Well known and Well Loved

Not all Top 100 entries come from anthropological sources. Like anyone else I do enjoy recordings from the contemporary music industry from the good old United States. Three examples of some exciting popular music happened to be up for painting conforming to their respective position on the lists. These are the number 9 of 2021, and numbers 68 and 70 of 2020.

Miles Davis with James Mtume, 11x14 inches, oil

Rated X by Miles Davis was recorded as part of the On the Corner sessions in 1972. The song didn't make it to the On the Corner album but was then released on the compilation Get Up With It. Rated X is one of those rare Miles tracks in which he does not play the trumpet but sticks to an organ. For the double portrait I paired Miles with percussionist James Mtume. The image is taken from a still from a 1973 concert in Vienna.

Wayne Coyne and Yoshimi P-We, 11x14 inches, ink

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part 2 by the Flaming Lips was next in the 2020 series that are all on 11x14 paper. I paired the main singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the Flaming Lips Wayne Coyne with Yoshimi P-We, who was the inspiration for the song and album it appears on from 2002, and whose cries and yelps are heard on this otherwise instrumental song. Yoshimi P-We is the drummer of the legendary Japanese band the Boredoms as well the singer of the all female OOIOO. The other Flaming Lips members at the recording sessions for the Yoshimi album are Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins.

Lana Del Rey, 14x11 inches, ink on paper

Then at number 70 is the song Love or Young and in Love as it's sometimes called. It was written and performed by Lana De Rey. This is the first time I did a portrait of Del Rey. Some of her peers (read: Cat Power, but also Fiona Apple) have been portrayed multiple times. Love comes from her 2017 album Lust for Life.

Two from Madagascar

 

The next ones up for both the Top 100s of 2020 and 2021 are recordings from the Clerisse Expidition to Madagascar of 1939. The provisional number 8 of this year and number 69 from 2020 are songs number 20 and 21 from the French Africa volume of the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Number 23, and fourth from the Clerisse Expedition, from that record I illustrated earlier (#33, Top 100 2020). This was in October 2020. When I wrote about the painting back in October, I regretted that I did not use a photograph from the Clerisse Expedition but settled for an exotic vintage photograph as for a source. The regret is now only enhanced as I could not find any photographs from the Clerisse Expedition anymore beyond this one image reproduced in the liner notes. I wonder where the heck I saw these back in October. For both of the current paintings I used this one photo from the Columbia Library labelled: "Madagascar, chorus of women with drums." The photo in the liner notes is not a direct illustration of any of the recordings from the expedition on the record because the instrumentation doesn't match, but may very well have been taken at the same place, at the same date, and with perhaps some of the same people as some of the songs. The songs in the Top 100 are: Healing Song from Southern Madagascar, and Song of Exorcism for which the Sakalave tribe is listed as performers. The Sakalave, as a tribe, have genetically more in common with east Asian people than with continental Africans, which makes it unlikely the photograph depicts that tribe. The Sakalava (as it should be spelled) are an ethnic group in Madagascar rather than a tribe. Madagascar is quite modern these days and rather homogeneous, speaking one language: Malagasy. When the recordings were made in in 1939, and the Columbia record released in 1954, Madagascar was part of French Africa. The expedition, and the musical recordings, are rooted in colonialism, with the greatest separation between the recorder and those recorded thus far in these series of paintings that addresses this topic. The separation was made even deeper because no individual musicologist or anthropologist is listed for these recordings. The photograph is not credited either. As I mentioned I was not able to find photographs from the expedition, and I could not find an image depicting Henri Clerisse, the leader of the expedition, either. All I could find were a few names that were part of the expedition. I settled for a photo of the botanist, and colonial administrator Raymond Decary, to represent the colonial context of the recording of the Sakalava in the Top 100 2021. The photograph, reproduced on two different websites, shows the photo sideways, as if he were standing up. Very strange. 

Directly after I finished the painting in oils representing the recording of the Sakalava people, I started on the one from Southern Madagascar using the very same image, but now with ink on paper. I sketched every individual who appeared in the photo. (I only used the three closest to the photographer earlier.) The Healing Song consists of a female chorus followed by a male chorus. The rhythm is provided by hand clapping and gun shots are heard (to ward off evil spirits, according to Andre Schaeffner, who wrote the lines on the album.) The Sakalava song, Song of Exorcism, also consisted of both male and female choruses, soloists, and again, hand clapping.

'Are'are and Shuara

The collection The Human Voice in Music compiled by Carlos Reynoso starts with a shamanic song of the Ecuadorian Shuara (familiar name: Jivaro). "For  those who wish to form an idea that is not biased by the temptation of  exoticism or by anachronistic particularistic yearnings, the collection  begins here." These are Reynoso's words (via Google Translate) which I (should) take to heart. Right away, within the first song of the collection, my integrity is being challenged. While having certain thoughts on the beginnings and essence of music, there are a number of factors at play I remain ignorant about. Reynoso must be serious about fighting misconceptions. Now the Shuar (Jivaro), is a good place to start because if there's one culture that has been misrepresented throughout western literature it must be the Amazonian Shuar. According to Reynoso the Shuara Shamanic Song exists in the grey area between speech and singing. The recorded performance is a manifestation of an altered state of consciousness that is patterned in such a way that it should be considered music. [Reynoso] Isabel Aretz and Felipe Ramon y Rivera, who I assume are responsible for recording this gem, characterize this incantation as a song. If the shaman heard on the recording is male or female isn't mentioned. In last year's top 100 I assumed that this was a recording of a woman but now I have my doubts. It shouldn't matter. Most shamans are men but in some cultures (including the Shuar) sometimes women become shaman, then there are other cultures, particularly in East Asia where most shamans are women. Listening to the song I assumed I heard a woman's voice but listening to other shamans recorded, both Shuar and from other cultures, it is not uncommon, even characteristic, for a (male) shaman to use a falsetto voice. I realized the shaman recorded by Aretz and Ramon y Rivera could be a man after watching a video of Dan Ramon, a Shuar shaman who was recently recorded by a site called Amazon Explorer. I decided to use a still from this video for the illustration of the Shuar Shaman Song. He is pictured on the right while Isabel Aretz is on the left. Aretz (1909-2005) was an Argentine Venezuelan composer and ethnomusicologist. The song was number 15 in 2020 and now, in the Top 100 2021, resides at number 4, for the time being.

No doubt exist as to the gender of the performers of the song "Aamamata na Kaukaurara" that is number 67 of the Top 100 2020. The performers Aaresi and Il'eresi were recorded by Hugo Zemp in 1977 in the Solomon Islands. Aamamata is a genre of song used for funerals. Kaukaurara is the composer of the song. The title thus translates as Funeral Lament by Kaukaurara. Another  song by the same two women appears on Zemp's Musique 'Are'are. The image above comes from a still from that film. The 'Are'are are a cultural group from the largest Island in the Solomon archipelago which is Malaita.

 

Albania and Ashaninka, numbers 7 of 2021 and 66 in 2020.

Albanian mourners, Spiro Shetuni

The song illustrated in the above painting is one of several for which I could find not a whole lot of information about. The song title is Lamento de Albania which I found on the collection La voz humana en la musica parte 1. It's a Spanish language website and was compiled by the Argentinian Carlos Reynoso, professor of Anthropology at the the University of Buenos Aires. His liner notes to the Albanian recording are short; A funeral song by a group of about 12 women. The song is syllabic, it does not have words. "A collective clamor organized according to a strophic structure" is how Reynoso described it. The source is the Institute of Popular Culture of Tirana. No date. So I looked up the Institute of Popular Culture of Tirana. The Institute does not exist anymore, not using that name anyways but it lead me to the name Spiro Shetuni, "the West's foremost authority on the subject of Albanian music." Shetuni is an Albanian American whose nationality is Arumanian (I had to look that one up too, the term designates Eastern Romance people, and their language). He moved to the United States in 1992 and was for a period employed at the Ohio State University. Between 1993 and 2000 he taught a course called An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples. This at exactly the same time I was at OSU. I was a grad student there between 1994-1997. I stayed on as a lecturer and Gallery assistant until 2011.  I wish I knew then what I know now and I certainly would have taken this course. In 2005 I organized an exhibition of record sleeve collections and did come in contact with Margarita Mazo, a professor in the cognitive music department. Mazo had recorded Old Believers: Music of the Nekrasov Cossacks, a cd on Smithsonian Folkways that I owned a copy of and that was in the Top 100 at the time. I had never heard of Shetuni then let alone met him (he had already moved to South Carolina anyways.)

Back then I was in middle of compiling a cd with examples of cry singing, mostly funeral laments. Throughout the world existed (still exists but disappearing) this practice of mourning through song and I had gathered examples from Ireland (where it's called keening to Papua New Guinea, and everywhere in between. Albania was not included in that collection but had I known the existance of this recording I would have certainly included it on the cd, and would have contacted Shetuni in the process.

 

The image of the wailing Albanian women I found in Death Rituals in Albania: An Anthropological Review by Gentian Vyshka and Bardhyl Cipi, published on Antrocom an online journal of Anthropology in 2010. Vyshka and Cipi used the 1985 photo courtesy of the Albanian Film Archive, Tirana.The caption reads: "The wailing ritual and laments in Southern Albania are led from a professional mourner, a woman that might be not a relative of the dead, and hired for that function." The caption also reaffirmed me that I was painting Albanian women. I had started this painting already without some of the context and I was not sure if all 8 individuals were women. I've painted half the photo, the four people on the left in the picture.

Ashaninka Indian, Josefat Roel Pineda

The Ashaninka songs, at #66 in the Top 100 2020 was also part of the Top 100 2019. In 2019, while painting the illustration, I did do some contextual research as to what I was listening to. The track Ashaninka songs are actually two short songs that appear on a project initiated by Mickey Hart (of the Grateful Dead) for the Library of Congress called Endangered Music Project. The first cd of which is called The Spirit Cries: Music from the Rainforests of South America and the Caribbean (Rykodisc 1993). The sections on the cd involving the Peruvian Indians Shipobo and Ashaninka were recorded in 1963 and 1964 by Enrique Pinella and Josefat Roel Pineda. I may assume that Pinella, a Peruvian avant-garde composer, was responsible for the Shipobo recordings and Pinella for the Ashaninka but I can't be sure. The otherwise well documented CD does not distinguish. While writing about bot sets of recordings last years I spoke about Pinella and omitted Pineda. Now, while focusing on the Ashaninka only, I'm reversing this and chose a portrait of Pineda to include in the drawing of an Ashaninka woman. The woman I depicted is anonymous, as are the performers of the Ashaninka songs. The photo source I used comes from the Goteborg Ethnographic Museum and I found it on a Brazilian website documenting Amazonian tribes. I could not find photographs made by either Pinella or Pineda during their field recording sessions in the Amazon region of Eastern Peru. I commented in the text on the Ashaninca last year on the tattos seen in older, vintage, photographs of many Ashaninka women. Beautiful face tattoos that have now been replaced by face painting. Talking about tattoos: I can't get this image out of my head of the tattoos on the back of Grimes, the partner of Elon Musk. She covered her back in abstract, very expressive white marks resembling doodles or scribbling, or the style of Antonin Artaud's drawings or Alberto Giacometti's. I saw it on the Daily Mail this morning. They probably put it up to feed the disgust people have for the ultra-rich extravagant escapades. To shock their viewers. I found the tattoos rather impressive. Easily one of the best non-tribal or ceremony related tattoos I've ever seen.

 

Into the Arctic

Annie Kappianak

Numbers 64 and 65 of the Top 100 2012 happen to belong to the same series of recording and come from the same album: Songs of the Inuit Iglulik. Both songs were recorded by Jean-Jacques Nattiez in 1977. That the songs appear next to one another in the list is a coincidence; I do not place the songs into the list as I fancy, the songs appear by virtue of a number system. Both the Huangahaaq (#65) and the Nirdliruyartak (#64) happened to end up with the exact same number of points. Both Huangahaaq and Nirdliruyartak are a form of throat singing games but different from katajjait (a song style). Compared to the dozens of katajjait recordings that have featured in recent top 100s they were also recorded further north from the Hudson Bay area most katajjait originated from. Number 64 was recorded in Pond Inlet and 65 in Iglulik. Both locations are close to one another and well inside the Arctic Circle. The Inuit: Iglulik cd is well documented. It comes with a 55 page booklet with numerous illustrations, all photographs by Jean-Jacques Nattiez. The photo of Annie Kappianak (together with Rose Iquallijuk) that appears in the booklet is the only throat game song illustrated though and is of the performer of number 65 be it with a different partner than on the recording. Kappianak teams up with Jeanne Amainuk on a Huangahaaq game. The song "is not based on a text but on the juxtaposition of syllables or words, connected more for their sonorous qualities than for telling a story." "The game consists of making the partner lose [his] seriousness, using diverse modulations of the word hang. The women pull wry faces."

Iglulik Inuit, Jean-Jacques Nattiez

The nirdliruyartak is similar to the katajjait of Northern Quebec. The nirdliruyartak is a complex game of alternating high and low sounds and is difficult to learn. The sounds are made while both inhaling and exhaling. The high sequence of sounds is called nirdliruyartak, which means goose cry, and is the name of the game. The image I used for this song does not appear in the cd booklet but appears in Inuit Throat-Games and Siberian Throat Singing: A Comparative, Historical, and Semiological Approach by Jean-Jacquez Nattiez. [University of Montreal, 1999] The women in the photo by Nattiez are not identified by name but are Iglulik.

Of Violent People and of Friendly People

Indianerinnen mit kind (Shuar)/Michael J. Harner

 The Shuar, generally better known by their previous name Jivaro, were one of the most violent tribes written about in the anthropological history. They were head hunters, the source of the once collectable shrunken heads. (Earlier I wrote about the practice of infanticide among the Shuar.) The Jivaro warriors were feared throughout the region by their enemies but also by their own women. While the status of women throughout the world is usually not anywhere near the status of equality, the Jivaro women were worse off. Beatings were common. Only later in life, when widowed, or when they were children they could live in relative freedom. The suicide rate of Shuar women were among the highest in the world. Yet, their songs are among the sweetest and happiest I've encountered. Michael J. Harner recorded several dance songs and lullabies that are included on the Folkways LP 'Music of the Jivaro of Ecuador' along with war songs and other songs by men. Shaman's songs were recorded too. One freedom Shuar women enjoyed was to become a shaman. Not many neighboring tribes had female shamans. Harner was the first to study the Shuar in depth in the 1950s, earlier records are anecdotal, biased, or tainted by biased interpreters from neighboring tribes. Rafael Karsten, in the 1930s was the first anthropologist to attempt a study of the then called Jivaro, but later had to admit to Harner that all his information came from a translator belonging to a tribe not friendly to the Shuar. Harner tracked this individual down for his research and corrected Karsten's otherwise useful data. The photograph I used for this image was taken by Karsten in 1930. Harner, later in his career, became known for his research and books on (neo)shamanism and other spiritual new age practices. Shuar Social Dance Song (2): Female Chorus in #63 in the Top 100 2020.

Marjorie Shostak/!Kun San man

The historical contrast between the Shuar of Ecuador and the !Kung San of Botswana couldn't be greater. The Shuar had a violent death rate among men under 25 at a staggering 42%, the highest number ever recorded in the world, the number !Kung San men in contrast, is less than 0.5%. San women are considered equal. Marjorie Shostak, seen on the left, spend many years with the San people. She recorded the 'Sitenga with one man's voice' in Botswana in 1970. It's at #5 in the Top 100 2021. The song, by /Tilkay (also known as "Jimmy" from /Xai/Xai, itself was not illustrated in the liner notes to the album so I used another image from these notes. The man on the right was photographed by Shostak and is labeled: "A !Kung San man reclining." The ! and / symbols used in the text are vocal sounds, the ! represents the click sound made famous by Miriam Makeba in "The Click Song." One more thing: the object/subject differentiation disappears even further compared to the last painting I wrote about a few days back. The only photo I could find of a 'sitengena' being played was this very image of Marjorie Shostak.

Number 4 and number 62

Sylvia Saghorekao and Sabina Seso

As many entries in the Top 100 are repeats from previous years, my familiarity with these recordings grow. The focus of the latest paintings and drawings is on the academic work of the musicologists and anthropologists who recorded in the field. I did, however, not include an image of Hugo Zemp here as I already painted him several times and already gained quite a bit of contextual information on the years Hugo Zemp spent in the Solomon Islands. What is new this year is that I now know the names of the performers and I found an image to go with it. This is from a photograph by Zemp included in the liner notes for Polyphonies des Îles Salomon (Guadalcanal et Savo) from 1978, the original appearance of the recording. The recording is called Ratsi Rope, rope is a repertoire of feminine songs and the word 'ratsi' means beginning. There are however no words to the song. The vocal sounds are an imitation of sounds in nature. Ratsi Rope is number 62 from the Top 100 2020.

Deben Bhattacharya and Tangkhul Great Story Teller

Number 4 from 2021 was also part of the Top 100 2020. I decided to use the same source image as I did last year. I could not find a photograph by Bhattacharya appropriate to illustrate his recording of the Tangkhul song. Deben Bhattacharya is a legendary ethnomusicologist from an old Bengali Brahmin family. (I've painted him before as well, the last time was in 2017 and somehow I painted his shirt then as orange as I did this time using a black and white photo from Wikipedia.) While Bhattacharya is of the highest social order in India, the indigenous tribal Tangkhul have lesser esteem in Indian society. The 2021 series of double portraits investigates issues like these. The juxtaposition of object and subject, and how this relationship evolved throughout the history of music recording. The further collapse the distinction in this painting I reversed the backgrounds from the two respective source photographs. The Tangkhul Great Story Teller now sits in the recording studio while Bhattacharya takes his place in from of the story teller's dwelling.