A grab bag of musicians

Alvin Curran/Giacinto Scelsi

20th Century avant-garde classical music really has a presence this year in the top 100 as it had once before in the late eighties. String quartets #3 and #4 by the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) and Canti Illuminati by Alvin Curran (Am. b. 1938, lives in Rome) all scored points in 1987 and again in 2022. Neither of these musicians I had painted before (I started illustrating the top 100 in 1990.) Portraits for both are thus long overdue. Scelsi featured in the Top 100 1987 (Curran did not,) while Curran is in this year's list (Scelsi is not.) The current format of double portraits without duplicates allows me to catch up on painting musicians that should have been painted in the history of the Top 100 but were not. Scelsi was a mentor and friend to Alvin Curran and Canti Illuminati (seen by Scelsi weeks before his death) is a sort of hommage to the old master.

Pat Conte/Andalusian (Rom) guitarist (from a photo c. 1900)

Now Pat Conte, the American multi string-instrument/guitar player, I did paint before, twice, but not as a musician but as a collector of old 78 records. This year Pat Conte returns as collector, and originator of the series The Secret Museum of Mankind, with a 78 called Vlach Longassi, from 1929 of the Andalusian Gypsy guitarist Oudi Jorghi. The track is included on the latest release in the Secret Museum series: Guitars, Vol. 1: Prologue to Modern Styles. I was delighted to find out that the Secret Museum was alive again after silence of more than a decade. I bought the record and a second tune also is listed in this year's 100. Fiesta Mora en Tanger by the, at the time, famous string quartet Cuarteto Aguilar. They were famous enough that there's pictures of them on line. I painted all three of the brothers and the one sister Aguilar.

Cuarteto Aguilar

They're not all new faces I'm painting. Take Cat Power, for example, just like in all of the last twenty years she's in this year's list once again (be it towards the bottom this time.) A brand new record appeared on the market but this new one failed to make the list. Not that I don't like it, but hey, times change. The song in the list is an old one: Metal Heart appeared first on Moon Pix [1998, Matador] and then again on Juke Box. [Matador, 2008] The song is one of her classics and a continuous (as far as I can tell) presence in her live sets. These live sets, by the way, for the last 15 years or so, feature Erik Paparazzi, who also played bass on Moon Pix.

Erik Paparazzi/Cat Power

Another familiar face, who was painted numerous times over the years is Michael Hurley. Like Cat Power, I'm a longtime fan of this musician who debuted on Folkways in 1964, the year I was born. In his eighties now he is still recording and performing. The track in the Top 100 was recorded in 2016 and is called O My Stars, a song that features the Swedish folk duo My Bubba. I painted the blond one from the duo but I took me a while to figure out who was the blond one and who the brunette was. I figured it out: The blonde one is My, while the brunette is Bubba.

Michael Hurley/My Larsdotter

Alright, I'll do one more before I let you go. Unrelated to any of the five above is a track by Piaroa Indians recorded by Pierre Gaisseau in 1949 in Colombia during the Orinoco-Amazon expedition of 1948/50. Some of the recording I've had for a long time on an album called The Columbia World Library of Folk & Primitive Music, Volume 9: Venezuela, but did find the original release Musique Primitive Indienne that not only has longer versions of some on the Columbia LP, but also uses a different set of titles. Bark Music of the Piaroa has been in the Top 100 several times but this time it listens to Rituel Saisonnier & D'initiation : Musique De Nuit (1). Gaisseau was part of the famous Ogooue-Congo expedition of 1946, who were the first to record the Pygmy people of the rain forests of Central Africa. As important as that expedition was, Gaisseau is even more famous for the film Sky Above and Mud Beneath, filmed in 1959 in previously unexplored areas of Papua New Guinea. The film had an enormous impact on the "Western mind."

Pierre Gaisseau/Piaroa bark horn player

 

Michael Hurley

Michael Hurley
11" x 8.5", 2013
watercolor, pencil

Michael Hurley hasn't gotten any younger since I met him in 2008, but then: neither have I. He released his first record in 1964, the year I was born. He released a whole score of consequent recordings, mostly hard to find, minor (his own often) label, small edition issues. I have a handful on CD, LP, and cassette. Top 100 2012 #54 is Knockando from the CD Ancestral Swamp. Released in 2007 on Gnomonsong Recordings, it's one of those self published discs. He has his own publishing company too: Snocko Music. I don't think anyone else publishes for Snocko, or records for Gnomonsong than Mr. Hurley himself. As with most of Hurley's record, it features his own artwork on the cover. As a bonus there's a cartoon inside. The hero of the story (I guess you call him Snocko, Hurley's alter ego) sleepwalks into a bar. I doesn't keep him from drinking though. He wakes up and then gets back into his patrol car and falls back asleep again behind the wheel.

13 more paintings makes 100

Okay, that's all of them. I'm off to Ohio to hang all these paintings and meet you back here for the Top 100 2012!
Some info on these paintings, from left to right, top to bottom:

Anne Grimes, 12" x 12", oil on wood.
For many years the second best represented US state in the Top 100, after New York, has been Ohio. It is no different this year, and than I’m not even considering the four tunes by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was born in Columbus, as from Ohio. Not that I keep charts of where people are from, but since I brought it up, I consider Kirk a New Yorker. What’s new about Ohio this year is that there’s, beside the regular home town rockers, traditional music as well. One of my last loans as a member of the Columbus Metropolitan Library was this handsome book with a cd tucked inside of it called Stories from the Anne Grimes Collection of American Folk Music. All the stories and all the music are from Ohio and were recorded on location by Anne Grimes. A few songs she performs herself on a dulcimer but most songs are sung by older Ohioans who learned the songs from even older Ohioans. The first track on the cd (and maybe therefor also the top 100 song) is The Homestead Strike performed by Rueben Allen. The song was recorded in Zanesville in 1953.

Delia Derbyshire, 10" x 8", oil on canvas board.
The BBC launched an eight part series about the live and work of Ms. Derbyshire that I watched with great pleasure. She worked for the BBC as a composer and sound engineer throughout the sixties and into the seventies and is best known for her collaboration with Ron Grainer on the theme for the BBC series Doctor Who. To refresh one's ties with universal consciousness you should watch the Doctor Who theme on YouTube. (Play it loud for the best connection!). Pink Floyd more than just quoted from this on their classic One of These Days. While you're at it...

Malcolm Mooney, 4" x 4", oil on wood.
I’ve hardly seen any live music the past year. It’s a shame, I should go out more, but I live in a city with nothing much going on. If I were in New York I would surely see a lot more music. The last time I was in New York, almost a year ago, I saw Michael Mooney at an art opening at White Columns. One of the featured artists was Mr. Mooney himself. Sculptures. Malcolm Mooney was vocalist and one of the original members of the legendary German band Can. He now heads a band called The Tenth Planet but the performance was him assisted by just one of Tenth Planet. Earlier that day I bought a picture disc by Malcolm Mooney at the White Columns booth at the International Art Fair in Chelsea. I took it to the gallery to have him sign it. I was not the only one. A German collector, an artist too, who sells records for supplemental income brought along the complete set of Can records Mooney performs on to sign. I ended up drinking with the German dude, forgot his name, sorry...

Issa Coulibaly, 10" x 7.25", oil on wood, 2012.
There is some confusion about the identity of the Issa Coulibaly whose tape Dit Trih Issa was published by Brian Shimkovitz for Awesome Tapes from Africa. In the notes to the music, Brian Shimkovitz writes that this cassette is from Guinea. There is however another Issa Coulibaly from Mali, who lives (and performs) now in the US. The readers’ comments to the post seem to suggest that the two are the very same person. I have to say that images of Issa Coulibaly (who teaches at Brown University) don’t look a whole lot like the Issa Coulibaly on the tape. But it’s sometimes hard to tell— individuals’ appearances can change over the years. It has to be two different people though. Prof. Coulibaly is a Master Djembe Drummer while our Coulibaly plays a balafon (which is sort of  drum too, I guess).
The balafon is yet another instrument I hadn’t painted yet.

Tony Schwartz, 10" x 6.25", oil on wood, 2012
The sound recording is taken from yet another Folkways’ release, in full– Nueva York: A tape documentary of Puerto Rican New Yorkers. Conceived, recorded and edited by Tony Schwartz. The recording of the church performance here is an outtake of a section that follows and interviews the congregation on a Sunday in 1956. After his spell with Folkways Schwartz (1923-2008) went on to become a guru of the new electronic media in the early 1970s.


Lotte Lenya, 10" x 8", oil on canvas board, 2012.
My friend Sue Harshe of the band Fort Shame, and formerly with Scrawl played a concert featuring compositions by Kurt Weill. She had arranged the music for piano solo while translating some of the lyrics in English. I have quite a collection of Lotte Lenya (married to Kurt Weill, and the most important interpreter of his music) records and I decided that I would pass on the most famous of these records to Sue. It’s the one featuring on the sleeve to Bob Dylan’s masterpiece Bringing it All Back Home. One of my favorite tracks on the record is Seerauber Jenny from the Dreigroschen Oper. Not having the record anymore I recorded the original 1930 version for the top 100 tape. Nothing wrong with that either.

Asakawa Maki, 8" x 5", oil on wood, 2012.
Strange Fruit was once, a long time ago, a number one in my top 100. Billie Holiday was the singer. Nina Simone did it too, she hit the list just two years ago with that song (be it far from #1). And now it’s back, and the singer is… Asakawa Maki. Ms. Maki (1942-2010) is a blues singer, some cult hero in her native Japan. She’s done House of the Rising Sun too, as well as many other standards. But she wrote her own too, and sang it all with her trademark smoky voice. In almost all her photos on line she smokes a cigarette. In all her photos she maintains a sort of James Dean kind of cool. In the video for Strange Fruit she tries to looks like Billie Holiday and even without the gardenia she does manage to look like her a lot. Lots of the credit on Strange Fruit goes to that wonderful three minute piano intro by Yamashita Yosuke.


Miki Tanabe of Guitar Vader, 7" x 4", oil on wood, 2012.
I’ve been slacking a while on my upkeep of Japanese pop music but since following the Bodega Pop blog last month I’ve taken a crash course to get up to date. I Love I Love Love Love You by Guitar Vader but it is actually more than ten years old! Where have I been! It comes from the cd Die Happy!

Kipsigis woman in traditional dress, 20" x 10", oil on canvas, 2012.
One of three tapes that I copied from Awesome Tapes from Africa in 2011. I could not find any information about Solomon Monori or his Chemaner Band, or the cassette Chepkunyuk, not at the Awesome Tapes from Africa comment section, not on the entire web, except that they’re Kipsigis, and the Kipsigis are my friends (see #21, Chemirocha). Together with the lady in the Chemirocha painting this young woman depicted here makes a dancing Kipsigis duo. The Kipsigis, by the way, live in Kenya.

SKVLT, 10" x 5.25", oil on wood, 2012.
This track kind of functions as a vestige of the black metal, punk, and noise recordings in previous editions of the Top 100. When I still lived in Columbus I often attended some of the many noise concerts in town. SKVLT is from Massachusets and was brought to my attention by Ryan J. from Columbus through his blog Friends and Wieners. He posted this song after a concert SKVLT did in Columbus.


Image from Kroncong: Early Indonesian Pop Music, 10" x 8", oil on canvas board, 2012.
The last post ever published by the beloved Holy Warbles site was an item on the cd Kroncong: Early Indonesian Pop Music, Vol. 1. After Holy Warbles went down their friends at Ghost Capital picked up where they had left it, and the lady in the painting came along with. I assume they found her inside the booklet of the cd. I don’t know if it’s one of the singers on the cd or just any woman. Who knows, it may even be an image of Ismanto, the singer in my top 100 list.

Oliver Lake, 11.5" x 8.25", oil on wood, 2012.
After After Jeremiah’s Wed (#10), A Little Tom’s a Dangerous Thing is the second track from that curious record by Children of the Sun called Ofamfa. Children of the Sun was a BAG (Black Artists Group) project out of St. Louis, MO. Other notorieties (Joseph Bowie for example) are affiliated with BAG but Oliver Lake is the only well known musician on the Ofamfa record.

Michael Hurley, 4" x 4", oil on wood, 2012.
The customary Michael Hurley song this year is the closing track of the cd Ancestral Swamp. Hurley (b. 1941, Bucks County, PA) is a singer songwriter on the fringes of the music industry. His first record was First Songs recorded on the same reel to reel equipment that recorded Leadbelly’s last sessions by Moses Asch for Folkways Records. I saw and met Michael Hurley during a music festival in Nelsonville, Ohio.

Hungary

Michael Hurley
10" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010

There's only a handful of dreams in one's life of which the memory stays with you forever . One of those dreams for me occurred more than twenty years ago. In the dream my father, on a train in Hungary, morphed into me. The dream was given with so much detail that I ended up researching those details' (political) history. Little did I find, even a coin, of which I could read its inscription, didn't give any real context. At the time I believed it was a reincarnation dream,  but now I don't believe in that anymore. A little later, during a few months when I had the ambition to become a singer songwriter, I wrote a song about that dream called Hungary. It was recorded on the roof of the building I was living in at the time with the sounds of the city in the background. God knows what happened to the tape. My friend Oebele, who recorded it, may have it, I don't know. It was quite a pathetic song (in retrospect) so it's probably a good thing it's lost (I will never attempt a do-over). Apart from the dream I have very little affinity with Hungary or Hungarians. I have one friend, Bela Koe-Krompecher, an American with Hungarian roots, who, as fate will have it, married a Dutch woman, (Merijn van der Heijden, who is one of the few people around my home town of Columbus I can talk Dutch to -and still be understood). The Top 100 also has very little affinity with the country; once a Hungarian Gypsy combo led by Pali Gesztros had a song in it and Bela Bartok has been in the list a few times but that's all I recall.  Stat maniac as I am, I noticed this very blog spot hasn't had one single hit out of Hungary yet. This of course needs to change. So I go to the library, go to the world section, go to European section, go to the letter H (split only with Herzegovina), pull out the cd Hongrie: Musiques Populaires, and it's awesome! This year's Top 100 will have music from Hungary! Here's my top 10 from the cd:

1. Mihaly Barsoni and Rokus Papp - Tiszaujfalui tekeromuzika
2. Imre Jankovics - Harnas tancdal
3. Zither Band of Sandorfalva - Kek szivarvany koszoruzza az eget
4. Andras Szim - Bura termett ido
5. Sandor Czako's wife - Szoloorzo dalok
6. Imre Jankovics - Rab vagyok, rab vagyok
7. Erno Kukucska - Aki dudas akar lenni
8. Menyhert Vegh's wife - Harom kivandorlo dal
9. Pal Tendl - Regi dunantuli lakodalmas csardas
10. Mrs. Istvan Nagy - Ne futyoressz, ne csicseressz

Now you're asking: what has the painting of Michael Hurley to do with all this? The answer: I don't have Mihaly Barsoni (the first from the cd to enter the list) painted yet (I probably won't be able to find his picture anywhay), and Michael Hurley's is the newest I finished (while playing the Hongarie cd over and over again). Michael Hurley was in the Top 100 2009 three times, I wrote a lot about him, I met him, and did hang out a with him a little. The real link though is that both Michael Hurley and Hungary are both filed alphabetically under HU: they are next to each other in my archive. My pathetic little song had a refrain that went hu-hu-hu-hu.
Lastly here I want to affirm to my Polish friends (more than 20 visits to this site from that country) that I'm not forgetting about their country. I'm also looking into the first Polish Top 100 entry in ten years (which was an anonymous 'kobza' player'). With Poland I have a little more more affinity than with Hungary as I have met several Poles (one I was French kissing about the same time I had that Hungary dream, I forgot her name –it was a difficult name to spell let alone pronounce). In my record collection I have way more Polish records than Hungarian ones, lots of polka of course, but the first Polish record I ever got was by the singer Ursula Sipinska, a beautiful blonde who's best song on the record is a Polish rendition of Bob Dylan's Be My Baby Tonight.