No outography!

Nico/John Cale

The painting of Nico and Cale sure looks like it was intended as an outography, but it's not. The painting was intended as a double portrait, with both their shadows moving across the halfway mark, as I had done in 2007 with a double portrait of the White Stripes. The two black shapes representing Nico and Cale were not cut away but rather added. It's more of a stereoscopic image than an outograph. The source was a photo of the two with Brian Eno and Kevin Ayers. The quartet had collaborated on June 1, 1974, from which album Baby's on Fire, by Eno, once was my number 1. But this was a long, long, time ago. The year 2022 features Nico's Secret Side in its top 100. Secret Side comes from Nico's solo album The End... and was produced by John Cale also in 1974.

Since I'm at I might as well forward some other painting I finished over the last two months. There are about eighteen I did not (yet) write about in these pages. I made a series of three double portrait paintings representing four songs from the CD series Siberie on Music du Monde. Three from Volume 4: Kamchatka: Tambours de danse de l'extreme-orient Siberien, and one from Volume 8: Chants rituels des nomades de la Taiga. Two of these paintings, featuring Ivikovna Sajnav with Henri Lecomte, and Anna Vasilevna Kolegova with Irina Khristoforovna Kolegova, I had already done some months ago using images I had used before in earlier versions of the Top 100. I had ordered the the Volume 8 CD from a seller in Switzerland which took forever to make it to my house. I ordered the CD mainly because I needed images. No images of any of the singers in the series can be found on-line the the CD booklets contain several. I knew I would be waiting to post about the first two paintings until I was able to do the third. The singer in the Top 100 from Volume 8 is Uljana Nikoraevna Vasilova. A photograph of Vasilova was not included in the booklet but several others were, including Oktjabrina Vladimirovna Naumova, who had been in a Top 100 several times, and really was due for a painting. She is paired with Alexandra Lavrillier, who assisted Lecomte, and recorded about half the tracks on the CD.

Alexandra Lavrillier/Oktjabrina Vladimirovna Naumova

Ikovna Sajnav/Henri Lecomte

Anna/Irina Kolegova

Family First

Cover image from "Les Dani de Nouvelle Guinee, Vol. 2"

The world of ethnomusicology is no longer (and hasn't been for a long time) a field primarily occupied by a handful of adventurous men. As academic practices have shifted from being observers to being  participants for lengthy spells of time, ethnographers, anthropologists, musicologists, and others, travel with their families to go live among the cultures being researched. An added bonus of taken the family along is that of access to ceremonies restricted to one gender only, especially in societies that are strongly stratified. Another bonus is that when contacting the most remote peoples, a family will be perceived as peaceful visitors, while a company of men only can be perceived as a threat. Anne-Marie, and Pierre Petrequin visited, recorded, and lived among the Dani of Western Guinea in Indonesia. Some of their recordings were collected on four disks called Les Dani de Nouvelle Guinee. Two recordings, one from Volume 1, and one from Volume 2, are listed in this year's top 100.

Anne-Marie and Pierre Petrequin

Traditional music among distant cultures is often a family affair. With no television, computer, or radio available, families make music for entertainment (or so it seems.) Below are portraits of Irina Khritoroforovna Kolegova and Anna Vasilevna Kolegova. The two perform several tracks together on Kamtchaka:Tambours De Danse De L'extreme-orient Sibérien recorded by Henri Lecomte. I've painted both Anna and Irina Kolegova twice before. Read here to learn more about their recordings.

Anna and Irina Kolegova

In 1923, four of the six children, Paco, Ezequiel, Pepe, and Elisa, of Dr. Francisco Aguilar, created a lute quartet: Cuarteto Aguilar. From Murcia, Spain, the four made a name for themselves until the Spanish Civil War ended their career. The worked with the composer Manuel de Falla, and are pictured in a photo together with Igor Stravinsky. The tune Fiesta Mora en Tanger appears on an LP from the Secret Museum of Mankind series who are, after a lengthy hiatus, compiling new collections again.

Paco and Elise Aguilar

There are plenty of examples of lovers working together in the field of popular music. Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa are an example. The Top 100 2022 features the track Relance, written by Veloso and sung by Costa. (Edit: Despite some cozy pictures together, I don't see evidence the two were lovers. I guess the musicians of "Tropicalismo" were one big family.)

Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa

Family is on my mind a lot these days as I travel back and forth from the US to the Netherlands where my mother is battling a serious illness. Here's her portrait too:

Tonnie van Boekel