Number 4 and number 62

Sylvia Saghorekao and Sabina Seso

As many entries in the Top 100 are repeats from previous years, my familiarity with these recordings grow. The focus of the latest paintings and drawings is on the academic work of the musicologists and anthropologists who recorded in the field. I did, however, not include an image of Hugo Zemp here as I already painted him several times and already gained quite a bit of contextual information on the years Hugo Zemp spent in the Solomon Islands. What is new this year is that I now know the names of the performers and I found an image to go with it. This is from a photograph by Zemp included in the liner notes for Polyphonies des Îles Salomon (Guadalcanal et Savo) from 1978, the original appearance of the recording. The recording is called Ratsi Rope, rope is a repertoire of feminine songs and the word 'ratsi' means beginning. There are however no words to the song. The vocal sounds are an imitation of sounds in nature. Ratsi Rope is number 62 from the Top 100 2020.

Deben Bhattacharya and Tangkhul Great Story Teller

Number 4 from 2021 was also part of the Top 100 2020. I decided to use the same source image as I did last year. I could not find a photograph by Bhattacharya appropriate to illustrate his recording of the Tangkhul song. Deben Bhattacharya is a legendary ethnomusicologist from an old Bengali Brahmin family. (I've painted him before as well, the last time was in 2017 and somehow I painted his shirt then as orange as I did this time using a black and white photo from Wikipedia.) While Bhattacharya is of the highest social order in India, the indigenous tribal Tangkhul have lesser esteem in Indian society. The 2021 series of double portraits investigates issues like these. The juxtaposition of object and subject, and how this relationship evolved throughout the history of music recording. The further collapse the distinction in this painting I reversed the backgrounds from the two respective source photographs. The Tangkhul Great Story Teller now sits in the recording studio while Bhattacharya takes his place in from of the story teller's dwelling.

Top 100 (Remixed): Update

Charles Duvelle
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017

Deben Bhattacharya
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas, 2017

The first of two receptions for The Top 100 (Remixed) has transpired at Tempus Projects in Tampa. Thanks to curator Jade Dellinger and gallery director Tracy Midulla the reception was a great success. 323 Top 100 paintings are installed. The exhibition runs through September 21. The second reception, the second First Friday Artwalk in Tampa during the course of the exhibition, will be on September 1st from 7-9 at Tempus Projects. Large sections of what is on view right now will be replaced by other works. So for those who've seen it, the exhibition will look quite different on September 1st. The exhibition is organized in groups of ten, the curator and myself pulled works from the last 16 years and organized these into themes. Top 10s of various topics are hung in groupings. Some sections are serious and formal (like geographical locations), others less so (musicians with beards for example). A 22 page guide is available to identify the paintings and their specs. Since the opening I have been diligently working on the next sections to substitute existing ones, to the point of fixing up older paintings to complete a section or even painting brand new ones. One of the new topics to be displayed on September 1st is Ethnomusicologists. The two paintings above are both brand new, created specifically for this topic. In the case of Deben Bhattacharya I redid a painting that I simply couldn't find anywhere in my archive. Frustrated as that was I did a brand new painting from the same photograph as the lost one. I had spent two hours looking for that painting while making a whole new one only took me an hour-and-a-half, and it's better than the original too. Even though painted in 2017 this painting belongs to the Top 100 of 2013/14. Charles Duvelle's portrait however solidly belongs to the Top 100 of 2017 as it illustrates the recording of Wama Igini Kamu recorded in Papua New Guinea by Charles Duvelle, that was released only one month ago. A site I follow, Sublime Frequencies, published the book with two cds included called The Photographs of Charles Duvelle. Duvelle was also already included in this section but I never really liked my effort for the Top 100 2012.
The full top 10 of ethnomusicologists:

1. Hugh Tracey (1903-1977, South Africa). Ethnomusicologist, founder of ILAM
2. Alan Lomax (1915-2002, US). Ethnomusicologist, directer of Archive of American Folk Song.
3. Bela Bartok (1881-1945, Hungary). Composer, ethnomusicologist (one of its founders)
4. Charles Duvelle (French). Composer and musicologist, founder of Ocora (1958)
5. Paul Bowles (1910-1999, US). Composer, associated with Morocco
6. Pat Conte (US). Musician, collector, founder of The Secret Museum of Mankind
7. Alain Danielou (1907- 1994, France). Historian (of India) and musicologist. UNESCO
8. Deben Bhachattera (1921-2001, India). Ethnomusicologist, UNESCO
9. John Storm Roberts (1936-2009, UK/US). Ethnomusicologist, co-founder of Original Music
10. Joe Bussard (b. 1936, US). Record collector, founder of Fonotone

In case the selection of ten paintings don't work well together, I'm also bring three alternates;

• John Jacob Niles (1892-1980, US). Composer, singer, collector, the "Dean of American Balladeers"
• Sam Phillips (1923-2003, US). Record producer, founder of Sun Records
• Jon Ward runs the blog Excavated Shellac.

 Come check it out September 1st in Tampa if you're in the vicinity (and even if aren't).

Iran

Deben Bhattacharya
11" x 9.5", oil on wood, 2014

Last year I bought on separate occasions two records with traditional music from Iran. The first one, Classical Music of Iran, Vol. 1: Dastgah Systems (1966) on the Folkways label is the most interesting (partly because of the rich documentation inside the jacket) and older (by five years) than the second, Musique Folklorique du Monde: Iran (from the same series as the Syrian one—see previous). Both records are represented in the list of 100 songs. The folkways one was produced by Ella Zonis Mahler the other by Deben Bhattacharya. Zonis' is a recording of female singer Khatereh Parvaneh while the musicians on Bhattacharya's remain anonymous. Zonis Mahler is best known for the Persian recordings while Bhattacharya has a much more storied history. The first paragraph from the Wikipedia page (reproduced here) only hints at the colorful history of his career.

Deben Bhattacharya (1921–2001) was a Bengali radio producer, record producer, ethnomusicologist, anthropologist, documentary filmmaker, photographer, translator, poet, writer, broadcaster, lecturer, and folk music consultant. He produced over 100 records, 23 films and published more than a dozen books in his lifetime and much of his work was carried out under the auspices of UNESCO.