It's a start

 

Brian Moser and Donald Tayler

The first brushstrokes of the Top 100 2022 have been placed on a 11x14 canvas which means the series have now officially started. The first painting will be a double portrait of two British anthropologists who recorded (and lived with) various tribes along the Río Piraparaná in Amazonia in Colombia. Several of their recordings will be featured in the new Top 100 including the likely #1 "Elders chanting origin myths," a fragment of which, wrongly attributed then, was also featured in the Top 100 2021. The chanting elders appear on The Indians of Colombia, that I believed to have been recorded by Lars Persson. The recording, suddenly of great interest to me this year, did not have much data so I started my research. I found on the British Library "Sounds" website the recordings made by Moser and Tayler in 1960 and 1961 of five different places they visited in Colombia's Amazonia region. A bit later I found the music on an LP named Music of the Tukana and Cuna Peoples of Colombia [Rogue Records, 1987] from which the current #1 is taken. I did not have any images yet but upon relentless searching I came across a movie following Brian Moser on a re-visit to the region 35 years after the recordings were made. The movie The Indians of the Vaupes was made by Titus Moser, who accompanied his dad together with the anthropologists Stephen and Christine Hugh-Jones, who had also visited the same peoples in the 1970s. In the film, outtakes from videos taken by Moser and Tayler during their initial visits were shown, including a fragment of the elders chanting origin myths. It supplied me with images of Moser and Tayler, as well as the leading elders of the song. I have names too: Cristo and Bosco. 

While the format of the 2022 painting is identical with that of the paintings of 2021, the concept has changed dramatically. I decided to do away with the hierarchical structure of the paintings in which the #1 from the list is also the painting in first place. The painting can now be exhibited in any order. Then, the individual paintings do not necessarily illustrate a particular song. The selection of portraits is simply a summary of those people meaningful to the list of 100 songs. It may be that a certain musician I painted is not in the list of 100 but deserves inclusion because of her presence throughout the lists compiled in the year. This way I avoid having to paint multiple portraits of one individual. Hope it works out, we'll see. I will forward the finished painting of Moser and Tayler shortly.