Another odd couple

The next pairing of paintings (random again, save for the dates of execution) are those of Roberto Carlos Lange and K.R.T. Wasitodipuro, also known as K.P.H. Notoprojo, Tjokrowasito, Wasidoiningrat, among other names. Wasitodipuro was the director of the Pura Paku Alaman, court gamelan orchestra as well as the gamelan for the Radio Republik Indonesia Yogyakarta. He died in 2007 at the age of 98. The many honorary names, so reads his biography, he earned throughout a distinguished career representing gamelan all over the world. The Wasitodipuro painting represents a recording from the court gamelan made in in 1971 on the Indonesian island of Java. The track is called Ketawang: Puspawarna. Even when the Top 100 in the past featured a lot of music from Indonesia, it had never before listed its most emblematic: the gamelan orchestra. One of the singers heard in the orchestra is that of Niken Larasati, who made it into the Top 100 2002 as a solo performer. My enchantment by the music of Indonesia has little to do with my liking of Indonesian food beside maybe a general favoritism towards that country. In Holland I grew up with Indonesian food (in the US I really miss Indonesian food, especially the loempia) but not with Indonesian music (apart from the very few, very commercial, very westernized 'kronjong' records around).
 As the musical tourist that I have become, I keep hopping back and forth, between South East Asia and the east coast of the Americas, the East Indies and the West Indies, between the popular and the traditional, the old and the new, and the painting of Roberto Carlos Lange brings us right back to the here and now again: Brooklyn, New York, 2010. The portrait of Roberto Carlos Lange represents the song Dahum performed by him and his band Helado Negro. Lange was born in 1980 in South Florida of Ecuadorian parents. Back in May I posted on this blog how I met him in Cincinnati. My introduction to his music was this song Dahum that I viewed on YouTube prior to seeing him perform.

Roberto Carlos Lange                                 K.R.T. Wasitodipuro
8" x 5.5"                                                                12.75" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010                                             oil on wood, 2010

Roberto Carlos Lange

Roberto Carlos Lange
20" x 17.75"
oil on wood, 2010

In keeping up painting for the Top 100, I worked all last week on the Roberto Carlos Lange painting whose track Amazonian Pacific currently resides at #3. The image is a still from a video my wife made during the sound-check for a performance at Country Club in Cincinnati. We met Roberto there and talked for a while. A lovely time indeed. I wanted to buy one of his records for sale there and asked him which one to get. "What are you looking for", he asked. I said "I liked the rawness of a Helado Negro (one of his bands) tune I saw on a video". He recommended the Intonations LP that contains this Amazonian Pacific. I like it a lot but not because of any rawness on it. His music is not about rawness but I never asked him what it would be about instead. A question like that I find a little rude. People hardly ever ask me that question but my paintings are obvious true representations of musicians. When they do ask I have sort of a standard answer that always involves the words fan, archive, and obsession. I then explain that the concept works because I didn't think it up: It started as a boy's hobby and it evolved organically over 28 years without ever changing the main concept. I'm sure Roberto also would have a standard paragraph to answer the question. His music is pretty abstract and thus harder to pin down. What do I think his music is about? Well, first of all about atmosphere in a formal sense. Then I think it is about spiritual concepts concerning community, humanity (love and such) in a broader sense and, in an even broader sense; cosmology. That's all good and well but what really matters, on a night like that Saturday in Cincinnati, is how the keyboard stand is set up on stage. If you look at the painting the keyboard is a bit high: he would not have been able to comfortably perform his music this way. I just noticed it, and once you see it you see nothing but. So I have to fix it in the painting. A weeks worth of painting (not precisely 40 hours; I have a job so it's 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there). Two hours on Sunday, a half hour Tuesday, another half hour Wednesday, a full hour on Saturday. And now, the next Sunday, it's done but then I notice that big mistake. Thank God it's a three day weekend.