Numbers

Tuurnagaaluk (6009) and Eunice Kunuk Arreak (6010)

Number 87 of the Top 100 2020 is track from the CD Canada: Inuit Games and Songs on the UNESCO label. The track is labelled Two Katajjait and it, as the title implies, consists of two recordings of a katajjaq, the Inuit style of throat singing in the form of a game. Both recordings are short and are from two different locations with different singers, recorded by different musicologists in the mid-1970s. The first one, recorded by Nicole Beaudy, features Elijah Pudloo Mageeta and Teemegeak Pitaulassie. This was recorded at Cape Dorset. The second one was recorded by Denise Harvey and is a duet by Maggie Grey and Jessie Tomassie at Payne Bay. There have been so many recordings of katajjait in the Top 100 and so few of the singers have been photographed for the albums (or at all on-line for that matter) that I have been forced in being creative when it comes to selecting individuals to illustrate the songs. For this one I stumbled on a very interesting article from the Library Archives Canada Blog titled Inuit: Disc Numbers and Surname Project that chars the history of attempts by the Canadian government to maintain a inventory of the Inuit people. I had never heard that Inuits were given numbers that then were printed on a small plaque (disc) that they had to carry with them at all times. The practice was abandoned in the 1970s. The images I drew in this work are from two photos that were taken directly after one another and did appear in that article. 

While working on the Inuit drawing I also worked on a painting for the Top 100 2021 simultaneously (as I have been doing the past months). Depicted are the Swiss/French photographer Barbara Brandli and one of her subjects who appeared on the cover of the album Music of the Venezuelan Yekuana Indians. [Folkways, 1975] Brandli (1932-2011) is a world renown photographer who, after a successful career as a photographer of the Parisian society, went on to live in Venezuela. She is best known for her work with the Yanomami Indians. The song illustrated is called Edanaka hani amöde and makes the list for the third successive year.

Barbara Brandli and a Yekuana Indian 

Properly Identifying the Music for the Top 100

 

In ethnomusicology it is nothing short of best practice to record the name of the performer(s), date and and place of recording, the language of the lyrics, and to identify the appropriate cultural or ethnic group the performer(s) belong to. There's nothing new to this practice but a half a century ago the data are often sloppy, especially concerning material shared to a broader audience beyond the academic field. The Folkways Records label, founded in New York City in 1948 by Moses Asch, set out to "record and document the entire world of sound." [folkways.si.edu] Recordings on the Folkways label have been one of my main sources for music and knowledge of music history for many years. After Moses Asch's death the Folkways collection was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institute in 1987. The Smithsonian honored Asch's wish for the availability of all titles at all times. My own record collection contains many Folkways discs and my collection of songs in digital format bought from the Smithsonian Folkways website (where all titles are available) is rapidly growing. I've come to depend on the information provided by this website to correctly identify the recordings I'm interested in. I've come across several instances now when the provided information isn't all that accurate, and I've learned that anthologies and compilations on the Folkways label are not a reliable source for information. An error on Anthology of Central and South American Indian Music for example, caused me to misidentify a certain song in the Top 100 2020. I'm leaving the Top 100 2020 list intact, including errata, but I change data in my archive when I uncover a mistake. Number 73 from the 2020 list comes from that Indian Music Anthology and is called Yekuana Fertility Chant, a song, according to the liner notes, about the yucca planting ceremony of the Yekuana. The materials on anthologies are often abbreviated from the original record and often a different, more generic, title is used. The fertility song is referenced by number FE 4104 which is the identifying number for the album Music of the Venezuelan Yekuana Indians. That record has indeed a number of songs that involve a (yucca) fertility ceremony. None however match the mp3 file I purchased at the Smithsonian Folkways website. I finally have identified the music as one several Social Dance Songs that appear of the record Music of the Jivaro of Ecuador. Another one of those Dance Songs appears higher up the same Top 100. I was revisiting the Jivaro record in preparation to paint the Shuar Ujaj song by a chorus of women for the Top 100 2021, which is identical to the Social Dance Dance Song by the Jivaro in the Top 100 2020. I learned from the French, very well documented Voices of the World 3cd-set, that the source of that recording is actually a French disc called "Jivaro" rather than the slightly younger Folkways disc. I learned the song was recorded by Philippe Luzuy in 1956. The Smithsonian Folkways website does not credit Luzuy but rather Michael J. Harner. Upon carefully reading the liner notes for the Folkways album  that were written by Harner it turns out he does not actually take credit for the recording, just for the writing and the photographs, also from 1956. I've gotten myself into a big tangled mess of ethnomusicology data that do not match. It seems trivial to untangle this mess, but to me it's essential to the concept of the juxtaposition of recorder and recorded for the 2021 series. I could not find a photograph of the performance that was recorded in 1956 and neither could I find an image of Luzuy. I've painted Harner before and used pretty much every image from the Folkways record in earlier paintings. The one who recorded the song that is now now in the top 100 for the third consecutive year, was not Harner anyways but Luzuy. I chose to use the cover for Luzuy's "Jivaro: Indiens Shuar, Cayapa, Otavalo" (the original source of the recording) for the painting that you see above. The cover photograph was taken by Pierre Allard. As a substitute for not having an image of Luzuy, I decided to use the cover of the book Faces of Bronze (Visages de Bronze) by Luzuy that appeared in 1960 and is pretty much the only thing that can be found on line about Philippe Luzuy. The photograph again was taken by Pierre Allard who is listed as co-author for the book. The Shuar, by the way, is the more specific name currently used for the Jivaro peoples of Ecuador. For the 2020 illustration of the wrongly labelled Yekuana Fertility Chant that you see below, I used a photograph by Theodor Koch-Grünberg from 1912. A historic recording of a Yekuana shaman by Koch-Grünberg was used by Walter Coppens to include in his Music of the Venezuelan Yekuana Indians. The spelling for Yekuana has now morphed into Ye'kwana.

Yekuana Revisited

Medicine Woman of the Yekuana People (from Los juegos de la Yekuana)

Tawaniwechi is a second track from Music of the Venezuelan Yekuanan Indians [Folkways, 1975] in this year's list. This particular recording of a Yekuana shaman, the last on the record, was not recorded by neither musicologist listed in the credits on the record, but is rather a historic recording from 1912 by the German anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg. Walter Coppens, Barbara Brandli, and Jean Francois Nothomb, who recorded all other music on the collection decided to include the old wax cylinder recording for historical context. In the recording made in Nauakuna in the South of Venezuela, a shaman is heard using the voice of the spirit Tawani. Even though Tawani is a defunct spirit, the voice of Tawani, invoked in this recording, sounds much like it did one hundred years later as can be witnessed in the film Los juegos de los Yekuana by Enrique Blein. The image above is based on a still from the film.

The Ye'kuana

Ye'kuana ceremonial dance
14 x 11 inches, stancil and pencils on paper, 2020

Number four here from the top 100 2020 series that I now should nickname as the COVID-19 series. The song illustrated is called Edanaka hani amöde but is the very same as the Yucca Fertility Chant in last year's 100. The difference is made by the collection it is featured on. Whereas last year's came from a compilation record of South American indigenous music, this one comes from a record dedicated specifically to the Yekuana of Venezuela [Music of the Venezuelan Yekuanan Indians] and was like the Anthology released on Folkways (1974). I painted a Ye'kuana Indian in August on 2019 and discussed the song briefly (as brief as the liner notes) accompanied by a longer political rant. Read about the song and rant right here. 

I used three different stencils in making this work on paper. It situates itself between a print and a unique work. There is no edition or anything but I would be able to reproduce this drawing to a great degree of similarity while it still would be a unique work. I'm tempted now to compile the new series using a similar technique. It would allow me to, if I stick with it, to reproduce the whole series. I would be able to offer a complete set of 100 unique works for a relatively low prize.

Music of Indigenous Peoples in South America

Ye'kuana (Makiritare) Indian, Venezuela
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

 

Mataco (Michí) Indian, Argentina
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

The last several top 100 years have been framed by existential questioning. Why do I like what I like? Is one music better than another? Questions like these are why the Top 100 exists, they're integral to a system of ranking and filing. Last year's Top 100 was positioned around one central issue: The origins of music. Where does it come from? What, if any, is its function? The search for the origin really started when, in the 1980s, I discovered 1930s original blues songs that were popularly covered by some of my favorite bands then like Cream and Led Zeppelin. This was the onset of the Top 100 project. (I talk more about this during an interview on WGCU, Three Song Stories.)

The quest for the origins of music, subject of a series of musings on this site, has lead me to listen to, and read about, recordings from the field of ethnomusicology. I have been seeking out recordings and information on the music of those cultures that have lived in relative isolation from the influence of civilizations, the industrial world. More half of the 100 songs in the 2018/2019 list belong to this category. Naturally  I have become sympathetic to the plight and rights of such cultures. I first started to have an interest (in the political issue) in the late 1990s. This was a relatively positive time in which many governments allotted land and rights to the indigenous people living within their borders. Currently, however, the political trend is to revert back to colonial times.

The two paintings shown here are sort of a pair even though the origin of the two individuals are thousands of miles apart. The first one a Ye'kuana woman from Venezuela, below a Mataco Indian from Northern Argentina. Both images are based on anthropological images from the late nineteenth century. The Ye'kuana woman illustrates Yucca Fertility Song recorded by Walter Coppens and found on the album Anthology of Central & South American Indian Music (Folkways, 1975.) The song is a chant by women to stop evil spirits from affecting the yucca plant (the tree of life) recited during planting and harvesting. [W. Coppens] The Mataco Indian represents a mataco instrumental piece on a stringed instrument and is played by a shaman. (Argentina, The Indians of the Gran Chaco, Lyrichord, 1977.)

Many indigenous peoples, some still uncontacted, live in South American continent. The struggle of the South American Indians, as in the North, is well documented throughout this century and the last. The Selk'nam people, wiped out in a genocide courtesy of economic progress (gold was found on their territory,) I wrote about last year, is just one example of the devastating history of the fate of indigenous peoples after contact. While many protective laws are in place, the onslaught on territories held by indigenous peoples continues and is getting worse. Jair Bolsonaro, the latest Brazilian president, is emblemtic of these developments. He believes that indigenous people should be integrated and that way too much land is appropriated to them. He's firing scientists opposing his "manifest destiny" as Trump does to those defending Alaskan tribal societies. And the ecology again is victim.