I Light the Fire

Sivugun und Nunana, 11x14 inches, 2020

Pic-eine'rkin is a form of throat singing related to the katajjait of the Canadian Inuits and the Rehbuhkara of the Japanese Ainu people. Not many recordings of Pic-eine'rkin exist as the form is near extinct. Until two year ago I've only read about it but then I found some videos on OPOS (Open Planet of Sound), a Swiss research institute, that featured the ensemble Kiighwyak, a Chukchi group recorded in 1991 and 1993 in Sireniki in the extreme eastern part of Siberia. One of the videos ended up as #10 in the Top 100 2019 (here's a link.) Sivugun and Nunana are two elderly Chukchi women who also performed in these videos. They were once part of the Kiighwyak Ensemble but retired. Recently I found more pic-eine'rkin recordings: Three examples of pic-eine'rkin appear on La Voz Humana en la musica, parte I, a project by the scholar Carlos Reynoso. Reynoso had pulled the recordings from The Russian Far North, a source that I have not been able to track down. There are no data for the recordings of which I Light the Fire appears at #36 in the Top 100 2020. The above drawing was completed over the course of four days, incessantly scribbling my way through.