Four Women (and four men as well)

Lisle Atkinson/Nina Simone

Lisle Atkinson was the bass player for Nina Simone during the 1960s. Nina Simone wrote Four Women in 1965 and it first appeared on her Wild is the Wind album from 1966. Some people criticized Simone for using African-American stereotypes but those criticisms clearly missed the point. Simone continued to use the song in her live performances and many versions can be found on-line. I watched quite a few of those. The version in the Top 100 is a live version recorded in France in 1969. Lisle Atkinson had stayed behind. The rather seductive image of Simone comes from a photo by Michael Ochs and was published in Rolling Stone Magazine. I usually stay away from using professional sources but could not resist the temptation to use this beautiful shot by Ochs (Getty Images).

Bearded man from the Oenpelli Mission/Douglass Baglin

While the Australian side (side A) from the LP The Columbia Library of Primitive and Folk Music, Vol. 5: Australia & New Guinea is listed as recorded by E.P. Enkin, tracks 12-15, are actually used courtesy of the Australian Broadcast commission at the Oenpelli Mission east of Darwin (now Gunbalanya). Both the Mourning Call and the Wongga this painting illustrates belong to the Australian Broadcast Corp. and were not recorded by E.P. Enkin. Enkin did write the liner notes for it though and tells us that the Wongga is a "campfire trading and sweetheart song by men of the Djauan tribe." He then informs us that we hear an accompaniment of a didjeridu and clapping sticks. Enkin recorded the other materials in 1949 but no date has been assigned to ABC recordings. The image I chose to paint is from a much reproduced photo by the Australian photographer Douglass Baglin, who published a series of photo books documenting the people of Australia. For the volume on indigenous people Bagnin didn't bother to identify the individuals by name as he had done in other volumes. The individual in this image was simply identified as "Bearded man from the Oenpelli Mission." The photo was taken in 1968. The image of a whistling Douglass Baglin comes from a photo taken by Colin Preese also in 1968.

Jo Johnson/Niki Elliott (Huggy Bear)

The band Huggy Bear formed in Brighton, England in 1991. They're assiociated with the Riot Grrrl movement but there's also two guys in the five-piece band, so they see themselves rather as "girl-boy revolutionaries." When I first painted them some twenty years ago they were only known by their first names and photographs were sparse. They never interviewed and never signed for a major label but produced a string of records between 1991 and 1994. The tune in the Top 100 is a 45 called Her Jazz. That 45 is split with Bikini Kill whom they toured with in 1993. It was because of Bikini Kill I bought the 45 EP and introduced me to the band.

Sherine Fatima Balti/David Lewiston

Desperate for an image of either Sonam Chungjung or Sonam Lamo, two itinerant singers from Ladakh, India, I came across an image of the singer Sherine Fatima Balti. Nicknamed the Balti Nightingale, she lives in Turtuk, the second northernmost village in India in a disputed region with Pakistan. Fatima Balti considers herself a Balti from Pakistani region of Baltistan, directly across the border from Ladakh. Neither Sonam was among the the images that come with Davis Lewiston's Ladakh: Songs & Dances from the Highlands of Western Tibet. [Nonesuch, 1977] Pala nyima zangmo is an "old song of social comment."