Colorfields

 

Studio portret van een Dajak vrouw uit Borneo/Jaap Kunst

I'm Dutch, and like other Western European countries the Netherlands was also a colonial force in the early 20th century, and of course, like those other European countries, some compatriots were ethnomusicologists as well. The best known Dutch ethnomusicologist is Jaap Kunst, who specialized in Indonesian gamelan music. He actually coined the term ethnomusicology. He became curator of the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam, an institution distinct from the Tropenmuseum of Amsterdam. On the right is a portrait of Kunst blowing a conch shell and on the left a Dayak woman with a drum from a photograph from the Tropenmuseum collection. Kunst recorded in Indonesia but his best known contribution to ethnographic records was as curator: Indonesian Music which was volume 7 from the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, a series edited by Alan Lomax. The recordings on the record were made by J. Hobbel, Andre Dupeyrat, Bernard Ijzerdraad and others. (The name Bernard Ijzerdraad rings familiar in my head because of the cartoon character Phil Ijzerdraad, a lanky bandit who featured in a Lucky Luke cartoon—friends said he looked like me.) The recording of rice song by a Dayak woman that features in the Top 100 was made by J. Hobbel on the island of Borneo. You may have noticed that the last ten or so paintings were done on a ground of four colored rectangles. This is my foray, like I did for the Top 100 2018, into the world of abstract art and color theory. Below are a few 'colorfield' paintings. Enjoy.

A song about rice

Young Dyak women grind rice using a
 traditional technique
(after a photograph by Harrison W. Smith
 for National Geographic)
12" x 12", oil on luan, 2012

In 1951 and 1952 UNESCO and UNO recorded indigenous music of the various Dyak (or Dayak) people on the Island of Borneo (now Kalamantan) in Indonesia. A selection of these recordings can be found on The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax, Vol. VII: Indonesia, Edited by Dr. Jaap Kunst, Indisch Museum, Amsterdam. A long title indeed, but inside the titles are short and descriptive. You can read more about the record when, a while back, I painted Roro natives from Papua New Guinea. The second song from the album is a pretty one labeled Rice Song. "Dyak women sing this appeal to the spirit of the mountains to send a good harvest." It could have been a lot worse; the song after the rice song is a headhunter's dance. The practice of cannibalism had been extinct in Borneo for a good while already. Volume five of the Columbia World Library series overlap volume seven a bit, it deals with Australia and New Guinea. The record features a recording of still practicing cannibals. Alan Lomax (who does the final edit on the liner notes in the series) states in a matter of fact manner: "(...T)he warriors burst into a song. Afterwards the bodies of the dead men are cut into pieces, cooked on hot stones, and eaten." I wonder if they serve rice with it.