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.