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

Trois jeux de gorge

Nellie Echalook and Rebecca Natialuk
11 x 14 inches, mixed media on paper, 2020

As long as the stay-at-home order stays in place, I'll keep doing these meticulous drawings for the Top 100 2020. I'll go by my preliminary list starting at no. 1 which I did last week. This is then the no. 3 thus far; a recording made by Nicole Beaudry at Cape Corset, Baffin Land in 1974. The recording is the first track from the CD Canada: Chants et Jeux des Inuit [Musiques & Musiciens du Monde, Unesco Collection, 1991; first appeared as an LP in 1976]. The track is labeled Trois Katajjait de la Terre du Baffin and alternatively Trois Jeux de Gorge, Katajjaq. The one track has three recordings made on different occasions by four singers (each recording is a duet, as Katajjait are typically performed by two singers.) The performers are: Elijah Pudloo Mageeta, Quanak Martha Meekeega; Napache Samaejuk Pootoogook, and Napache Etidloie Toonoo. I have not been able to find any photographs of any of the performers on the CD but was delighted to find an image of two performers who in a previous year were listed, Nellie Echalook and Rebecca Natialuk. I did not have this image available to me when I made a painting illustrating their katajjaq. At this point there are already ten different katajjait listed in my top 100 list, several from the CD mentioned above.