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.