... 99, 100

The Top 100 2021 is finished! Watch the process of making the last painting in the video below. I'll start the Top 100 2022 shortly but now I'm taking a break and explore some possibilities of contemporary art that surely must exist outside the realm of The Top 100.

Of Ancient Music and Rune (To Comb or Not to Comb)

Eva Rune/Agneta Stolpe

Once a student asked me how to paint hair. "Use a comb!" I responded out of the blue. I used liquin as a paint medium in this painting to build up the hair. I was tempted to try a comb on this painting but then I realized that neither Rune nor Stolpe had combed their hair before their images were photographed. The photos that I painted these portraits from. Lockrop & Vallåtar = Ancient Swedish Pastural Music was released in 1995 on CD. Originally the recordings were released in 1966 as Locklåtar och musik på horn och pipa = Ancient Swedish Pastoral Music by the Swedish Broadcasting Company and was recorded in the farm pastures in the provinces of Dalarna and Härjedalen between 1949 and 1964. For the CD several newer works were added including this track that was recorded in Stångtjärn at the Falun Folk Festival of 1995 by Torbjörn Ivarsson. Susanne Rosenberg, Eva Rune, and Agneta Stolpe were the callers (kulning) during this concert. Listening to other recordings by these three singers I believe the singer on specific outtake to be Eva Rune, but I can't be sure. Carlos Reynoso, who included this recording on La Vox Humana, gave no information.

"Playing the traverse flute known as lantuy"/Harold C. Conklin

I was excited to paint this particular paring of subject and object because there's something of a reversal happening. The object, from a faraway and exotic place, often half naked, is fully clothed, while the academic western subject, a middle-aged white male, wears no more than some short shorts. The subject is Harold C. Conklin, and the photo of him that I used, was taken near Mt. Yagaw on Mindoro Island in the Philippines in 1953. In the photo Conklin is paired with another fully clothed native Hanunoo named Badu'ihuy. The traverse flute player in the painting above is not named but was used on the 1953 Folkways album Hanunoo Music from the Philippines in the liner notes to illustrate a couple of tunes in which the lantuy (or palawta) flutes were used. The track in the top 100 is one of these: Flute (Lantuy) duet by a girl and her mother. The Hanunoo belong to the Mangyan cultural group native to the mountains of Mindoro, the 7th largest island of the Philippines. When the liner notes were written (in 1953) the Mangyan groups had remained relatively isolated, some groups continue to be without any contact. Most of the population of the island, living on the lower and coastal parts, had been Christianized.

Not Simha

Cover of Aka Pygmy Music/Pygmy family posing with European man

By today's standards this would certainly not be the most flattering image depicting Simha Arom, the French/Israeli ethnomusicologist and expert of Central African music. Images like these are (were) common in the world of anthropology and ethnography as they are assumed to give credibility to the research being done. It shows rapport between the scientist and his (or her) subjects. No doubt that the photo I used for this painting had nothing but good intentions but the underlying racist tendencies are clear from the fact that the Aka family members are not named. The caption simply reads: "Simha Arom."

Edit: I researched the origin of the photo and it turn out that it's not Simha Arom at all who is depicted. The original photo is from 1921 and appeared in Collier's New Encyclopedia. The caption is: "Pygmy family posing with a European man for scale."

Ivan Polunin/Back cover image of Murut Music of North Borneo

Dr. Ivan Vladimirovitch Polunin (1920-2010) was a professor of medicine until he retired in 1980 in Singapore. He was also an ethnomusicologist, a collector of art, a film maker, photographer, and naturalist among other things. He was a polymath. He was the son of a Russian father and English mother who were both artists for the ballet of Diagilev. Olga Polunin, one of his two daughters, is also an artist. The family settled in Singapore in 1948 and remained on the island to this date. The song in the top 100 he recorded is called Ambubus Perawan and is played on a sumpotan, a gourd with a mouthpiece and bamboo tubes. The tune appeared on Murut Music of North Borneo and was released on Folkways in 1961. The sumpotan was played by a Peluari (one of the Murut peoples in Borneo) girl who remains anonymous.

Chicha trough (hollowed log) of the Perija/Lars Persson

Twelve years ago the Chicha Song was listed in the Top 100 for the first time. I had used an image of two Quechua Indians holding a mug of chicha (traditional beer) and at the verge of keeling over. When several years later the same song entered again I wanted to use the same image but was disappointed I could not find it anywhere. Now the song is listed again and this time I did find the image back but to my consternation I realized the two Indians were men and not women as I had previously understood. It is essential that a woman is painted to represent the chicha song because the song is part of a coming of age rite for young women. And the song is sung by a woman. The song is found on the fabulous collection The Music of Primitive Men. That there a no data provided with that record on the Horizon label is not so fabulous and I chose Lars Persson because he recorded the Motilons on another collection: The Indians of Colombia. It is very well possible that Horizon used Persson's Motilon recordings because I am not aware of any other recordings of this ethnic group (Yuko-Motilón.)

 

From Asch to Asch

Ainu elder/Moses Asch

Not having images of neither Dr. Kiyojiro Kondo nor Dr. W.A. Murphy, listed as recorder and annotator of the Ainu Narrative Poem on Primitive Music of the World, I used the opportunity to highlight the work of Folkways founder Moses Asch. Folkways Records' aim was to record and document the music of the entire world. Asch's principles were to never delete a single title from his catalogue and to always have all titles available. Moses Asch died in 1986 and the catalogue was bequeathed to the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Institute granted Asch's wish and continue to keep all titles available on the label Smithsonian/Folkways. I continue to buy from them on a regular basis. The narrative poem is part of the Ainu epic oral poetry tradition and was recorded in Hokkaido (well) before 1962.

Kagura mask/Edward Norbeck

Bitchũ Kagura is a track from the Folkways LP Folk Music of Japan which was recorded in 1950 and 1951. The song was recorded by the Canadian born American anthropologist Edward Norbeck in the Okayama Prefecture in an area that was once known as Bitchũ. A Kagura is a song form and Shinto ritual dance closely associated with Noh theatre. According to the liner notes written by Norbeck the song was composed 120 years ago. I would have thought songs like these have an older origin. Then I realized the liner notes were written seventy years ago. The liner notes didn't have photos and I could not find any appropriate images from files on Norbeck either. I settled for a mask I though would be interesting to paint. The mask is owned by the Vatican of all places. (I guess Pinocchio is Italian too.)

Ustad Anwar Darbar/Ganti Khan

The music, or rather the antics, of Ustad Anwar Darbari went sort of viral on YouTube this past year. He responded on Twitter in broken English "reply all you tuber i'm not funny and i'm respect to music and if you any Doubt then i'm upload more videos." [sic] All his videos are awesome but I've not been able to find anything on the performer on-line (other than videos on YouTube and his Twitter rant.) I'm not sure if he's Pakistani or from India. What I do know is that the music belongs to the Qawwali genre and that the tabla player on the track I selected for the top 100 is Ganti Khan. Ganti Khan has some videos on YouTube as leading performer too, but no information is available on him either. Both images are taken from stills of the video.

Happy Holidays

Tuareg woman/Bernard Lortat-Jacob

My teaching semester just ended so I'm on my holiday winter break. Happy Holidays to you all. For the occasion I made some cheerful holiday inspired painting to bright up the dark days of December. This one here illustrates a lullaby (or in French, the beautiful word berceuse) dubbed Bell'ilba by Bernard Lortat-Jacob who recorded the Tuareg woman with a baby in her arms in Mali in 1988. The recording, like so many others in this year's top 100, appeared on Les voix du monde: une anthologie des expressions vocales compiled and produced by Lortat-Jacob together with Hugo Zemp and G. Leothaud. The lullaby consist of words and ululations imitating the sounds of a flute. Like in last year's top 100 the song is illustrated with a random Tuareg woman paired with the recorder Bernard Lortat-Jacob. It's silly to just pick an image of a woman to paint from a non-specific Google search but options were few. I simply picked an image that seemed fun to paint, as I did last year. Last year's Tuareg woman looks very much like this year's but I do believe they're two different individuals.

Raúl R. Romero/Gisela Cánepa-Koch

The Taki song, a free-form and improvised song from the Peruvian Department Lambayeque, is also (like the above) by an anonymous performer and without an image too. I opted for two musicologists involved in the recordings and production of Traditional Music of Peru, Volume 4: Lambayeque, on which the taki appears.

Chitenje Tambala/Alain Daniélou

For the third festive design painting I had no problem finding the images of the recorder and the performer, even though the CD liner notes [Music Tradition of Malawi, UNESCO, 1991] does not have an image for either individual. The song in the top is called Ellis (the name of a woman) and is performed on a bangwe, a sort of board-zither. Tambala belongs to the Achewa cultural group. Alain Daniélou is best known for his work in India. He is a noted expert on Hinduism.


 

Sounds and Visions

One of fon's (Dafut king) wives/Pat Ritzenthaler

Music of the Cameroons [Folkways, 1961]was recorded by Robert and Pat Ritzenthaler in western British Cameroon in 1959. I assume that the more intimate domestic recordings of women and children were made by Pat Ritzenthaler and the men's ceremonial music by her husband Robert. The advantage of a husband and wife team of ethnomusicologists is that there is access to men only as well as women only quarters. It allows me to mix up the genders of the people I portray (it's been a stag fest lately.) The song in the top 100 is called Hail Muma and was performed by children and wives of the brother of the king (fon.) Muma is the brother of fon and the second in command in the Dafut society. I don't know how many wives Muma has but the liner notes tell of 41 wives of fon and over a hundred children. Hail Muma is an improvised song under the influence of palm wine to honor the fon's brother.

Martin Cradick/Bounaka

The British musician Martin Cradick is known for the fusion of world music and western rock and jazz. He founded the band Outback that featured several didjeridu players. His best known fusion is that of western and Baka (pygmy) people of Cameroon in a mixed orchestra he called Baka Beyond. The group featured his wife Su Hart as well as a host of Baka musicians he had recorded in the field on an earlier occasion (1992) including the m'gongo player Bounaka pictured above. On the solo m'gongo performance called Venlouma that Cradick recorded in 1992 Bounaka places his instrument on a cooking pop as a resonator. It appeared on the very successful Heart of the Forest cd from 1993.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk/Dick Fontaine

The song Three for the Festival is almost a customary feature of a Top 100 (I missed last year) and especially the version from the film Sound!! by Dick Fontaine (and narrated by John Cage) is a long time favorite of mine. (There are many version on line and in my own music collection.) I assume it was Dick Fontaine who filmed Kirk in performance for this film. Sound!! is from 1967.


 

Political Upheavels

Zong In-Sob/Korean janggo player

The janggo player depicted here comes from a photograph by F.M. Trantz and was used for the liner notes of the the album The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Vol. XI: Folk Music from Japan, the Ryukyus, Formosa, and Korea and was collected and edited by Genjiro Masu for the Japanese Music Institute of Tokyo. The Korean poet Zong In-Sob provided the liner notes for ther section on Korea. Sushim-Ka (Song of Sorrow) was recorded in northwestern Korea by a man with a janggo (slit waist drum.) Korea was alredy divided when the record was released around 1955 but perhaps not when the recording was made. There are no data given for the recording. Korea  became divided between the north and the south in 1945.

Felix Cardona i Puig/Unidentified Orinoco Indian

With this painting I'm adding another variant to the double portrait theme of performer and ethnomusicologist. Felix Carmononai Puig is an explorer. While half of the paintings feature a musicologist, in the remaining 50% the second portrait paired with the performer are band mates, producers, anthropologists, film makers and some odd ones like Puig the explorer or Wong the Korean poet whom I started working on already. Felix Carmona i Puig, from Barcelona, Spain, was among the most famous of explorers in the 1930s and 40s. Several plant species are named after him or dedicated to him. He found the famous Angel Falls in Venezuela. This was during the time he set out to find the source of the Orinoco in the Amazon. He got stuck in Venezuela because of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and consequently the second world War. He recorded the Sheriana Curing song in 1942. The photo I used here is probably from around that time too. I could not found anything on the Sheriana indians on line. They simply don't exist within the rather large confines of Google. The area it was recorded in is the territory of the notorious Yanomama Indians. The indian in the image here is most likely a Maquiritare, also from the same area, which is Sierra Parima, the mountainous region on the border with Brazil.

Mark Cunningham/China Burg (Mars)

A favorite from the No-Wave community I subscribe to on facebook. The painting illustrates the song Helen Forsdale that appeared on the compilation album No New York from 1978. The CD version of it has been with me for many years.

Yakut shaman/Platon Oyunskiy (Sleptsov)

After L. Tibetov at #43 and N. Pionka #44 a third track from the sixth volume dedicated to the extreme north of Russia called Voyage en URSS (Anthologie de la Musiques Instrumentale et Vocale des Peuples de l'URSS). At #75 in the top 100 2021 is listed a certain P. Sleptsov, a Yakut shaman who chants a curing song. I'm not sure if the famous poet and statesman P.A. Oyunskiy is the same individual as in the song but I deem this likely. P.A. Oyunskiy was born Platon Alekseevich Sleptsov in 1893 in the Yakut Oblast. Oyunskiy means kin of oyun (oyun is the Yakut word for shaman.) Even though he tried to please the Soviet regime he was arrested (for no valid reason) and died in a labor camp in 1939.