A song about rice

Young Dyak women grind rice using a
 traditional technique
(after a photograph by Harrison W. Smith
 for National Geographic)
12" x 12", oil on luan, 2012

In 1951 and 1952 UNESCO and UNO recorded indigenous music of the various Dyak (or Dayak) people on the Island of Borneo (now Kalamantan) in Indonesia. A selection of these recordings can be found on The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax, Vol. VII: Indonesia, Edited by Dr. Jaap Kunst, Indisch Museum, Amsterdam. A long title indeed, but inside the titles are short and descriptive. You can read more about the record when, a while back, I painted Roro natives from Papua New Guinea. The second song from the album is a pretty one labeled Rice Song. "Dyak women sing this appeal to the spirit of the mountains to send a good harvest." It could have been a lot worse; the song after the rice song is a headhunter's dance. The practice of cannibalism had been extinct in Borneo for a good while already. Volume five of the Columbia World Library series overlap volume seven a bit, it deals with Australia and New Guinea. The record features a recording of still practicing cannibals. Alan Lomax (who does the final edit on the liner notes in the series) states in a matter of fact manner: "(...T)he warriors burst into a song. Afterwards the bodies of the dead men are cut into pieces, cooked on hot stones, and eaten." I wonder if they serve rice with it.

The Super Djata Band

Zani Diabaté
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

I found Bimoko Magnin, a song from the LP The Super Djata Band de Bamako vol. 2 (1983) on ghostcapital, a blog that I follow. The LP was produced in Burkino Faso but the group is from Mali. Bimoko Magnin is the second song that came to the Top 100 courtesy of ghostcapital, and also the second African Pop gem from them in the list. Guitar player Zani Diabaté was the driving force behind the Super Djata Band, who were active throughout the 1980s.  He had been playing in various groups in Mali since1963 before forming the Super Djata Band in 1974 together with Maré Sanogo. Diabaté lived most of life near Bamako in Mali but died in Paris in 2011. 

Like the previous two paintings this week, this one of him is again done on top of a landscape depicting my back yard featuring a banana plant. Despite my best intentions the banana plant is again being obscured by the portrait.

Flor Sinqueña

Flor Sinqueña
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Aah...the banana plant is still there, part of the floral design of Flor's transparent Peruvian dress. I can't get enough of playing those Peruvian records I got this year and the one by "La voz filamonica del Peru" is my favorite from that modest collection. The record situates itself to the left of the western orchestrated, beautiful and smooth music of a singer like Maria Jesus Vazquez, but well right of the raw huaylas by a typical Huanca orchestra. The orchestra here has the characteristics of the traditional huayno orchestras of Central Peru and other Andean regions. Flor's voice is pretty straight forward without many frills, no emotive extroversion, but solid and sober. The language is Spanish (as opposed to Quechua). Most of the tracks on that record of hers, El Peru con Flor (1989), are in the huaynos style (a dance), but a few tunantadas are also included. A slower tunantada Mi Ultimo Aviso is my favorite track on the album. I'm in the process of learning Spanish but I'm not nearly far enough to understand Spanish language web sites (I can barely count to twenty) so haven't been able to find too much information on the singer Flor Sinqueña. Translated sites don't go much beyond calling her "Flower" Sinqueña. I once saw a film about rocker Neil Young on German TV; they translated the name Johnny Rotten in the song lyrics of Hey Hey My My as Johnny Verdorben. 

The above text is edited from an article titled El Peru Con Flor that I wrote last June for Musical Thrift Store Treasures. Following the link you can listen to Mi Ultimo Aviso as well as to the huayno song Vas a Llorar, both from El Peru Con Flor.

The Dervish

Marika Papagika
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Rebetika (or rembetika) star Marika Papagika (1890-1943) is pictured against a backdrop of my back yard. I'm getting better at these back yard paintings and sometimes it's difficult to 'sacrifice' a particular good one. I do not pre-superimpose the musician, meaning that when I'm painting the backyard, I do it as if it were to be a painting that could stand on itself. Often the most interesting part, the focal moment, happens close to the center of a painting, and it is precisely these moments that are being covered up by the superimposed portrait. The background to the Marika Papagika painting once featured—for the first time—my finally mature banana plant, and it was my intention to paint Papagika's portrait transparent so the banana plant would shine through. I had even flipped the original photo I based the painting on, horizontally so that her facial features would not be right in front of the banana but her hair would. Needless to say it didn't quite work out that way. (There's only a slight trace of the banana leaves left). It's because I'm impatient; I envision the painting a certain way and I get restless, wanting it to be that certain way before I could technically accomplish it (meaning to let the paint dry before retouching it). That impatience also causes that here, on this spot on line, you will hardly ever find an image of a painting exactly the way it exists as a finished painting. Too soon I want to share it and write about it. You can bet your life that this Marika Papagika painting will be back in the studio tomorrow for some final adjustments and touch ups.

Marika Papagika? Yes, she's in this years Top 100 because I consider her song Dervisis as one of the price songs from the 2009 record set Mortika: Recordings from a Greek Underground from the cult-status like Mississippi label, a record I bought for full price, at a real record store (which doesn't happen too often). The Greek song was recorded in 1927, in New York City, and its topic is a brawl, hashish and wine, in a rather profane take on the meaning of the word "Dervish". A topic mind you, appropriate for the Mississippi label, and right up the alley of their audience (of which I'm one).

Sviatoslav Richter

Sviatoslav Richter
12" x 12"
oil on masonite, 2012

#2 in the 100 Greatest Recordings Ever series is the Piano Quintet in F-minor by composer César Franck as performed by pianist Sviatoslav Richter together with the Bolshoi String Quartet. For many years I lamented not being able to find this recording anywhere. A good friend of mine had this wonderful record and it became my number 1 in the Top 100 of 1985. For the longest time I thought of this as the best piece of music ever. I lost contact with that friend and the record at the same time. I hadn't seen the record in 20 years until, just a few weeks ago, it was right there, in a second hand curiosity store in downtown Fort Myers. I had filled one of the major gaps in my record collection. And it was not the only record of Sviatoslav Richter, there were three all from a series dedicated to him. Besides the Piano Quintet, there was Rachmaniov's Pianoconcert No. 2, as well as the Concerto No. 5 by Camille Saint-Saëns. I bought all three of them. I had never payed a whole of attention to individual performers or certain directors or orchestras (besides one or two opera singers) but this has now changed: I am officially a fan of Sviatoslav Richter. The newest edition may feature all three of the newly purchased Richter record and the Concerto No. 5 is already a certainty. Russian born Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter (1915-1997) is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century and I now know why. For the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) it is the first ever appearance in the 30 years of the Top 100.

Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók
12" x 12"
oil on masonite, 2012

Classical music has been a bit underrepresented in the Top 100 considering the vast amount of such records in my collection and the availability of cheap items. There are several genres, or topics that I collect within the broad field that is classical music. One of the topics that I always grab whenever I see one is that of the composer playing his (her's is a bit rare outside of contemporary classical music) own music. Recently I was delighted to find not one, but two records with the music of one of my all time favorite composers, Béla Bartók (1881-1945) at a local 2nd hand store. Bartók plays his own piano music on these. The two Bartók records, together with a third one, were neatly bound into an album by the previous owner. I love those personal touches added by music enthusiasts of yore. Bartók Plays Bartók is an album of short solo piano pieces, one is a piano adaption of a work written for strings, another is a piece for two pianos. The second piano is played by his wife Ditta Pasztóry Bartók. Ditta Bartók has even a more prominent presence on the second album, which is a performance of the piece Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Béla Bartók is heard on piano, Ditta plays the second piano while Harry Baker and Edward Rubzan are the percussionists. The album is then completed with  some short piano solos performed by Béla Bartók. The past several Top 100 years have included many recordings made by Bartók in his occupation as ethnomusicologist, these were field recordings of traditional music made in Romania and Hungary in the 1930s and before. It has been more than 20 years since I've welcomed a Bartók as composer in the Top 100, from before the time I painted all the musicians. Here then is the first time I painted a portrait of Béla Bartók.

Keening

Kitty Gallagher
12" x 12"
oil on masonite, 2012

A banshee is a fairy figure of Irish lore. Her appearance is an omen and she wails when someone is about to die. That wail, according to legend, is a high pitched ululating voice that would scare anyone to death. Keening, as wailing is called in Ireland, is closely related to the banshee. Keening is the practice of lamentation in song at Irish funerals. The keener is often a close relative of the deceased but sometimes she is a well known keener. The best keeners were in high demand. Keening comes from the Irish word “caoin” meaning “to weep” or “to wail” at a funeral. The practice is officially extinct.

It must have been 1995, when I heard in a museum exhibit a sound recording of a banshee. But a banshee is a fairy which makes it very improbable that the recording I heard was actually that of a banshee. Yet it was the most beautiful and haunting recording of a female voice I had ever heard. I still have, to this day, not found out what it was precisely that I heard that one day in 1995. My memory tells me it was at the Columbus Museum of Art. I contacted the Museum but they could not tell me what it was. They didn’t know what I was talking about. If it wasn’t there I would not know where else it was I heard it, or where to inquire. But I did hear it—I’m not crazy—it was not something my mind had made up by dreaming or otherwise. It became a quest to find it, the holy grail of my music collection, a song so beautiful it would render all other music meaningless or at least pale in comparison. Irish friends well versed in Irish lore could not lead me to it, scientific research through the music cognition program at the Ohio State University, lead me to many wonderful places but not to the banshee. Many things I’ve found on my quest for that elusive recording. Keyword searches in many search engines yielded a lot wonderful music. I searched for keywords like keening, wailing, laments, mourning, and of course banshee, and I’ve gathered many examples of weep-singing, a tradition linked to the wake of a deceased one, often a child. A wake for a dead child is a festive ritual observed in many parts of the globe. The rituals are disappearing, keening is officially extinct, and sound recordings of such rites are sparse. It is thanks to those tireless ethnomusicologists in the early and middle of the 20th Century, that made it their life’s work to capture the traditions in music that were dying out, that there are any at all. Since 1995 I have been collecting the sounds of the wakes, the mourning songs, and other examples of weep-singing. And even with the vast amount of ethnographical music found on the web, my collection of weeping songs is growing only very slowly, and the recording of the banshee may remain forever elusive. But as they say: it is not the destination that matters, it is the journey.

This is my introduction to a compilation of weeping songs from my collection. It will be released on CD in a limited edition of only 25, intended as Christmas presents to close friends. The CD leads the listener through the Cossacks of the Caucasus, to the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Ireland of course, and many other locations. I wanted to compile such a CD for a long time but it was lacking a good keening song. That, my dear friends, I have now found:

Keening Song sung by Kitty Gallagher is only a recent addition to my collection of wailing songs. I could not have completed this compilation without a keening song from Ireland, the land that started my interest in the genre but from where I had not yet found a sound recording. True, it may not be precisely that elusive recording I once heard at the Columbus Museum of Art but it comes closer than any of the other tracks featured in this collection. Keening Song is featured on the album Traditional Songs of Ireland with recordings made between 1952 and 1961.

⚡un

Cat Power
12" x 12"
oil on masonite, 2012

 Silent Machine is the second Cat Power tune to enter into this year's 100. I saw Cat Power perform a few weeks ago in Miami, the first concert of her new ⚡un tour. It was good, but the beer way too expensive. It was good to hear the several parts of the ⚡un songs performed by the musicians in the band (as opposed to overdubbing and electronics on the CD. Silent Machine was the only song in the concert in which Cat Power played the guitar. The song is also the only that's not new. I known it as She Loves You So Hard for many years. This will be the last post before the opening reception of 100 Top 100 paintings at Pinecrest Gardens Gallery on November 2nd, from 6 to 8 in Miami. This painting of Cat Power will just be dry in time to be included. Hope to see you there. Southwest 57th Ave and 111th. (Beer is free while supplies last.)

Sugaring Season

Adaption of Sugaring Season
album cover, Beth Orton
12" x 12", oil on board, 2012

Beth Orton's brand new Sugaring Season is out and it's really great. I bought the 12" vinyl version that does the beautiful photograph on the cover more right than does the 12 cm CD. I don't typically use such an iconic image as a record sleeve, as a source to draw from but this time I wanted to make an exception. I don't recall ever painting on a 12" x 12" surface but it surely makes sense as it mimics the format of the LP.  Thus here is an adaption of the LP cover of Sugaring Season, same size, sans the title and name, but with my trademark backyard background. And the portrait, as always, is done freehand without any mechanical devices. The more realistic and true to the source material the painting is, the more important this issue is to me because all the character of the portrait in the painting hinges on small subtleties and distortions from the photographic original. In my self taught course psychology 101 I learned that involuntary distortions in reproduction tell a lot about some unconscious hidden aspects of one's psyche. So I'll add more and more material to be analyzed if someday anyone out there would have an interest. (Which most likely will be my psychiatrist after I've yet completed another thousand more of such paintings.) For the first couple of the next thousand paintings I'll stick to the 12 inch square format in order to produce some more record sleeve adaptations. The next Beth Orton song after the already discussed Something More Beautiful in the Top 100 2012 from Sugaring Season is the opening song Magpie. The song has a reference to a crow in it, which is precisely the animal I attributed to Beth Orton when, two years ago, I asked myself the question: "If Beth Orton would be asked what kind of animal she'd be, what would she answer?"

The Roro

Roro, South Coast, Papua
24" x 14", oil on canvas, 2012

There has been a disproportionate amount of popular music in the Top 100 2012 list that doesn't really reflect all the music I have been playing on my turntable. Academic style field recordings from all over the world has been and continues to be the main focus of my record collection and what I choose to play at home as well. Within these records I like the older ones the best, recorded and collected at a time when there still was little influence of the Western popular music styles onto the traditional music of a certain ethnic group somewhere on this planet. A whole bunch of academic  ethnomusicologists, as well as hobbyists with high ideals, traveled around the world in the middle and later parts of the 20th Century, to record and catalog the music they thought of as a fast disappearing local cultural identity. One of the most prominent collectors out there was Alan Lomax, who spent his life collecting and recording the folk music of the most remote regions of the world. He started documenting the various folk styles of the most remote areas of the US but soon broadened his scope to the whole world. His ambition was to have a giant library that collected all the traditional musics from around the world. He was part of the Library of Congress that focused mainly on the music of the US including all of the various immigrant group's traditional music identities, and founded the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. All the music had to be available to any and every person interested. The scope of that library was broad and ambitious but only 18 volumes were ever compiled by the Columbia label. All 18 of these are sought after and very hard to come by. I just scored my second in a record store in Miami: The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Collected and Edited by Alan Lomax – Indonesia, Edited by Dr. Jaap Kunst, Indisch Museum, Amsterdam is the full identifying title of the record in front of me. The record is divided into four geographical sections: New Guinea, Moluccas, Borneo, and Bali. New Guinea is subdivided into Eastern New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea) and Western New Guinea (now part of the Republic of Indonesia). The first song from this album to enter into the Top 100 is called Atestsua-Aroba and is from the Papua part of New Guinea, it's a song by Roro natives, who live scattered in small villages along the South Coast and on Yule Island. The three individuals in the painting (against a backdrop of once again my back yard) are adapted from a photograph included in the record album. The song was recorded by Dr. Kunst and the photograph is presumably his as well.

Top 100 Exhibition at Pincrest Gardens in Miami

John Coltrane and Miles Davis
13.25" x 10", oil on wood, 2008

While it's too soon to even think about the contents of the current top 100, there's big news concerning the exhibition of paintings that belong to this series. Nearly all of the 2012 paintings that are finished will be on display in November and December at Pinecrest Gardens, in Miami, Florida. The exhibition is a bit a of a 30th anniversary celebration of the Top 100. Besides the paintings from the current year there will be a large selection of last year's paintings on view as well as a selection of paintings from the top 100 dating back to the start of it in 1983. In total there will be exactly 100 paintings. The selected paintings can be considered the top 100 paintings from the Top 100 catalog. This time however it's not according to an objective list, but as a subjective pick from over 2,000 paintings I have made in the context of the Top 100. And... I've got to tell you... picking my favorite top 100 paintings  is the most fun project I've undertaken in along time. Going through all these boxes and boxes full of paintings gives me so much joy, and to select them in terms of visuals in stead of aural favorites gives it a whole new spin. For the first time the paintings are not an illustration of a piece of music but exist as painting. It's an art exhibition and the subject happens to be musicians. So if you happen to be in Miami in November or December be sure to come see it. The opening reception is on November 2nd in the evening and then there's an event on Sunday December 9th in the afternoon, where I will give a Gallery talk. That date, the latter, coincides with Art Basel in Miami. Well... hope to see you there. The above painting from the Top 100 2007 of John Coltrane and Miles Davis will certainly be one of the 100 displayed. At the time if functioned as an illustration for the track All Blues by Miles Davis accompanied by John Coltrane.

Hello Hallo

Hallo Dawe
24" x 12"
oil on canvas, 2012

I like strange recordings and the music on this cassette by Hallo Dawe that I found on Awesome Tapes From Africa certainly qualifies. Maybe it's not the recording that's so strange but the reproduction of it is perhaps. The playback doesn't seem quite right as it appears to be out of key and a bit too fast, maybe even more than a bit. Dawe's voice seems to have an unnatural high pitch that I really like–no matter if it's natural or mechanically (by accident) induced. There have been stranger things produced in Ethiopia. This cassette features Oromo music and that's right away all the information I have concerning this cassette, the recording, the singer, the circumstances. Trying to find out more on line proves a very confusing task. At this moment I'm not even sure the singer's name is actually Hallo Dawe as it may possibly be the title of the cassette (it sure sounds—on track 1 of side A—that the lyrics include the words Hallo Dawe) but it could be both, it certainly doesn't help that I don't know the Oromo language. Somewhere on line this recording had the year 1977 tagged to it, and that seems about right to me.