Numbers

Tuurnagaaluk (6009) and Eunice Kunuk Arreak (6010)

Number 87 of the Top 100 2020 is track from the CD Canada: Inuit Games and Songs on the UNESCO label. The track is labelled Two Katajjait and it, as the title implies, consists of two recordings of a katajjaq, the Inuit style of throat singing in the form of a game. Both recordings are short and are from two different locations with different singers, recorded by different musicologists in the mid-1970s. The first one, recorded by Nicole Beaudy, features Elijah Pudloo Mageeta and Teemegeak Pitaulassie. This was recorded at Cape Dorset. The second one was recorded by Denise Harvey and is a duet by Maggie Grey and Jessie Tomassie at Payne Bay. There have been so many recordings of katajjait in the Top 100 and so few of the singers have been photographed for the albums (or at all on-line for that matter) that I have been forced in being creative when it comes to selecting individuals to illustrate the songs. For this one I stumbled on a very interesting article from the Library Archives Canada Blog titled Inuit: Disc Numbers and Surname Project that chars the history of attempts by the Canadian government to maintain a inventory of the Inuit people. I had never heard that Inuits were given numbers that then were printed on a small plaque (disc) that they had to carry with them at all times. The practice was abandoned in the 1970s. The images I drew in this work are from two photos that were taken directly after one another and did appear in that article. 

While working on the Inuit drawing I also worked on a painting for the Top 100 2021 simultaneously (as I have been doing the past months). Depicted are the Swiss/French photographer Barbara Brandli and one of her subjects who appeared on the cover of the album Music of the Venezuelan Yekuana Indians. [Folkways, 1975] Brandli (1932-2011) is a world renown photographer who, after a successful career as a photographer of the Parisian society, went on to live in Venezuela. She is best known for her work with the Yanomami Indians. The song illustrated is called Edanaka hani amöde and makes the list for the third successive year.

Barbara Brandli and a Yekuana Indian