Getting Ahead

Wolgang Laade/Amadu of Buzi

The Tataro solo is another track that was listed last year as well. A snippet concerning the recording can be read here. A tataro is a bundled pan pipe much like the ones used in the Solomon Islands I've written about before (in this post for example.) The music of the south coast of Papua New Guinea actually shares many characteristics with their neighboring islands in Melanesia. The painting sort of forms a pair with the one I did just before. My main adaptions from the painting of Tran Quang Hai together with Nang Suy are the scale relations between the two and warming (toning down) of the stark black and white contrast.)

Tran Quang Hai/Nang Suy

Female voice and flute again repeats from the Top 100 2020. Nang Suy alternates between singing and playing the flute in such a manner that one is an extension of the other. The track was recorded by Jacques Brunet but the painting is of Tran Quang Hai, who wrote the liner notes to the recording. Tran Quang Hai (Vietnam, 1944) is an important practitioner and researcher of Vietnamese traditional music. Nang Suy is from the Kmhmu Highlands in Laos. I did not have an image for Jacques Brunet.

Jon Ibragon/Charlie Parker

The next in line to be painted brought me back to the popular music of the United States. Earlier this year saxophone player Jon Ibragon released the record Bird With Streams, playing the music of Charlie Parker (hence "Bird" in the title of the record.) Bird With Streams was brought to my attention through a record review by Kevin Whitehead on NPR radio. The review was coupled with another new record of another tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen. The coupling, and theme of the review, was about how the jazz world dealt with the practice in the COVID-19 era. For Jon Ibragon it meant seeking out solitude in the woods. He recorded Bird With Streams at Falling Rock Canyon in California. It's a lo-fi recording and the sounds on the record include the sounds of nature. I immediately listed to the whole record on Bandcamp and was blown away by especially the opening track Anthropology.