Happy Holidays

Tuareg woman/Bernard Lortat-Jacob

My teaching semester just ended so I'm on my holiday winter break. Happy Holidays to you all. For the occasion I made some cheerful holiday inspired painting to bright up the dark days of December. This one here illustrates a lullaby (or in French, the beautiful word berceuse) dubbed Bell'ilba by Bernard Lortat-Jacob who recorded the Tuareg woman with a baby in her arms in Mali in 1988. The recording, like so many others in this year's top 100, appeared on Les voix du monde: une anthologie des expressions vocales compiled and produced by Lortat-Jacob together with Hugo Zemp and G. Leothaud. The lullaby consist of words and ululations imitating the sounds of a flute. Like in last year's top 100 the song is illustrated with a random Tuareg woman paired with the recorder Bernard Lortat-Jacob. It's silly to just pick an image of a woman to paint from a non-specific Google search but options were few. I simply picked an image that seemed fun to paint, as I did last year. Last year's Tuareg woman looks very much like this year's but I do believe they're two different individuals.

Raúl R. Romero/Gisela Cánepa-Koch

The Taki song, a free-form and improvised song from the Peruvian Department Lambayeque, is also (like the above) by an anonymous performer and without an image too. I opted for two musicologists involved in the recordings and production of Traditional Music of Peru, Volume 4: Lambayeque, on which the taki appears.

Chitenje Tambala/Alain Daniélou

For the third festive design painting I had no problem finding the images of the recorder and the performer, even though the CD liner notes [Music Tradition of Malawi, UNESCO, 1991] does not have an image for either individual. The song in the top is called Ellis (the name of a woman) and is performed on a bangwe, a sort of board-zither. Tambala belongs to the Achewa cultural group. Alain Daniélou is best known for his work in India. He is a noted expert on Hinduism.


 

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.

 

New Toys

Portrait of a young Tuareg, ink and gel pen, 14x11 inches

The latest drawings I finished for the Top 100 2020 series are numbers 82, 83, and 84: Depicted above is number 84, an individual from a Tuareg group from Mali. Even though in theory the caste system is abandoned among the Tuareg, the practice continues. The Ikelan, or Bella, are the lowest caste, they are slaves, that simple. The song a group of about 12 Bella sing and that features in the top 100 is a type of song called Ihamma. The word is onomatopoeic and does not have lyrics. Bernard Lortet-Jacob calls it a panting song. The source, like so many in the list, is Les Voix du Monde. I have new toys: A set of gel pens from the dollar store. There are eight pens in the set which makes each pen 12.5 cents. I have no idea how they will hold up over time. When I made a drawing using highlighters depicting Hang on the Box (Chinese punk/pop) in 2008 the colors faded after about a half year.

Number 83 come from the same collection as above. The location is now Taiwan, the ethnic group are the Bunun. The Track Pasi But But was recorded by the Taiwanese musicology professor Rung-Shun Wu, who is also depicted using the same gel pens. At number 82 then is an American popular music entry. The song in the Top 100 is The Theme from The Black Cat and was written and performed by Scotty McKay. Scotty McKay is known for his frantic style of playing (and performing) during the late 1950s into the 1960s. Black Cat is from 1966 and appears on Beat Jazz, a collection of Jazz music related to the Beat Generation. Last year a track from the album featuring a recording of Jack Kerouac made the list. The image I used for the drawing is a commercial publicity shot. I can't help but to recognize the sassy facial expression of this dude in a MAGA hat who was in the news last year.

 

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