Top 100 2019-9: 11-20

11. Shipibo: Song

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.