The three paintings for the week, two of Hugo Zemp

Men's choir (Fataleka)/Hugo Zemp

The image I used next to Hugo Zemp in a painting from June of this year must now move to represent a song recently added to the list this year which is Sukute the name of a tubular instrument that is both struck and blown. The player of the instrument on Solomon Islands, Fataleka and Baegu Music from Malaita is Rokona. I believe the image I linked to above is indeed Rokona. I thus painted not the new song but an alternative painting for Fataleka divinatory songs: Uunu. Fataleka Music, Uunu song form, Divinatory songs, performed by men's choir seated in two rows facing each other. On the liner notes to the album there is an image of two rows of men with rattles facing each other. I believe these to be the men heard on the recording. Hugo Zemp has been really good with naming and photographing his subjects which my undertaking so much easier. Adhering to my own concept for the series of the Top 100 2021, I simply must paint Hugo Zemp over and over again. While I have images of most performers recorded by Zemp in this list, I am running out of options for Zemp himself. Here he is shown early in his career while I used an image of a much older man in the next.

Hugo Zemp/"A hunter sings alone" (Dan)

The younger portrait of Zemp would have been more appropriate here as Zemp recorded the Dan in Ivory Coast in the mid 1960s well before his work in the Solomon Islands. I own a re-release on CD published by Rounder Records in 1998 titled Africa: The Dan but the original LP dates way further back. It was published as The Music of the Dan by The International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation. In the painting I experimented with a black background which alters the focus, especially early on when setting up the images, from linear to volume. On black you start out with swatches of light rather than the outline. On black you work from the inside outward while with a white ground you do the reverse. Early on in the process the painting had the looks of those kitschy black velvet paintings. An early shot of the painting appears in a video I recently posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-FOrUFdCQ

Ahidous (Berber Dance, Morocco)/Bernard Lortat-Jacob

Grande Danse Ahidus, recorded by Bernard Lortat-Jacob in Morocco in 1978 appeared on the CD-set Voices of the World which was edited and produced by Hugo Zemp together with Lortat-Jacob in 1996 for Musee de l'Homme. The recording is of a mixed chores of Ben Aissa Berbers accompanied by frame drums. Ahidous is a traditional war dance performed in the Atlas Mountains by Berber men and women.

 

Moving Along

 

Jofirsti Lungisa playing a musical bow

 

 

The Top 100 2020 contains a larger than usual number of repeats from the year before and again a great number of tunes from 2020 will be repeated again in 2021. There's plenty of different music I play but those recordings that make up the playlist from which I compile my thoughts on the origin of music is getting more established as time goes on. And so do my thoughts. The playlist is front and center of my music appreciation path. At some point when I have enough time and ambition I am going to collect and edit my writings on this subject as they appeared in this blog and other places and compile them into a cohesive paper forming a theory on the origin of music, of art, and creativity. The theory is a meditation on all the big questions concerning the origin and nature of being using insights from hundreds of others. The theory itself is far too big and broad for one person to research. The theory that is forming in my hand circumnavigates materials handily available on line and is not depending on independent research at all but rather on the implications of the sounds on the playlist. And empathy. I haven't posted much recently but have continued the work towards completing the illustrations for the Top 100 2020. The nine works shown here are all from this year and are done on 11 x 14 drawing paper. Ink is the most common material used throughout but a number of other media have also been used. Represented are numbers 45 through 53:

• 45: Jofirsti Lungisa – Nandel'ekhaye
• 46: San, Tin Can Bow Solo
• 47: Yeyi "Hut Song" by thirteen young girls and children from Cameroon
• 48: Norma Tanega – You're Dead
• 49: Ya'ak Keodaeng and Ya'Seu Keodaeng – Teum singing
• 50: Sun Ra and His Akestra featuring June Tyson – Space is the Place
• 51: Nellie Echalook and Rebecca Natialuk – Katajjait
• 52: Grande danse, ahidus by a mixed chorus of Ben aissa Berbers
• 53: Bell'ilba (lullaby) by a Kel ansar Tuareg mother
  

!Kung San playing a hunting bow

Baka gathering

Norma Tanega

 

Bamboo on the Mountains (cover), Frank Porschin

Sun Ra, preparation sketch for stencil

Sun Ra, stencilprint (A/P)

Nellie Echalook and Rebecca Natialuk

Berber Family

Tuareg mother and child, Bernard Lortat-Jacob