Albania and Ashaninka, numbers 7 of 2021 and 66 in 2020.

Albanian mourners, Spiro Shetuni

The song illustrated in the above painting is one of several for which I could find not a whole lot of information about. The song title is Lamento de Albania which I found on the collection La voz humana en la musica parte 1. It's a Spanish language website and was compiled by the Argentinian Carlos Reynoso, professor of Anthropology at the the University of Buenos Aires. His liner notes to the Albanian recording are short; A funeral song by a group of about 12 women. The song is syllabic, it does not have words. "A collective clamor organized according to a strophic structure" is how Reynoso described it. The source is the Institute of Popular Culture of Tirana. No date. So I looked up the Institute of Popular Culture of Tirana. The Institute does not exist anymore, not using that name anyways but it lead me to the name Spiro Shetuni, "the West's foremost authority on the subject of Albanian music." Shetuni is an Albanian American whose nationality is Arumanian (I had to look that one up too, the term designates Eastern Romance people, and their language). He moved to the United States in 1992 and was for a period employed at the Ohio State University. Between 1993 and 2000 he taught a course called An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples. This at exactly the same time I was at OSU. I was a grad student there between 1994-1997. I stayed on as a lecturer and Gallery assistant until 2011.  I wish I knew then what I know now and I certainly would have taken this course. In 2005 I organized an exhibition of record sleeve collections and did come in contact with Margarita Mazo, a professor in the cognitive music department. Mazo had recorded Old Believers: Music of the Nekrasov Cossacks, a cd on Smithsonian Folkways that I owned a copy of and that was in the Top 100 at the time. I had never heard of Shetuni then let alone met him (he had already moved to South Carolina anyways.)

Back then I was in middle of compiling a cd with examples of cry singing, mostly funeral laments. Throughout the world existed (still exists but disappearing) this practice of mourning through song and I had gathered examples from Ireland (where it's called keening to Papua New Guinea, and everywhere in between. Albania was not included in that collection but had I known the existance of this recording I would have certainly included it on the cd, and would have contacted Shetuni in the process.

 

The image of the wailing Albanian women I found in Death Rituals in Albania: An Anthropological Review by Gentian Vyshka and Bardhyl Cipi, published on Antrocom an online journal of Anthropology in 2010. Vyshka and Cipi used the 1985 photo courtesy of the Albanian Film Archive, Tirana.The caption reads: "The wailing ritual and laments in Southern Albania are led from a professional mourner, a woman that might be not a relative of the dead, and hired for that function." The caption also reaffirmed me that I was painting Albanian women. I had started this painting already without some of the context and I was not sure if all 8 individuals were women. I've painted half the photo, the four people on the left in the picture.

Ashaninka Indian, Josefat Roel Pineda

The Ashaninka songs, at #66 in the Top 100 2020 was also part of the Top 100 2019. In 2019, while painting the illustration, I did do some contextual research as to what I was listening to. The track Ashaninka songs are actually two short songs that appear on a project initiated by Mickey Hart (of the Grateful Dead) for the Library of Congress called Endangered Music Project. The first cd of which is called The Spirit Cries: Music from the Rainforests of South America and the Caribbean (Rykodisc 1993). The sections on the cd involving the Peruvian Indians Shipobo and Ashaninka were recorded in 1963 and 1964 by Enrique Pinella and Josefat Roel Pineda. I may assume that Pinella, a Peruvian avant-garde composer, was responsible for the Shipobo recordings and Pinella for the Ashaninka but I can't be sure. The otherwise well documented CD does not distinguish. While writing about bot sets of recordings last years I spoke about Pinella and omitted Pineda. Now, while focusing on the Ashaninka only, I'm reversing this and chose a portrait of Pineda to include in the drawing of an Ashaninka woman. The woman I depicted is anonymous, as are the performers of the Ashaninka songs. The photo source I used comes from the Goteborg Ethnographic Museum and I found it on a Brazilian website documenting Amazonian tribes. I could not find photographs made by either Pinella or Pineda during their field recording sessions in the Amazon region of Eastern Peru. I commented in the text on the Ashaninca last year on the tattos seen in older, vintage, photographs of many Ashaninka women. Beautiful face tattoos that have now been replaced by face painting. Talking about tattoos: I can't get this image out of my head of the tattoos on the back of Grimes, the partner of Elon Musk. She covered her back in abstract, very expressive white marks resembling doodles or scribbling, or the style of Antonin Artaud's drawings or Alberto Giacometti's. I saw it on the Daily Mail this morning. They probably put it up to feed the disgust people have for the ultra-rich extravagant escapades. To shock their viewers. I found the tattoos rather impressive. Easily one of the best non-tribal or ceremony related tattoos I've ever seen.

 

Le Mystère de la Voix Albanaises

Albanian girl
25" x 15"
oil on wood, 2012

The girl in this painting has become an iconic figure. Her image can be seen on the cover of Folk and Popular Music of Albania, and on the cover of The Top 100 2010. A painting of her hangs on my wall and now a new painting has been made. The painting belongs to the strangest I ever made. Objects and colors appeared and disappeared by her side magically. The palm tree, painted from life, remained from the beginning, the girl followed. She is only known with these clothes on, in this particular pose. C'est ne pas une pipe. Like the palm behind her she is grounded in that pose, stuck in that location, forever. She is the axis mundi, the spiritual center of the world. No one knows her name. No one's ever seen her. But she's presiding over the events that make a top 100. Stranger things have happened.

Her image is invariably linked with Albanian folk music but nobody knows if she's a musician. The song illustrated now is an example of an iso-polymorphic song, in this case a song performed by two women. 

Albania! (2)

The Joyfulaires
12" x 10"
oil on wood, 2011

The second installment of the two part series named Albania! marks the end of the Top 100 2010. In part one I discussed the relative obscurity of this country and her music, and how I've only seen it flying over en route to Greece. Part two then deals with Albanian's music outside the country's borders. The first one is from Ohio, the quintessential fly-over country in the US. I mentioned the Joyfulaires in the chapter Thrift Stores and even posted their photo. I didn't mention that the two Jeffries sisters and Dianna Woodgeard in that picture are from Albany, Ohio. Now six months later I painted these Albanians after I awarded them the #100 spot in the list. "Dianna is a young married student and has dedicated her talents to God. She was a neglected child, but God sent Mr. and Mrs. Pinney, wonderful christian parents, to adopt her as their own." (—The Joyfulaires, In the Valley He Restoreth My Soul)
Dianna plays piano in the group. Karen and Bonnie are young mothers who sing. Their phone number is listed on the LP and it's for me only a local call but I won't dial it (no, I'm not passing on that number either, it's 40 years old, for heaven's sake). The second group of Albanian musicians are immigrants in the "heel of Italy". More a destination than fly-over territory (unless, of course, you're from Rome and have business in Libya, or vice-versa). The musicians are an Albanian couple who, at Easter time, go from door to door to sing songs for a little food or money. I doubt if the couple singing on the record would have an outfit like the Albanian couple in the drawing. The music was recorded by Alan Lomax in 1950s. The copy I have is from the original release of that song on Music and Song of Italy. I hate to be sarcastic (this is the last chapter of the Top 100 2010, and I already quoted from the Joyfulaires' liner notes) but I can't resist quoting Mr. Alan Lomax in this sentence that probably wasn't reprinted when the music finally, fifty years later, was released on CD. "During the 19th century the accordion, which has done such severe damage to the old folk music of Central Europe, penetrated every region of Italy."

Since I installed the first part of Albania! I have met for first time real Albanians. They were running a Pizzeria on 6th Avenue (NYC) and were very pleasant and nice people. (Everybody would agree, I think, that the first impression you get from meeting somebody from a different country determines how you feel about a whole nation. Viva Albania!)

ciao

Albanian couple
11" x 8.5"
ink on paper, 2011

Albania!

Image from Folk and Popular Music of Albania
32.5" x 16"
oil on wood, 2011

Aah...Albania! I once flew over it on my way to Greece for a vacation. Greek records I have quite a few but as far as I'm aware there are only three songs in my record collection recorded in Albania. All made it one time or another into a Top 100. All are of folk music and at least two of them were originally commercial 78 shellac discs from before 1945. The latest is Vome Kabà by Jonuzi Me Shokët, recorded in Tirana in 1930. It appears on Sprigs of Time, a compilation of old 78s I acquired last year. I never found an image of Jonuzi Me Shokët or of any of the other Albanian performers I have on record but still had to paint a painting. In my running list of songs for the Top 100 2010 Vome Kabà used to have a star in front of it to designate that it still needs a painting. That star had been staring at me for almost half a year before I finally typed in the words "Folk Music of Albania" and clicked "image" on my Google menu bar. Of course there exists a record named Folk Music of Albania and I'd seen it before, they used to have in the Columbus library system. Not interested in its graphics I found Folk and Popular Music of Albania right next to it and on the cover two vintage photographs of the cutest (Albanian, I assume) girls appear. It's unlikely that there are female performers on Vome Kabà but it didn't keep me from painting one of the girls (the cutest of the cutest) as a placeholder. I wish I had that record Folk and Popular Music of Albania, or Folk Music of Albania for that matter as it would fit so nicely with Folk music of Rumenia and Folk Music of Yugoslavia, that also appear in this year's list.