La Flute de Pan

Hugo Zemp, Sabine Seso, oil on canvas, 11x14 inches, 2021

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about a technique that involves simultaneously creating vocal sounds and playing a flute. I was discussing then the track Au waa recorded by Hugo Zemp in the Solomon Islands in the 1970s. In this painting you see Hugo Zemp himself playing one of those flutes made from bamboo stalks. The portrait of Zemp here though is to accompany the track Koleo sung by a woman from Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands. There are no pan flutes heard on the recording. The name of the woman singing is not listed in the liner notes and the one portrayed above is either Sabina Seso or Sylvia Saghorekao, singers who were recorded by Zemp during the same sessions on the island as Koleo currently residing at number 16 in the Top 100 2021. The image of Seso (I assume it's her) was taken by Zemp and I had used it recently to illustrate Ratsi rope sung by Seso and Saghorekao. Koleo is a type of funerary singing. The vocalizing flute technique like that of the au waa of the Solomon Islands is practiced in different parts of the world. The hindewhu of the Ba-Benzele pygmies of Central Africa is very similar to the au waa. The tune Hindewhu in the top 100 was recorded by Arom Simha in 1966 and appears on the album La musique de la pygmées Ba-Benzélé. The flute is made from the stem of a pawpaw. The image I used for this drawing is a photograph taken by Simha that appeared in the liner notes to that album. There too, in the liner notes for the album, it is illustrating this vocalizing flute technique which is called (by Hugo Zemp, when he used it in the collection Les voix du monde) hocketting. The performer on the recording is a woman though, and it may sound familiar to you because Herbie Hancock used a sample of it in the intro of his famous Watermelon Man from the album Headhunter. Or you you may have heard on Madonna's Sanctuary from Bedtime Stories. She credits Hancock for the sample but fails to identify the true source. When listening to the recording you would think it's an improvised ditty. It couldn't be farther from the truth as the very same melody appears on different Baka pygmie recordings using different names. The very same melody, note for note, is included in Louis Sarno's Bayaka CD recorded 20 years after Simha recorded Hindewhu in 1966.

Ba-Benzelle group (Hindewhu), 11x14 inches, ink, 2021