'Are'are and Mitsogo

Hugo Zemp/Sisiwa, oil on canvas, 11x14 inches.

 

Ya Mwei masks/Pierre Sallee, 11x14 inches, ink on paper

The otherworldly sounds heard on Voice of the Genie Ya Mwei (mother of the inundations) come from two performers who ingested irritant leaves causing a swelling of the throat. While performing the secret male-only rite they also wear Ya Mwei costumes establishing a total transformation from man to spirit. Pierre Sallee recorded the sounds of a night of rituals by the Mitsogo people of Gabon in 1968. 

Top: Aamamata: Lament by Oko'ohimana sung by Sisiwa and Nonohanapata. Outake from the film 'Are'are recorded in Malaita, Solomon Islands in 1974 and 1975 by Hugo Zemp. For the film Hugo Zemp made a special effort to employ Sisiwa who was the only singer who knew the old lullabies and funeral lamentations. Zemp had made sound recordings of Sisiwa when he visited the Solomon Islands in 1969 to capture the music of the 'Are'are for the Ocora record label.

'Are'are

Nonohanapata (l.) and Sisiwa (r.)
11 x 14 inches, various materials on paper, 2020

Last year I had chosen an photo taken by Hugo Zemp to illustrate the song Koleo, from the album Iles Salomon: Musique de Guadalcanal (Ocora/Radio France, 1970.) The photo was not taken in Guadalcanal but instead on the neighboring island Malaita, both belonging to the Solomon Islands in Melanesia. The image is a still from the documentary Musique 'Are'are (Hugo Zemp, Musee de l'Homme, 1993.) The section of the film the image appears in is during a performance of "aamamata," a funerary duet style song, a lament. The "koleo" of Guadalcanal belongs to the same tradition but is of a different group, island, and language. Koleo reappears in this year's top 100 and I was going to use the same image to start another painting. Starting another painting usually requires—and this is part of the longevity of the whole top 100 project—revisiting the music, additional research, and the selection of an image. During the research I found I was able to view the full documentary (2.5 hours) on line, and I settled in for the marathon. As a result many of the performers in the film ended up in a top 10 and several may make it into the final list of 100 songs for 2020. Nonohanapata and Sisiwa could very well be one of those in which case the image produced for Koleo should then shift to the funeral lament "aamamata" (called Lament by Mahasiwa.) 

The "Are'are, at the time of shooting the film in 1970s, were Christians, and the traditional music hardly performed any more. Age old traditions are vanishing throughout the world. Notable in the film by Zemp is that in the panflute ensembles he recorded some musicians were wearing blue jeans and t-shirts while others were stark naked.