, Traditions of the Shona People.

The National Sitar Ensemble

India National Sitar Ensemble
(Sitar Music of India, sleeve)
14" x 16", oil on canvas, 2011

Sitar Music of India is a really great record of Indian folk music featuring the India National Sitar Ensemble with the Indian Folk Ensemble released by the Californian Everest label. The music has the stateliness of Indian classical music and the excitement minus the kitsch of Bollywood film music, the best of both worlds. I'd imagined a music like that would exist, i just hadn't heard it yet. In my mind I can dream up the greatest music, you see, but when you put an instrument in front of me I'm instantly lost. I can dream up the greatest paintings too, but when I execute them they're never like the ones I dream, or in the few cases when they are, I realize that a painting in a dream can look a hundred times better than a material one. Don't get me wrong: I don't discourage dreaming, I think dreaming is alright.

Lament from Hungary

Folk Music of Hungary cover 
(after a photograph by Béla Bartók)
24” x 18”, oil and pastel on canvas, 2011

Nostalgia - community - family - traditions - children - nature - home, these are some of the topics my paintings occupy lately. The same topics are present in the music I listen to (painting and music are parallel for me, always). Some of these topics had not entered my work before—children for example: I was never interested in their songs, their aesthetic, or their play, but something changed. I think it started with teaching children this summer, I had never done this before, and never thought I would like it, but I did—it gave me joy. In painting, in music, and in real life children provide an uncomplicated presence. There’s no idolatry, sexual charge, or psychological complexion—burdens I feel no use for, in these paintings anymore.

It has recently been discovered that some of the iconic ancient cave paintings have been done by small children. In the recently discovered Rouffignac  caves in the Dordogne, the most prolific artist was a five year old girl. Learning about this fact had an enormous impact on my worldview and my attitude of how I view my position within the world of art.

The LP Hungarian Folk Music contains a really nice children’s song but the first track from this magnificent record to be included in the Top 100 is sung by an older woman. Jaj, Jaj énnekem bánatos anyának! is a lament from the north of Hungary, a true example of the world-wide practice of cry-singing I have been collecting for many years. There hasn’t been a top 100 in the 2000s without an example of such mode of singing.
The group of Hungarian women and girls was photographed by Béla Bartók and used for the cover of Folk Music of Hungary with recordings made by Bartók. Hungarian Folk Music (not to be confused with Bartók's) is an introduction to a series of records that was to be started in 1965 by the Folk Music Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I don’t know if the series ever materialized.

Ayşe

Ayşe
24" x 20"
oil and pastel on canvas, 2011

In my eternal search for this sound recording I once heard of an Irish woman keening I've started collecting women's mourning songs. Laments, keening, wailing, cry-singing, are some of the terms used for these mourning songs. It's a slow growing collection but every year I find new ones that usually go straight into the Top 100. Ayşe I found during one of my YouTube browsings using some of the keywords I laid out above. The song Zazaca Bir Parka doesn't quite fit in my collection of cry-singing but comes close. The music is certainly mournful but this may be a general characteristic of certain Kurdish musical traditions, Ayşe's other songs published on YouTube have a similar melancholic feel as Zazaca Bir Parka. Ayşe sings and plays saz in the video. Trying to figure out Kurdish titles and  names from headings and comments in the videos is a challenge (for me) and I could not positively identify Ayşe's surname. Several names are placed in front of, and behind the name Ayşe. A Google search using Ayşe did not lead me to the identity of the singer, Ayşe is apparently a common given name. All the other names used together with Ayşe simply brought me back to the videos on YouTube. I narrowed it down to two names: her name is either (or both) Ayşe Sefaqi or Ayşe Felek. The country it was recorded in remains unknown to me too as Kurdistan lies within territories of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Political unrest has been ravaging the region for decades and recently violence has been escalating again. I sure hope Ayşe is alright.

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker
12" x 7"
oil on wood, 2011

Another Top 100, another John Lee Hooker painting. I hardly select to listen to any of my old favorite musicians anymore but sometimes they are selected for you. I was watching Basquiat, the Radiant Child when One of These Days by John Lee Hooker, unexpectedly and sudden, was heard in the background of the film. It has a great soundtrack, that movie, One of These Days is a great song. I have quit a few John Lee Hooker records but That's My Story: John Lee Hooker Sings the Blues (on which One of These Days is to be found) is not one of these. No matter how many John Lee Hooker records you collect there always will be some important work missing. You think you have enough of his work collected until you hear another one. John Lee Hooker is full of surprises. When John Lee Hooker entered the Top 100 last year the story that went along with it was a similar one: 

His output is such that to collect all his recordings is a task so epic that it isn't even worth a consideration. I have no ambition towards such an achievement but I will occasionally add to my substantial representation of John Lee Hooker in my record collection.

–Dec 26, 2010: The Stars of My Top 100

 

Florida

Jesus Rodriguez
11" x 6.75"
oil on wood, 2011

When I moved to Ohio from the Netherlands 14 years ago, I moved to a state with a very rich history in music. Pere Ubu from Cleveland, King Records from Cincinnati, Rahsaan Roland Kirk born in Columbus, to name a few, are just the tip of the iceberg securing Ohio an important place in the history of recorded (popular) music. It meant a lot to me. This year I left Ohio for Florida. Florida doesn't have a musical history like Ohio does. The move was clearly motivated by different motives (like the beaches, endless summers, to state the obvious). Among the people living around me in Fort Myers, there's not much of an interest in musical history, sure people like to dance, sure people like to hear music they like, and sure people play instruments like they do up north, but it's a different musical universe, music is entertainment, not at all very serious. That said I received 5 complimentary CD's in the mail from the Florida Folklife Institute, for the most part recorded during the annual Florida Folk  Festival in White Springs. One CD is dedicated to bluegrass, one to blues (with the beautiful title Where the Palm Trees Shake at Night), one to African American religious music, while the other  two are compilations, a mix of the first three plus some miscellaneous categories. Within these  miscellaneous categories the most interesting music can be found; we hear Seminole Billy Bowlegs III (named after the famous chief Billy Bowlegs, after whom the creek behind our house is named, we live at the very location the Seminoles surrendered in the 1800s), a song recorded by the famous writer (and folklorist) Zora Neale Hurston, and children's playing songs. But the first musician to hit a home run is the Venuzuelan American harpist Jesus Rodriguez. My favorite parts of the compilation CD's are the various performers whose language is Spanish.

The Florida Folklife Collection CD's are issued by a state institution. Everything is documented out the ying-yang as you would expect from an official source. My wife is in the middle of obtaining a degree in library science so I pick up more information about cataloging than I could ever dream of. Searching for a photo of Jesus Rodriguez lead me back to the very same official Florida site as I found the complimentary CD's on. Every single photograph –and there are hundreds, just in the music section roughly parallel with the 5 CD's– is named, numbered, credited, dated, located, categorized, sub-categorized, and sub-sub-categorized. Five photos from the concert in which Jesus Rodriguez played his El Gavilan Cjaropo are published on line and they're pretty much all the same photo but every single one comes with a full page of data. Just for the sheer scale of the documentation (and the enormous effort by the cataloging staff) I reproduce here the information coming with the photograph I used for my painting. (This time I strayed far away from the photo, it is hardly the same image any more.) What would it look like then to transfer and edit this information into cataloging my painting of Jesus Rodriguez? A bigger file yet than the one following I'm afraid. A numbering system I have in place: The painting of Jesus Rodriguez will be Top 100 2011, #... — blanks to be filled in after February 2012 when the list of 100 songs is complete.

Title

• Jesus Rodriguez playing the Venezuelan harp at the Traditions Festival - Miami, Florida

Image Number

• FA5871

Year

• 1986

Date Note

• Photographed on March 22 or 23, 1986.

Series Title

• General: Folklife Collection.
• Specific: Folklife Collection Series 1667, Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs Florida Folklife Archives Florida Folklife fieldwork photographs, slides, and negatives: Traditions Festival, Folder 1 of 2 ; Box 2, FF1

General Note

• The other musicians are unidentified.

Photographer

• Larsen, Eric, Collector.

Physical Description

• 1 slide - col - 35 mm.

Subject Term

• Festivals--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Manners and customs
• Recreation--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Performing arts--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Hispanic American men--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Hispanic American children--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Entertainers--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Folk musicians--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Performances
• Musical instruments--Latin America
• Stringed instruments
• Plucked instruments
• Harp
• Harpists
• Guitar
• Guitarists
• Instrumentalists
• Music--Performance
• Folk music--Latin America
• Arts (Performing)--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Songs, Ethnic
• Musical traditions, Latin American and Caribbean
• Ethnicity, Venezuelan
• Ethnicity, Latin American and Caribbean
• Practices
• Community rites--Florida--Dade County--Miami
• Belief and custom
• Secular festivals--Florida--Dade County--Miami

Geographic Term

• Metropolitan Dade County (Fla)
• Miami (Fla)

Personal Subject

• Rodriguez, Jesus, 1947-

Subject Coporate

• Historical Museum of Southern Florida (Miami, Fla)

Subject Meeting

• South Florida Folklife Festival, (1986 :, Miami, Fla)

Shelf Number

• Shelf number: SNS1667B2F1.

Cassette w/Arabic script

Unidentified singer
28.5" x 16.5"
oil and pastel on canvas, 2011

Who can help me identify this singer? It's from a cassette and the only information given is in Arabic script. I can't read it. Below is a pictures of the cassette (side 1), please be so kind to translate it for me if you can. The music is generous in its detail, pathos of plenty but not kitsch. And a beautiful voice. Somehow I think the singer may be Lebanese, I don't know why I think that but the tape was filed with others from Lebanon from the day I bought it. Once, a long time ago, it must have been the late 80s, Fairuz was #1 in my Top 100. She sung Ya Ana, Ya Ana together with the Rahbani Brothers set to music of Beethoven's Für Elise. It was my first foray into the music of Lebanon. 

The background in the painting above is again of my back yard. Featured this time are three palm trees neatly lined up. The singer then, is superimposed with pastels. I didn't attempt to save too much landscape this time.

Marie Danek

Marie Danek
7.5" x 6.75"
oil on wood, 2011

A little advertisement for a new blog I started:

http://musicalthriftstoretreasures.blogspot.com/ 

It's a music blog where I post tunes from records found in thrift stores. You can download there the Top 100 tune Kdo Valcik Mival Rat sung by Marie Danek. The following text I wrote last week to accompany the first Musical Thrift Store Treasures blog.

Moving from Columbus, Ohio to Fort Myers, Florida didn't really change a whole lot in regards to what records can be found in thrift stores. They say that Southwest Florida is the place where Ohioans retire. Case in point: one of the first people I met is a retired plumber from Columbus who lives practically next door—we have become good friends.
Just as in Ohio you will find polka records here at any single thrift store, dozens in an afternoon of shopping. I had given up buying any more polka records after I purchased a 4LP box-set with the best recordings ever made. I thought that would do, never was a big fan anyhow. So why I bought yet another one is easy to explain. This one features a female vocalist, a feature not found on any track on the 4LP greatest ever recordings. This record is by far the greatest polka record I own. The vocalist is Marie Danek singing with Joe Hezoucky and his Bohemian Orchestra from Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland, with its large Eastern European community, is the polka capitol of the United States. The king of polka, Frankie Yankovic is from there too, and he too retired in Southwest Florida.

The selected tune is not really a polka but rather a waltz titled Kdo Valcik Mival Rat (Who Loves to Waltz). It was recorded in Edcom Recording Studios on Tungsten Rd. in Cleveland and released by Souvenir Records on Drake Ave. in that same city. 

"It is my sincere hope, that by listening to this album, your days will become just a bit more enjoyable. May the sun shine forever in your hearts"
                     —Joe Hezoucky, liner notes to Third Edition

They made my day :)

Misirlou

Three Egyptian (?) women with their children
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2011

According to Wikipedia the song Misirlou was composed by Michalis Patrinos together with members from his Rebitiko band in 1927. He recorded it first in 1930 and then again in 1931. The recordings were distributed in America on the Ortophonic label by a certain Titos Dimitriadis. How confusing—on YouTube I find a 1927 recording of Misirlou by Tétos Dimitriades. How, in the rich documentation of this song that became known all over the world, did this historical mix-up slip in? Misirlou was a big hit for Dick Dale who recorded it in 1962, in 1994 that version played an important part in the film Pulp Fiction. Hundreds of musicians have recorded versions of it.

Part of the painting you may have seen before. This same painting once belonged to Shankar Jaikashan that I did a month ago (see a few blogs down). In the end I didn’t like that painting and I returned it to the landscape it once was. Since I have painted a brand new Shankar Jaikishan and the landscape painting of my backyard now features the three mothers wearing niqab. The image I extracted from a slide show that was put behind the 1930 Misirlou version of Michalis Patrinos on YouTube. I’m not sure whether or not the women in the “time-piece” photograph are Greek. (They probably are Egyptian—the song Misirlou deals with a Greek man who falls in love with an Egyptian girl, Misirlou means literally Egyptian girl. They could also be Turkish—Misirl is a Turkish word.) Either way, whilst most their faces are covered up some breasts are not (I didn’t spot that upon selecting the image but only during the process of painting it.)

Mulatu Astatqé

Mulatu Astatqé
5.75" x 12"
pastel, ink on wood, 2003 (2011)

Jazz music is played throughout the whole world. The music Buddy Bolden pioneered in New Orleans more than a century ago has exploded into a thousand different styles and genres. There are hybrids of jazz with pretty much every type of music imaginable. The term fusion, musically, refers to jazz mixed with all sorts of popular music. Growing up in the Netherlands I was exposed to improvisational free jazz of the highest quality. Cities, most notably Amsterdam and Tilburg, had vibrant jazz scenes in the years I became interested in the music. The interest never faded and now on the world wide web, along with a broader interest in the music from the whole wide world, I'm finding all sorts of real exciting jazz from locations not typically associated with jazz. A few weeks ago I put a spotlight on the first Indian Indo-Jazz recording by Shankar Jaikishan. I've know the music of Mulatu Astatqé, the father of Ethio-Jazz, for many years now. A large series of cds called Ethiopiques (Buda Musique) with recordings from Addis Ababa of the 1970s was released beginning in 1997 to advance that music scene to the ears of eager listeners outside the borders of Ethiopia. The Columbus Metropolitan Library had a whole bunch of those cds and every one of them stayed at my house for a few weeks.  Volume 4 from Ethiopiques has the music of Astatqé on it and I found my long lost copy back to accompany me on a long drive down the country. Coincidentally a friend brought another along copy a week later for me to listen to. Mulatu Astatqé is back in Top 100 land after a nine year hiatus. I pulled out that portrait again of Astatqé I did in 2003, I always liked it but I had to fix a few things before posting it because of inadvertent proportional incongruities.

Top 100 2010: The Book

The Top 100 2010, back
11" x 8.5", 117 pages
printed book, 2011

The Top 100 2010, cover
11" x 8.5", 117 pages
printed book, 2011

The Top 100 2010 is now available in a book format. The contents roughly follows the posts on this blog from April 2010 through March 2011. It's printed by myself and spiral-bound in a local copy shop in black and white on heavy paper. It's printed on demand in a running edition that will not exceed one hundred copies. It contains lists, reproductions of all 100 paintings in the Top 100, and the commentaries to all 100 as well, and more. 117 pages of informative and fun reading, full color front and back covers, numbered and dedicated. Price: $37.50 + shipping. Contact me through the e-mail provided under View my complete profile on the right hand side of this page.
More updates: If you are in or near Washington, DC this weekend, some of my newest paintings are on view at the (e)merge Art Fair through New York's White Columns:

WHITE COLUMNS

at (e)merge

SEPTEMBER 22 - 25, WASHINGTON DC

works by:

DAVID ALBERTSEN
JASON BRINKERHOFF
JEFF FUNNELL
JOHN HILTUNENJADRANKA KOSORCIC
ELLA KRUGLYANSKAYADANIEL RIOS RODRIGUEZ
BERRY VAN BOEKEL

editions by:

ANNE COLLIER
TAMAR HALPERN
SCOTT KING
AUBREY MAYER
ADAM McEWEN
THURSTON MOORE
MARLO PASCUAL
JOSH SMITH
+ more

for more information:

www.emergeartfair.com

WHITE COLUMNS / 1970 - 2011 / 40+ YEARS OF SUPPORT FOR ARTISTS

Shankar Jaikishan

Shankar Jaikishan
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 201

 

Back yard
30" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2011

Exactly at those moments that you think you've heard it all something comes around that totally blows that thought. And it happens in such a fashion that you realize you should never ever think such thoughts again. How often does it happen that you hear a piece of music so original, passionate, and exciting, that you hear a sound that you've never heard before? A few times a year, to answer my own question, just enough to continue the top 100 project with ever more zeal, even after almost thirty years of doing it. It happened again last week listening to a piece of jazz music, a hybrid of Hindi popular, Indian classical music and American Jazz. The two Indian gentlemen in front of my back yard are  Shankar Jaikishan [शंकर-जयकिशन], Shankar Jaikishan are a composer duo consisting of Shankar and Jaikishan, Shankar Singh Raghuvanshi and Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal to be more precise. They are best known for their work in the Hindi film industry but the track entering the Top 100 2011 is from an autonomous album called Raga Jazz Style from 1968. The album is noted as the earliest Indo Jazz recording in India. The moment that the opening track Raga Todi propels itself into a higher stratosphere is at the moment the sitar, played by Rais Khan is introduced. From there on the record is  ecstatic until the very end. I heard it on a new site I've been following called Holy Warbles [सølγ שаябlɛş]. The site is quite prolific, it'll take me a while, if I ever get to it, to uncover all this fantastic music hidden in their archives.

A sixteen inch Beth Orton head on the wall

Beth Orton
16" x 20"
oil on canvas, 2011

Just as with Cat Power (see previous) I'm also waiting on Beth Orton's new album to come out. Both their last releases date back to 2006. Maybe not as anxiously anticipated as Cat Power's new one, Beth Orton's sure will make a splash in my rankings. Orton's last album Comfort of Strangers now tops the albums' list for the second year running, while for the time being the track Shopping Trolley from it resides at #1 in this year's counting. While awaiting her new one I've been listening to some of her older ones. Stolen Car from her 1999 release Central Reservation entered the list and as a consequence I picked up one of the many paintings I did of her last year and gave it a brand new look. Needless to say I wasn't too happy with the  painting's original look. Now it's good and I learned a lot about that particular painting, that particular photograph it is modeled after, and about portrait painting in general. Not that 16" is all that tall but when a portrait fills it up it is quite big, bigger than life size. I've made many much bigger top 100 portrait paintings but none ever larger than life. Now it's hanging on my wall and a face that big has quite some presence. More than ever before I'm confronted with the spirit of a painted portrait. The look of the eyes, the curve of the lips, every patch of hair, it all has to be just right or else... the painting will complain. I've never met Beth Orton, never seen her perform, just like the music, her videos, her humor, and I painted a dozen portraits of her.

Cat Power

Cat Power
20" x 10"
oil on canvas, 2011

If you're a Cat Power fan, like me, it has been a long time waiting for a new album. Occasionally a live performance shows up on YouTube or something with a song never recorded on any album before. Recently 4 new songs surfaced as a fan recorded a concert in San Francisco. These songs, all unnamed as of yet, are due to be part of Cat Power's new record. The 4 songs hold great promise for this much anticipated album. For the Top 100 this year I selected the last one from the San Francisco video, called New Song #4 for now. 

Cat Power has been the most painted musician in the Top 100's history and she's about, with or without new album, to take over the #3 spot, currently held by Captain Beefheart, in the 28 years of counting points awarded to musicians, right behind Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.

The Comoro Islands

Gabus Player
16" x 10"
oil on canvas, 2011

I had never heard of the Comoro Islands until a few days ago. Scrolling through a list of the 196 "official" countries of the world, Comoros was the first one I had never heard of. This is why I used it as an example in a facebook posting on collecting folk music. This is what I wrote:

Thanks to Maria for dragging me in to those thrift stores. I added at least 7 more countries to my international folk collection this week. I now have gathered records from more than one hundred countries (there are officially 196 of them, so I'm more than half way to collect them all (but where the hell would I find a record from Comoros?)

 From several responses, the link to the LP Folk Music of the Comoro Islands (on Folkways, what other label could it be?) was the most interesting. I ordered the music as a download and now, suddenly, from an unknown, it is part of my collection of folk music from around the world and right away too, part of my Top 100 archive. The Shinzwani Love song with cabus that opens the record is irresistible in its charm. As with the cumbus player a few weeks ago, the publishers published a photo of the musician, but both photo and cabus player on the LP remain anonymous. Yet again a new instrument in my painting repertoire, I'll work on Cs I guess (as I love things in alphabetical order. The C is a big letter too in our spice rack: cumin, cinnamon, chili, cayenne, curry, cloves, chives, caraway, chicory, are all together there—be it not in that order). What will the next instrument be? I haven't painted chimes yet, or the irresistible clavichord? 

p.s. The instrument depicted above is not a cabus but a gabus. The text accompanying the music was hard to read. So much for painting instruments starting with a C.

What's New Pussycat?

Tom Jones
oil on martini glass, 2011
(signed by Tom Jones)

When I was asked to contribute to the 2011 Naples Independent Film Festival fundraiser I said yes. I'm a yes man and being new in South Florida, I'm jumping on every opportunity just to get in touch with the 'scene' down here. The fundraiser consists of auctioning off decorated martini glasses signed by celebrities. The signed martini glasses are decorated by (mostly local) artists hence the invitation. When I was given the list of which glasses needed decoration I got very excited: Tom Jones was on it! In the history of my Top 100 Sir Tom Jones has not been a prominent fixture but he was once in it nevertheless (What's New Pussycat in 1998) and among my wife's and mine record collection, we have seven(!) of his records. So I got the signed martini glass and I had to think about what to do. I did think for a long time, making a few sketches, before I decided to go straight up. I painted a portrait of Tom Jones on the outside of the glass as not to jeopardize the function (it can still be used as a martini glass.) The nature of a drinking glass is such that an image can be seen from both sides. This is very different from everything I've done before. I've painted on glass but only one side is meant to be seen. The proposition was for me the opportunity to show an under-painting on one side and a refined one on the other. I used that part of the glass that most resembled a two dimensional surface; starting  at the rim and diagonally wrapping the image halfway around the glass. It's a science. For an image I chose not to use the Tom Jones we're all familiar with but a recent picture of his. He's 71 and about to release a blues(!) album. Yes I'm serious, the single that's already out is Burning Hell originally by John Lee Hooker (and Top 100 inducted in Hooker's version). When I showed Jones' version to my wife on YouTube, she commented that he looked (and sounded) like a black man. Looking at the finished painting he does too, not so much like John Lee Hooker, but I see a resemblance with Howlin' Wolf.

The Accordion (Swiss Mountain Music)

Swiss Accordion Players
17" x 17"
oil on ceramic tile, 2011 

 During the 19th Century the accordion, which has done such severe damage to the folk music of Central Europe, penetrated every region of Italy. The Southern Italian folk musicians, however, have worked out ways of playing this pestiferous instrument so that it supports rather than injures their old tunes.

 —Alan Lomax, Music and Song of Italy, 1958

A big sale of records for a dime each made me buy records I usually leave for the next person. Included in the big haul were records, folk and popular music, from many European countries. I picked up records from countries I usually ignore: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Lots of yodels, lederhosen, and accordion music. If it's old enough, and recorded in the field (the Alps, in the case of the countries mentioned above), every geographical location is worthy enough to collect. The record Swiss Mountain Music meets these criteria and at least one tune is a true gem, and the picture on the back cover of a combo in which two accordion players, one in a polar bear costume, are featured, is too good to pass up. The gem, however, is one of the few tunes on the record that doesn't feature an accordion. It's a yodel with moving coins accompaniment performed by Franzsepp Inauen called Appenzeller Yodel. I've painted my share of accordions and without exception I have had a hard time doing it. Visually it's an annoying instrument to paint and when I had to do it again I just did the bare bones version. Kind of looks like a fish bone, doesn't it?

Folk Songs of Iceland

Anna Thorhallsdottir
17" x 17"
oil on ceramic tile, 2011

The photograph of Anna Thorhallsdottir (Anna Þórhallsdóttir), on the cover of Folk Songs of Iceland is, like the music on that record, and maybe like Iceland itself, serene, mystical, and meditative. I've never been to Iceland (I only flew over), I never read the Edda (I only know of it because of crossword puzzles), and I can't speak the language. Yet I have fond memories; one of my art professors in college was an Icelander. Sigurdur Gudmundsson is his name and I regard him highly. I would characterize him as serene, mystical, and meditative, like the land, and the record, and the photo, but he is funny too.  Something happened in the process of painting Thorhallsdottir's portrait. Something made the sitter jump up and dance, the quiet sky swirl. The stillness vanished by the northern light, pagan deities, and fairy grandmothers. By the Sugarcubes, Sigur Ros, and Sigurdur Gudmundsson. Memories and myths I carried into making this painting of Anna Thorhallsdottir.

And...by the way...the instrument she is playing is called langspil, an Icelandic drone zither.

Çumbus Player

Anon. Çumbus Player (Turkey)
17" x 17"
oil on ceramic tile, 2011

There are so many instruments in the world, there's no way I'd be able to know them all let alone paint them all but new ones are added to my repertoire every once in a while. The çumbus is the latest. Advertised on the liner notes to Songs and Dances from Turkey as a modern lute, the çumbus looks more like a giant 12 string banjo. The çumbus player above, anonymous, is most likely the player featured in the dance tune Nihavent Longa as the image appears on the back sleeve of that record. The player is not identified in neither image nor recording. The producers of 'field' recordings in the 1950s and 60s typically omit this kind of information. In recent times this would be disrespectful, but back then it seemed that the circumstances and geographical location were more important  to the ethnomusicologist than the name of a player or singer. The çumbus on Nihavent Longa is accompanied by a clarinet as well as a darabukā player. I've painted clarinets before but never a darabukā. A missed opportunity here because an image of the darabukā, a goblet drum, is also featured on the same back sleeve.

But a painting is a painting and not a platform for instrument indulgence (even though it could very well be). The more I learn about painting the more of a purist I become. In this painting on ceramic tile (the purity of which is debatable) my palette consisted of the three primary colors and white, and I've used only one medium sized brush. I use no mechanical techniques whatsoever, no tape, rulers, transfer techniques, no additional application techniques. I've painted wet in wet without any color mixing on the palette. Ideally I finish one in a four to five hour session but typically I go back into it the next day. The çumbus player was executed over the course of three days.

Robert Johnson

Robert "Nighthawk" Johnson
17" x 17"
oil on ceramic tile, 2011

Blues is confusing if you're an archivist. As an oral tradition the authorship of most blues songs are obscure or debatable. Musicians freely combine verses from older songs, add a line or two, and call it their own. They 'borrow'  verses, songs, and even names from each other. The Robert Johnson depicted above is a different Robert Johnson than the legendary Crossroads blues man. Both were born Robert Johnson though. The Robert Johnson I'm dealing with here was born in 1917, he performed under the name Robert Nighthawk, but let's not get him confused with the better know blues musician with the same name. Robert "Nighthawk" Johnson didn't record a whole lot of records. In fact the two song on the album Sorrow Come Pass Me Around: A Survey of Rural Black Religious Music, recorded by David Evans in 1967 in Skene, MS, may well be the only two he ever recorded. In a Google search it's the only record that shows up. The first is the standard Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down in which he inserts a stanza from Amazing Grace. He performs with a 'knife' guitar. The second tune is sung by Dorothy Lee, Norma Jean, and Shirley Marie Johnson, his three teenage daughters who were part of the local church choir. The title is You Got to Give an Account and it will be part of the Top 100 2011.

The painting is done, rather unconventionally, on ceramic tile. Having no canvases available that were big and square enough, I resorted to building materials to work on. Those I have plenty of, readily available, combining the chores of fixing up the old house with the passion for painting.

Luo Chief

Luo Chief (anon.)
14" x 11"
 pastel on paper, 2011

 The image for the pastel drawing above comes from a blog maintained by British artist James Aldridge. The source of the original photograph was not given by Aldridge. The identity of the person portrayed I don't know either except that it is an image of a Luo chief (Kenyan tribe), which is close enough for me to use as the illustration for a praise song performed by Luo chief Gideon Magak. I was not able to find an image of Magak and Hugh Tracey, who recorded this song, I had already done.

James Aldridge's art focuses on environmental awareness and his blog deals a lot with teaching art to children. Being interested in environmental issues myself (be it not through my art) and also teaching painting and drawing to children (be it only very recently), I will look into Aldridge's ideas later on but for now these ideas are not relevant for the Top 100 project. Aldridge didn't comment at all on the photo he published but I'm sure he was motivated by the horn-hat the chief is wearing. I found that hat quite intriguing myself.

Chosen for its horn-hat then, the photo proved difficult to mutate into a drawing precisely because of those horns attached to the hat. The drawing didn't come to life until I subverted the masculinity of it.

Magak's praise song, recorded in the early 1950s in Kenya, was released in 1952 on The Music of Africa Series 2: Kenya as a ten-incher, and this record I consider one of the most precious records I own. If I had to give up all my records but for one I'd probably pick this one to keep. (Don't you ever put me in that position!)