The Top 100 2022

100 Faces from the Top 100 2022, oil on canvas, 24x36" 

The above painting is still in progress. The process of it is establishing the concept for the series of a 100 paintings for the Top 100 2022. The series, like last year, will be double portraits, but the focus will not be on difference but on equality, or similarity, or familiarity. Different too will be that the 100 paintings will not follow the list by the letter. While the list is a ranking of 100 songs, the paintings will not be depending on the rankings. This will give me greater flexibility in my choices of who to paint. The one aspect of following the list I grew tired of last year was that I had to paint certain individuals over and over again. Last year I painted six portraits of Hugo Zemp for example. Even though there are already several duplicate performers in this year's list (that is not even half way compiled), the above painting has no duplicates, yet every song is represented and there are already more than 60 people portrayed (out of a list of 40 songs). The following 10 details are likely to be repeated in the series that will become The Top 100 2022.

Austin Grasmere and Brian Elliot of Cromagnon

The two members of Cromagnon were painted side by side. The song Caledonia is nothing short of spectacular. Experimental garage rock featuring a bagpipe. It has it all. I had never heard of the band but was introduced to them via the No Wave Facebook group. Their record Orgasm (later reissued as Cave Rock) was produced for the New York based ESP records. The 'E' in ESP stands for 'Esperanto'. The label was founded with the intention of releasing recording with lyrics in Esperanto.

Rundi women performing Ubuhuha

One of my favorite tracks from the treasured LP Burundi:Musique Traditionelles is back in the list this year. For earlier paintings (and written commentaries) click on this link.

Klaudia Schiff and Marlene Marder of LiLiPUT

A return after about 15 years to the list for the Swiss post-punk band LiLiPUT. This time not with their high scoring Eisiger Wind, but with the equally exciting single Split. LiLiPUT used to be called Kleenex but had to change their band's name because of the threat of legal action by the company who used Kleenex as a brand name.

Swedish music anthropologists Ake Egevad and Cajsa Lund

The record Musica Sveciae: Fornnordiska Klanger means a lot to me as I'm interested in prehistoric art and the origin of music. Professor Cajsa Lund, who produced the record, and her collaborator Äke Egevad are professionals who research bot interests and use archaeological evidence to reconstruct sounds from the prehistoric era. Two tracks from the album are listed in the top 100: the sound of a bull-roarer and a performance on the Kantflöjter (flute).

Albert Ayler and Sunny Murray

Sunny Murray is the percussionist on Spiritual Unity, an album by Albert Ayler from 1965. Gary Peacock (not depicted) is the third member of the trio. Ghosts, First Variation is the opening track that also features in my continued top 100, which records and adds points for a recording going all the way back to 1983, the year I started the Top 100.




 

Ubuhuha

Ubuhuha, Rundi Women
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

 From the liner notes by Michel Vuylsteke: "The ubuhuha (literally 'to blow') which were formerly performed by by women during wakes, have practically disappeared today." This was written in 1967 when Vuylsteke recorded these two Rundi women in Burundi. The women use their hands as an instrument, like a trumpet, "The resultant sounds vary in pitch, timbre and volume according to the position of her hands and the tension of her lips." From the LP Burundi: Musique Traditionelles on Ocora. 

Talking with my friend Jade before the Cat Power concert last Friday he mused that most of the musicians I painted would be unknown to her. I told him that I wouldn't be surprised if Cat Power would be much more familiar to these ethnomusicological recordings than one would expect. During the concert Cat Power used her hands to alter her singing voice on several occasions very much like the Rundi women, most poignantly during a cover of Bob Dylan's Hard Times in New York City (perhaps to mimic Dylan's nasal voice). One of my favorite tunes she performed that Friday was Robbin Hood from her latest Wanderer. The following drawing done during the concert then becomes the official illustration for the song in the Top 100.

Cat Power
12 x 9 inches, pencil on paper, 2019

The Origin of Music (2)

Rundi women performing "Ubuhuha"
12 x 16 inches, oil on wood, 2013

 Music

We may assume that when Homo Sapiens evolved they built shelters, made art, and made music. The oldest known instruments, flutes made of femur bones of bears with holes drilled into it, were found in caves in Europe alongside the earliest known figurines. The problem with music history is that there was no sound recording available until the end of the nineteenth century. What we know of music before sound recording is musical notation, instruments that survived, literature on music, and images of musical performances and instruments in art. The earliest known example of musical notation stems from around 2,000 BCE, written in the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia. There are scenes of musical performance depicted in the art of Ancient Egypt that give us an idea of their music. A pottery chard found in Israel containing an image of musical performance related to a wedding ceremony dates from 5,000 BCE. Vedic literature contains theory of music alongside that of acting and dance. Before sound recording  came around, music was a temporal form of art and how it sounded can’t be recaptured and remains guesswork. Music can be reconstructed from non-temporal information but this is usually not without bias. The temporality of music compared to the materiality of art makes the study of music history less objective. Another difference between art and music is that folk (secular) music has a more prominent place in music history than folk art does in art history. It also appears that traditions in music are more persistent than traditions in art. Traditional music could be compared to oral poetry. Oral traditions remain virtually unchanged throughout centuries, perhaps even millennia. Towards the end of the nineteenth century when sound recording became widely available, ethnomusicology (the study of the music of various cultures) was an uncharted field. Over the next decades musicologists went around the world to record musical traditions of the various cultures they came across. The recordings of cultures that had lived in total or relative isolation are of special interest because their music provided a glimpse into the music of a distant past. The numbers of living cultures displaying characteristics typically associated with Paleolithic or Neolithic cultures were dwindling fast in the twentieth century, making the early recordings of immeasurable value.

There’s no definite answer to the question of how music started. Various hypotheses have been forwarded and debates have been going on for more than a century. Did music start from percussive or vocal traditions? If vocal, did it arrive from language or from animal imitation, or was it an autonomous evolution? If percussive, do the rhythms stem from work or from dance, or perhaps by chance? Is the origin of music ceremonial or secular? These are some questions asked that deal with the origins of music. The answer to these questions appear to be multifaceted, hinted at by recordings that seem to reflect ancient traditions. The enigma of the origin of vocal music for example, seems to lean towards an independent development, derived neither from imitation nor speech. An almost universal characteristic of ancient vocal traditions is that of the distortion of the speaking voice. Techniques include the cupping of hands (as in the 2013 painting above), the use of trumpet like instruments (such as shells) as soundboards, or the use of falsetto by male singers. The effect of voice distortion is an enactment of otherness. Sounds are created that are outside oneself, thereby allowing communion with a different plane of consciousness. The aim of which is the contact with the sacred. Shamanistic chant recitation is often performed in falsetto. The (male) shaman assumes an identity that resides in the spiritual realm. They act in accord with what seems a universal belief that the essence of nature and the ancestral spirit, is hermaphrodite or nonsexual. As in trance ceremonies, an essential and timeless function of music is the attainment of a reality different from the mundane. Some of the older musical recordings referred to here may sound outlandish or simply weird at first, but the weirder such recordings sound, the more it seems to touch a hidden compartment in our brains. There is where the sacred is found, closer to the primal source of humanity than we will find in daily routine. Music is an escape of daily routine. All human beings should start to accept that humanity is, well...weird. To accept that we’re all weird may unburden us from the restraints society puts on us. Let’s debunk the myths of beauty, beauty is an illusion, we’re all beautiful.

A Rundi Wake

Rundi women performing "Ubuhuha"
12" x 16". oil on wood, 2013

So my friend from the Netherlands came to visit for the holidays. He brought with him, as a gift, from his own collection, a fantastic set of records. My favorite so far from the set is a volume of traditional music from Burundi recorded in 1967. I've played the whole record several times already and it contains, perhaps the biggest bonus of all, an example of a lamentation that were traditionally performed during a wake. Once upon a time the lamenting of the dead was an almost universal practice but has since disappeared. About a year ago I compiled all examples I collected of recordings of such practices on a CD that I called Keening Songs and Death Wails. I am thrilled that I can add yet another one. Ubuhuha as these lamentations are called in Burundi is maybe my favorite of them all. (From the liner notes by Michel Vuylsteke:) "The women use their lips like reeds to set in motion the volume of air contained in the cavity formed by cupping both hands against their mouths. The resultant sounds vary in pitch, timbre and volume according to the postion of their hands and the  tension of their lips."