10 More miniatures

June Tyson from the Akestra

The miniature painting of June Tyson is probably my favorite of the 65 I've done this past month. Tyson sings on the Sun Ra epic Space is the Place and was a member of the Akestra. The following nine are some other of my favorite miniatures, embedded in the 100 Faces from the Top 100 2022 painting I haven't shared with you yet. Each of the paintings is about 3 inches tall.

David Blair Stiffler

Last year I couldn't find a decent image to paint of the American ethnomusicologist David Blair Stiffler and used the only (blurry) image that a Google image search yielded. Stiffler recorded more than just the Music from the Mountain Provinces he recorded in the Philippines and I had known him for. The Top 100 2022 features recordings of Indians from Costa Rica he recorded. I found a recent interview with Stiffler on-line which means I have all access to many images of him, be it as an aged man.

Iannis Xenakis

The most exciting thrift store haul of 2022 was a collection of modern classical records including three discs with compositions by Iannis Xenakis. His works had just previously, in 2021, debuted in my Top 100. The painting I did then is one of my favorite from last year's series. Thus far three compositions by Xenakis have entered the list.

Cuna Indian from a vintage photo

This individual stood right next to the one I used last year (in a vintage photo) to illustrate a song of a Cuna medicine man from Colombia. The same track is in the list again and now much higher (at #2 for the time being). Some of the miniature paintings, like this one, only took 10-15 minutes to complete. The quick ones are also the best ones.

Esma Redzepova

This one was perhaps even less than 10 minutes and honestly, I'm not even sure if her song Jalandi Coban will make it into the list of the Top 100 2022. I painted her because of the context of how the single came to me. I revived my old Musical Thrift Store Treasures just for this one. Here's that post: http://musicalthriftstoretreasures.blogspot.com/2022/05/nine-years-later.html

From the cover of  Music of the Indians of Panama

 

 

A great impulse for the selections for the Top 100 2022 was supplied by the record store Vinylarchive in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Due to unfortunate circumstances I had to spend a lot of time in this city whre I had grown up. Every visit to the city included a visit to this record store, the only one I know of with an excellent collection of ethnomusicological recordings. Music of the Indians of Panama: The Cuna (Tule) and Chocoe (Embera) Tribes is only one of a dozen records to be featured multiple times.

Rung-Shun Wu

The Taiwanese musicologist Rung Shun Wu recorded the Vunun tribe in Taiwan. Pasi But But is becoming a regular in the Top 100.

Music of Thailand (cover)

Howard Kaufman

The record Music of Thailand from Folkways has been with me for many years. I've painted bot the cover for it, and a portrait of the recorder before. This year the opening track Suksanaen makes the list. The tune is played on an instrument called can.

Sun Ra

Last, but not least, is a portrait of Sun Ra. A number of his recordings will feature in the Top 100 2022!

New Paintings

John Cage/David Skidmore (Third Coast Percussion)

I took some time deliberating what image to use for John Cage's portrait and who to pair him with. I had access to photos of Cage not readily available on line, and listened to some suggestions of a friend who's a big fan of everything Cage. For the Cage portrait I opted for the same photo as author Kay Larsen used for the cover of Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists. She obviously chose the image, a reversal of traditional portraiture, with great purpose. And I chose to adopt this purpose: We, the audience, have the same vantage point as Cage has, we are looking at the same shade of orange as he does. We are invited to see the world as Cage does as it were. For the pairing I opted for the most obvious: the performer of The Works for Percussion 2, the work in the top 100 list. The performers are Third Coast Percussion, a Grammy winning ensemble from Chicago. Of the four members Davis Skidmore, the most prolific in composing materials for the group. The other members are Sean Collins, Robert Dillon, and Peter Martin. Once I selected the two images I planned the painting process in great detail. In good Cagean fashion I had the computer select at random the four customary base colors I have been starting most paintings with lately. 

Budai Ilona/Péter Éri

Kék ibolya, ha leszakajtanálak is a lyrical song fromthe album Hungarian Folk Music [Hungaraton, 1964.] No performer or recorder are listed on the album but the location is: Great Plain. The liner notes tell us that the song belongs to the traditional style. The notes further reark that the old songs are hardly remembered. Perhaps because of this important LP the song Kék ibolya, ha leszakajtanálak (which translates as Blue Violet, if I picked You) is remembered as recordings of it are plentiful on YouTube. Thirteen years after the release of the LP by the communist government, the ethnographer Péter Éri recorded it for an album called Élö Népzene II, in a series called Living Hungarian Folk Music. The singer on this album is the well known Hungarian singer Budai Lilona. The vocal version of Kék ibolya on Hungarian Folk Music is followed by short instrumental versions of it, first on a zither, then on a hurdy gurdy.

Eddie Kirkland/John Lee Hooker

Tsitano Muburunyara/Ton van der Lee

Nanang Marin, Dumagat representative/David Blair Stiffler