Objects and subjects

I made a second painting directly after I finished the first. The painting represents the provisional number 2 in the Top 100 2021. Like the first one, the location is again Nunavut, Canada. This time further north in Kinngait on Baffin Island. The painting represents the track "Three Katajjait," first on the Unesco record "Canada: Inuit Games and Songs." A Katajjaq (singular form) is a game song performed by two woman who stand close together. They mimic each other's sounds until one starts laughing, she is the loser. The three katajjait were performed by five different performers and again I do not know if the (nameless) woman on the left in the painting is either on of the five. I do now that it comes from a performance of a katajjaq and the the photograph I used was taken at around the same time (1974) the recording was made. The photo was taken by Nicole Beaudry, who also recorded the "Three Katajjait." The woman on the right is Nicole Beaudry, be it from a much more recent photograph of her. There's a lot of laughter on both the numbers 1 and 2 recordings during their respective performances. Beaudry herself suggests that this is because the music of both recordings are games and not considered music by the Inuit themselves. I argue that it is music, and the laughter an expression of the joy felt when two souls merge.

The contrast of the two men depicted in the above image is stark. The intentional juxtaposition of object and subject in these series of paintings (The Top 100 2021) is especially pronounced in illustrations of older recordings. Anthropology has evolved from the colonialist attitude of the 19th and early 20th centuries to the immersive contextual discipline it is today. The term ethnomusicology was not in use yet in 1949 when Adolphus Peter Enkin recorded "The mourning 'call' of Melville and Bathurst Islands. The photo credit of aboriginal rock-painter on the left that I used is Mount Ford. I assume this refers to Charles Mountford, the leader of the 1948 expedition to Australia's Northern Territory (where both mentioned islands are situated.)  Enkin, an Anglican clergyman, was at odds with his then boss Mountford. Enkin was a champion in the fight against prejudice and racism, and was an outspoken advocate for equal rights for indigenous Australians. A.P. Enkin to his credit, broke through the divide that considered indigenous peoples as primitive and as savage. Extended contact and communication will accomplish a better understanding, I assume. Still the object-subject relation is clearly visible. Starting in the late1960s it becomes standard practice for anthropologists and ethnologists to not only extend contact with their subject but to live with them, often for many years, to understand the cultures they research. The drawing below, belonging to the Top 100 2020, illustrates the music of the Hamar in Southern Ethiopia. Husband and wife team of anthropologists Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, and their two two young children, went to live with the Hamar in the 1970s.

I just watched (part of) a movie by Rosie Strecker, who was the daughter of Strecker and Lydall and lived with the Hamar for several years since she was 4 months old. The movie documents her return to Ethiopia many years later. The story is heartwarming and strengthens my belief in the goodness of humanity. Object and subject collapses in this movie as it does in the best of modern anthropology, and ethnomusicology.