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.)