Gardu's Hut

 

Gardu(?), 14x11 inches, 2021

The Top100 2020 is presented (and created) in order of appearance. Now I don't even have to think about who I will paint next. For number 54 I had an enormous amount of data and pictures available as the album Music der Hamar is nothing short of an academic work of anthropology. The only thing lacking in the collection are captions underneath the photographs. I may assume that the woman I painted is Gardu but I can't be sure. Gardu is the woman who was recorded in her hut singing a calming down song to her son. I never heard of the calming down genre which is distinct from a lullaby but the Hamar have a name for this type of song: Laensha. The words in the song are analyzed too by the group of anthropologists responsible for the album. The most noteworthy aspect of the lyrics is that the mother addresses her son with a feminine pronoun. The song was recorded in 1973 by Ivo Strecker in Hamar territory in Southern Ethiopia. Bernard Strecker took the photo I used for the painting.