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.