The Top 100 started as a hobby; a fan adoring his musical heroes and paying tribute by making portraits of them. The hobby became obsession and the project went from the boy’s room into the art world. But I'm still that fan, it's about them in the end, their music, and not about me.
Cat Power
14 x 11 inches, pencil and spray paint on paper, 2020
One of the few popular musicians that I continue to listen to is Cat Power. While last year saw a spike in Cat Power songs in the Top 100—a new album, Wanderer, was released—this year's contributions are less numerous but still significant. The song Wanderer was #1 last year, and currently standing at #12, it is the highest of three of her songs in this year's list. The other two are In Your Face also from the 2018 album Wanderer, and her best known song Good Woman returns as well. The latter is from her 2002 release You Are Free. The above drawing I started last week but initially it didn't click, so I started a new one from the same photograph by Christian Lantry. Both of these drawings I continued to work on with just a single pencil for several days until both satisfied me as a representation of Cat Power. The second one then is here to represent In Your Face in the Top 100 2020.
Cat Power
14 x 11 inches, pencil and tempera on paper, 2020
Wanderer
is out now. I had
preordered a copy that came with a 45. My first Cat Power 45. The record is
great and my favorite thus far is the title track Wanderer. The song appears at
the beginning and the end of the album and my preference is the latter version.
The source for the image of the painting was provided by a September 23 New
York Times article with a photo by Ryan Pfluger. All 100 for the current top 100 will be painted on a
golden acrylic ground. The blue rectangle in the background here makes it look
a cover for the National Geographic.
2. WameIginiKami (Papua)
Charles Duvelle with his instrument, oil on canvas, 2019
Earlier paintings of
Charles Duvelle featured him as an
old man, here he is in his prime in the 1970s working on field recordings that
became his legacy. He considered himself a "westerner with a
microphone" and this painting shows just that. The track he recorded that
is in the top 100 is, like last year, WamaIginiKamurecorded in Papua New Guinea. The track comes in at #2
and appears on The Photographs of Charles Duvelle(Sublime Frequencies, 2017.)
3. Chants funebre: Koleo
Aamamata, funerary chant, oil on canvas, 2019
The Koleo(funerary chant) at
#3 in the Top 100, is a rather recent development, a synthesis of the previous weeping tradition at a
funeral and the vocal imitation of bamboo panpipes. The photograph that was the
source for the painting features in a lengthy paper on bamboo flutes by Hugo Zemp. He probably took
the picture. Depicted are two women performing the funerary chant Aamamata, a different recording
than the Koleothat is featured on Iles
Salomon: Musique de
Guadalcanal (Ocora/Radio France, 1970.)
4. Bongwater – Nick Cave Dolls
Ann Magnuson, oil on canvas, 2019
From the 1991 album The
Power of Pussy LP
comes the song Nick Cave Dolls. How did it happen that I didn't hear of Bongwater in the 1990s?
"Wow...They have Nick Cave dolls now...I want one." Bongwater was formed by Mark
Kramer and Ann Magnuson in 1985. Members of the band then also included David Licht and Dave Rick. Licht went on to form the Klezmatics, Rick to Phantom
Tollbooth. Kramer founded Shimmy Disc Records in 1987.
5. Kiyo Kurokawa, TeruNishizama – Horippa
Kiyo Kurokawa, oil
on canvas, 2019
Kiyo
Kurokawa and TeruNishizama perform several
duets and a few solos on the cdChants
des Ainu (Ainu Songs)
from the Musique
& Musiciens du
Monde series (UNESCO.)
Last year songs of theirs were represented by stock images of traditional
Ainu women but now I think that I've found photos that actually depict the two
women. The photos were made by Jean-Jacques Nattiez who also recorded the music and are found on Ainu
Songs Japan (Phillips)
which was in 1980 the first release of the music recorded in 1978 in Hokkaido.
I do not have the original LP and liner notes are not published on the web so I
can't be sure the images depict them or who's who. Given the prominence of Kurokawa on the LP and that
she's seen clapping on another photo I may assume that the individual on the
record sleeve is indeed Kurokawa.
6. Tiom, Dani: Cour d'amour, air doux
Dani woman with children,
oil on canvas, 2019
The Dani who live in the
western (Indonesian) part of New Guinea are known for their appearances. Men
wear penis sheaths that are quite long and pointy. The sheaths look vicious but
I assume they function the opposite way as it keeps men from getting an
erection and therefore discourages the idea of sexual intercourse. Women, when
losing a dear one cut off a digit of one of their fingers, a painful way to
mourn but it helps mourning I suppose.
7. Bocet: Lament for a Dead Brother
Bela Bartok, oil on canvas, 2019
The Top 100, in the
past, featured many a Bartok composition. Bela Bartok is back now in the Top 100, not as composer but
as musicologist, and collector of folk music. He is well known for his work on
the folk music of his native Hungary, but also collected Central– and Eastern
European music extensively. Case in point is a CD with music from his
collection I picked up the other day with folk music of Rumania (as it was
spelled in 1951, when the music was first published.)
8. Aate: Dance le femmes, Rope
Hugo Zemp, oil
on canvas, 2019
Hugo
Zemp is represented twice
in the top 10 with recordings made in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Both
tracks come from the LP Iles Salomon: Music del Guadalcanal. Professor Zemp was born in Basle,
Switzerland in 1937 and has recorded, written, and filmed on the subject of
ethnic music. As a Swiss national (working in France) he is naturally
interested in yodeling, a subject he also found in various places beside
Switzerland. On the image above Zemp is seen playing a pan flute in the Solomon Islands. He
must have transported that thing all the way from South America! The young
woman (who may well be the individual heard on Aate: Dance le femmes) looks bewildered. I
wonder if Zemp left the pan flute
behind and if so, did the flutes end up in the repertoire of Solomon Islands
traditional music?
note:
Panpipes are indeed in the repertoire of traditional Solomon Islanders music.
However...this is not because Hugo Zemp imported the flutes from South America but the
islanders themselves invented their own pan flute and they make it out of
bamboo.
9. Imitation of the cries of geese, Katajjait on geese cries
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, oil
on canvas, 2019 Canada: Inuit Games and Songs was produced by Nattiez. The painting presented here is to illustrate Imitation
of the Cries of Geese,
a recording made at Baffin Land by Nicole Beaudry and Claude Charon in the mid seventies. Jean-Jacques Nattiez was born in Amiens,
France, 30 December 1945. He is a musical semiologist and professor at the UniversitéMontréal. He was made a
member of the Order of Canada in 1990. Performers of goose cries heard include:
Elijah PudlooMageeta, Quanak Martha Meekeega, NapacheSamaejukPootoogook, and Mary Qarjjurarjuk.
Ay-ay-amamay
is a song seen on a video recorded by OPOS, a music program at the University
of Basel, Switzerland. We see and hear seven singers who form the group Kiighwyak perform a pic-eine'rkin (a style of throat
singing specific to the Siberian Chukchi). The song comes with a set of hand
gestures. The movements of the hands, with an occasional clap in there, belong
to the song. Traditions have withstood the ages, even when musical traditions have
been repressed by political events. The Chukchi women seen in the video wear
ordinary modern clothing. That traditional music isn't just performed by those
peoples who haven't been in contact with civilizations, and that ancient
musical traditions are performed in buckskin, or reindeer pelts belong to the
world of myth.
Shipibo Indian, Peru,
oil on canvas, 2019 The Shipbo, now known as the
Shipibo-Conibo people (a merging of two cultures,) live along the Amazonian
Ucayali river are known for their waeving and pottery. Both feature designs
similar to the tattoos seen in Kroehle's photograph of 1888 that was the source
for this painting. Recent photographs, there are many as the culture is very
popular, do not show tattoos. Today's music is very much of the same tradition
as this recordings of 1964, and (I assume) how it sounded in 1888.
12. The Weaves – Scream
Jasmyn Burke, oil on canvas, 2019 Scream was in last year's Top 100 as well. Twenty-one
repeats from the previous list seems about average in top 100 history. All
three songs in which the Canadian Tanya Tagaq appears were also listed last
year. Twice under her own name and once as a guest in the (also) Canadian band
The Weaves. I did not paint Jasmyn Burke last year as I deemed the contribution
of Tanya Tagaq to the song Scream by
Burke's band The Weaves the reason for its inclusion then. Now this is
different as the song comes in at #12 in the Top 100 2018/2019. Punk rock meets
throat singing!
13. Aluar horns (Ngoma music)
Aluar Horn
Orchestra, oil on canvas,
2019
The
record Africa: Drums Chants and
Instrumental Music introduced me more than thirty years ago to the field of
ethnomusicology that became my main focus in collecting music. My favorite
track from the record Aluar Horns was
the first ever in the field that was listed in a Top 100, this was in the late
1980s. The tune reemerged in a number of top 100s since. About sixty horn
players in the royal court of the Arua in Uganda comprise the cacophony heard
in the recording. Each horn is able to play one note and one note only. A
photograph I found recently show eight of them, three of which feature in the
painting. This painting on a silver ground is the first of six previous
illustrations that show the actual musicians.
14. Kiyo Kurokawa, Teru Nishizama – Upopo
Teru Nishizama, oil on canvas, 2019
The
Ainu are descendants of the indigenous Japanese Jōmon people and share many
cultural characteristics with neighboring Siberian and Inuit peoples. A great
number used to live (and some still do) in the easternmost Russian territory
Sakhalin, an island just north of Hokkaido, the northernmost Japanese island
where most Ainu live today. Sakhalin has been disputed territory between
Japan and Russia but became solidly Russian after the second World War. The two
songs in the Top 100 (see #5) are both associated with the bear festival. Upopo is a sitting song and Horippa a dancing song.
15. Te bow with two women's voices, San
!Kung San Woman playing a gut pluriarc, oil
on canvas, 2019
The
te bow is a traditional instrument made a wooden post and played with a gut
bow. A recording of it made by Megan Biesele in Botswana in 1972 appears on Instrumental Music of the Kalahari San (Ethnic
Folkways, 1982) and is featured in this year's 100. The traditional instruments
of the !Kung San people, all heard on the record, are, beside the te bow, the
hunting bow, the plurirac (depicted above) and the sitengena (a thumb piano.)
16. Roro Natives – Kittoro
!Kung San Woman playing a gut pluriarc, oil
on canvas, 2019
According
to the Roro of Papua New Guinea (and many other peoples) ceremonial songs
contain magical power. The particular Kittoro
song illustrated here was given to the Roro by a friendly tribe from Rigo. The
Roro live 130 miles further east on Yule Island in Eastern Papua New Guinea.
The Rigo group can't perform the song anymore as it now belongs to the Roro.
Jaap Kunst of the Indische Museum in Amsterdam introduces the song on The Columbia World Library of Folk and
Primitive Music (Vol. 7: Indonesia) but quotes from Father Dupeyrat who
recorded the song in 1951 in Tsiria on Yule Island. Kunst talks at length about
magico-religious qualities of indigenous music in a lecture from 1959, but does
not comment on the question if the magic is still contained in the recorded
version (eight years old at the time and now 68 years later.) Don't get me
wrong, I truly love this song but the magic doesn't work for me.
17. Andaman Islands: Port Blair, vocals
Andaman
Islands, Port Blair, oil on
canvas, 2019
In
November 2018 John Allen Chau, an American missionary, set foot on the
northernmost of the Sentinel Islands. His mission didn't last long as he was
speared by the indigenous Sentinelese. The Sentinelese inhabit the least
visited of the Andaman Islands that are located in the Bay of Bengal east of
India. The latest Indian census counted only thirty-nine inhabitants. The
Indian government used satellite imagery to count because visits are
prohibited. Chau traveled illegally. Since 1700, as far back as recorded
history goes on the Andaman Islands, the Sentinelese have only been in contact
with the modern world a handful of times, usually very brief as they either
flee into the bushes or kill the visitors. The Indian government has decided to
leave them alone. The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are believed to be
members of the first wave of migrants out of Africa some 60,000 years ago. The
Sentinelese, moreover, are believed to have been completely isolated from
contact since 30,000 BCE when they inhabited the island they're still living at
today. Their language is unintelligible. There are no sound recordings
whatsoever. The related Onge share their territory and are also left to their
own but are more approachable. I was surprised to find a sound recording made
by the Indian Institute of Anthropology in 1960. The recording may be the
closest analogy to the music of prehistoric men that exists. The recording was
made in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and features
a chorus of boys and girls performing a turtle hunting song.
18. Gombojav – Running Horse/Two Lovers on Horseback
Gombojav,
oil on canvas, 2018
Musicians
often come from musical families. This is true in popular music, classical
music, folk music, but nowhere as pronounced as in traditional music. Often
traditions in music hinge on the transmission from parents to children. It is
rare, however, to find two generations independently featuring in a top 100 of
mine. I can't think of a single occasion until this year, when Mongolian tsuur
players Gombojav and his father Narantsogt, who had learned to play the
instrument from his grandfather, are separately listed. A tsuur is a simple
flute with three finger holes typically made from a hollowed out larch or
willow. The instrument mimics, rather than imitates, the sounds of nature.
Legend has it that spirits possess the instrument. The shoor (as it is called
in Tuva) has completely vanished and the tsuur tradition in Mongolia has nearly
died out. The instrument was forbidden during Soviet occupation in both Tuva
and Mongolia. Gombojav and Narantsogt are two of only a handful of players
knowing how to play the tsuur and both have now passed. Narantsogt died of old
age and Gombojav of cancer at age thirty-five.
19. The Fall – Smile
Mark E Smith and
Brix Smith of the Fall, oil
on canvas, 2019 The Woman in the Band (1): Gaye Advert is billed as the first female punk rock
star. She played bass in The Adverts I think she may have inspired women to
pick up a rock band instrument as Suzi Quatro inspired her to start playing
bass. Many guy bands following the Adverts had a women in their line-up. Often
she is or becomes married to another band member. Brix Smith Start, guitarist
in the Fall was married to Mark E Smith. In some bands the woman was equal. The
Fall, however, always was Mark E's band and when Brix and him split the guitar
player was simply replaced.
20. Tanya Tagaq – Uja/Umingmak
Tanya Tagaq, oil on canvas, 2019
Tanya
Tagaq (b. 1975, Nunavut) is a Inut Canadian throat singer who has released
three albums since her first one, Sinaa, in
2005. Animism of 2014 is the most
acclaimed of the four. It's a bit more theatrical than her second Auk/Blood (2009). On her latest album Retribution (2016) she expanded yet
further into modern recording practices and the album seeks to entertain a
larger audience. Animism was awarded
the prestigious Polaris Music Prize and for the reception she performed the
first two tracks, Uja and Umingmak as one. I tell you, it's a
treat.
Rahsaan
Roland Kirk, oil on canvas, 2019 This Kirk recording is one that has not previously featured
in a Top 100: Theme for the Eulipians. I first heard the tune as an
instrumental through a performance together with Gil Evans. A marvelous
performance late in Kirk's life. He had already suffered a stroke and could
only play with one hand. Still a virtuoso. The song, as it is a song, appears
on The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man and is written by Kirk together with
Betty Neals, who wrote the lyrics. Neals is also heard on the recording
reciting these lyrics and Maeretha Stewart sings. The album was
recorded in 1976.
22.
Antonia Vasil'evna Skalygina – Alterateur de voix Kal'ni
Antonia
Vasil'evna Skalygina? oil on canvas, 2019 The source of the above painting is a photograph by Henri
Lecomte used as the cover for the cd Nivkh, Ujl'ta, Siberie 6, Sakhaline:
Musique vocale et instrumentale (Buda Records, Musique du Monde, 1996.) I
do not have the cd and therefore I can't say for sure if the person depicted is
indeed Antonia Skalygina or not but I like to believe it is. It makes sense.
The track in the list of 100 is called Alterateur de voix Kal'ni, voice
modifier. The instrument shown could indeed be that modifier but perhaps it is
a jew's harp (in which case the performer would probably be Ol'ga Anatol'evna
Njavan.)
23. Sonic
Youth – Shaking Hell
Kim Gordon,
oil on canvas, 2019 The Woman in the Band (2): The
punk-rock movement empowered women to pick up instruments traditionally played
mostly by men, and to form their own bands. The process towards gender equality
in rock music started in 1976 in England. Kim Gordon, bass player in Sonic
Youth was married to Thurston Moore. In Sonic Youth all members were equal and
when the marriage between Gordon and Moore ended in 2011 the band split up. Shaking
Hell is from SY's first album Confusion is Sex from 1983. It's
Gordon's song.
24. Ana and
Asuncion Caraballo – Canta para pilar maiz
Ana Caraballo, oil on
canvas, 2018
Canta para Pilar Maiz is a work song from Magarita
Island in Venezuela recorded by Francisco Carreño and Miguel Cardona in 1949.
When I painted the same image in 2013 I must have missed the information
concerning the identity of the singer when I tagged the painting as Venezuelan
Girl (I should have named her woman instead of girl). I assume that the
photographer responsible for this tiny black & white image in the liner
notes of volume 9 of The Columbia World
Library of Folk and Primitive Music would be either Carreño or Cardona.
Maize is the staple of the inhabitants of Margarita Island. The authors also
credited Asuncion Caraballo as musician but I have hard time making out a
second person on the recording.
25. Cat
Power – In Your Face
Cat Power,
oil on canvas, 2019 It took me a little while to warm up to Cat Power's new
album Wanderer, but now I consider it one of the (her) best ever.
Besides the title track camping out at number one, In Your Face and Robbin
Hood have also entered the list for this year. The album is on top of the
album count and Cat Power on top of the musician count for the year.
26.
Yekuana Fertitlty Chant
Ye'kuana
(Makiritare) Indian, Venezuela, oil on canvas,
2019 The Ye'kuana woman illustrates Yucca Fertility Song recorded
by Walter Coppens and found on the album Anthology of Central & South
American Indian Music (Folkways, 1975.) The song is a chant by women to
stop evil spirits from affecting the yucca plant (the tree of life) recited during
planting and harvesting. [W. Coppens]
27.
Asháninka songs
Asháninka
(Campa) Indian, Peru, oil on canvas, 2019 Two photographs by Charles Kroehle taken in 1885 and 1888
were sources for two paintings. They illustrate two songs in the Top 100 that were
recorded by Enrique Pinello, a Peruvian ethnomusicologist and composer. The two
tracks, Shipibo Song (see #11) and Ashaninka Songs, appear on the
CD The Spirit Cries: Music of the Rainforests of South America and the
Caribbean, compiled by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart for the Library of
Congress. The Asháninka, or Campa Indians live nowadays scattered throughout
the Amazon region that borders Brazil.
28. Marija
Nikoforovna Ceculina – Chukc song (chant et jajar)
Henri Lecomte, oil on canvas, 2019 Henri Lecomte
(1938-2018) died last year. I just figured that out while searching for
biographical data on him. Darn, last year I painted and wrote about another
French ethnomusicologist Charles Duvelle and he had just passed away in 2017, I
didn't even know it then. Henri Lecomte (Google keeps thinking I misspelled his
name and I'm searching for the tennis star Henri Leconte) was, beside his work
in the field, also a musician and director. He played a host of instruments
among them many traditional central Asian ones. The last thirty years of his
life were dedicated to research into the music of the Arctic Siberian regions.
He wrote a number of papers on the subject 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. There are seven
recordings made by Henri Lecomte in the Top 100 this year.
29.
Bongwater – The Power of Pussy
Kramer, oil
on canvas, 2019 Kramer is Mark Kramer (born Stephen Michael Bonner in 1958).
He used the single name Kramer throughout his career. (I wonder if Kramer in
the hugely popular TV sitcom series Seinfeld was inspired by the
musician Kramer.) With Ann Magnuson he formed Bongwater in 1986, started a
relation (while his estranged wife was pregnant, hence the baby in the
painting) in 1991 and disbanded the band when the two broke up in 1992. Kramer
got back together with his wife then, and Magnuson sued Kramer for breach of
contract.
Vonarino, oil
on canvas, 2019 One change in the field of ethnomusicology in the last few
decades has been to provide much more contextual information with recordings
than was the case earlier. All musicians on Canadian 'field-recorrding artist'
Charles Brook's Fanafody album are portrayed and also photographed. A
photo of Vonarino (Vonarino Avaradova Amboaniotelo Tulear) made it to the cover
of the album and the song in my Top 100 Mozika Mandrehita is the opener
on side A. Vonarino plays a home-made three string fiddle (lokanga).
Recorded in Madagascar in 2006/7.
