A Mother's Lament

Sergio, harpist
(after a photo by John Schechter)
24" x 12", oil on luan, 2012

I reported a month ago I was working on a CD with examples of weep singing. I have now finished this compilation, it contains 28 tracks and has a 20 page booklet of pictures and explanatory notes. The CD won't be released anywhere but if anyone is interested in this subject or the CD, please write me a note. The texts in this booklet were often pulled from this very blog. Now I'm returning the favor: the following text is from the booklet Keening Songs and Death Wails. Sergio, the harpist depicted above, is featured on the recording of a Quichuan mother lamenting the death of her 2-year old daughter.

Keening Songs and Death Wails
collected by Berry van Boekel
private publication, 2012

Quichuan Mother’s Lament (to her 2 year old girl)

Ecuador, January 12-13, 1980, outside Cotacachi, recorded by John Schechter.

In the educational textbook Worlds of Music ethnomusicologist John Schechter gives an account of the circumstances surrounding the recording of this Quichuan’s lament. (Summarizing 4 pages into 1 paragraph): Against a backdrop of a high infant mortality rate amongst Catholicized  Quichua Indians in Ecuador a wake is organized for the passing of a two year old girl. The wake is festive, there’s food, drink, music, and dance. The musician is harpist Sergio, he plays non stop local favorite (traditional) dance music. The girl is put on the floor, decorated with the finest adornments, and just before her casket is closed, laid on a higher table, and a ladder put against it (to symbolize the ascension to a higher realm) her mother sings a song. The song is improvised, the lyrics almost impossible to decipher because of the mother’s sobbing, halfway into the song Sergio starts playing the harp again, and the song becomes different, more joyful.

Gustave Doré: A festive child’s wake 
in the Spanish Mediterranean, 1870s

In many Latin American countries the passing  of an infant is a festive occasion. When an infant died he/she is sinless and becomes an angle. The child did not have to endure the impurities and hardships of life adults have. In 1980, when the account by Schlechter was written, the mortality rate of infants was three out of ten. Funerary lamentation is a widespread practice among catholic countries/regions. It is said to have originated in Roman times but the origins of the singing at wakes and funerals may well go further back than Christianity does. A lamentation is an improvisation of an unaccompanied female wailing voice. The singer is often a relative of the deceased but also could be a hired professional "wailing" woman. In Ireland she's called a "keener", in Romania a "bocitorre", and in Corsica "voceratrice". Laments can be divided up into two categories: that of the wakes and funerals for adults, and for those of children. The adult ones are mournful while children's laments can have a festive quality to them as it is celebrated when a child "becomes an angel" without having experienced the hardships and impurities of life. The practice has become nearly extinct now but it used to be a tradition in nearly all catholic societies. It could be found throughout the Mediterranean, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and other pockets of Catholicism that existed around the globe. I grew up in the Catholic Netherlands, but I don't think lamentation was ever practiced there. It certainly wasn't  when my grandparents died while I was still a little boy in the late 1960s. The Netherlands had a sober kind of Catholicism, it had the introverted ascetic characteristics of it but not not the extroverted spirituality. The folk music in Mediterranean and Latin American countries were influenced by a rich spirituality and a cult of the death.

Source: Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's People, 4th ed., Jeff Todd Titon (ed.), Schirmer, 2002

KIRK

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Downbeat magazine "Poll Winners' Show" 1975, Rahsaan Roland Kirk is introduced by Quincy Jones as having won the award in the category of multi-instrumentalist and miscellaneous instruments. In the clarinet category he won for the 2nd consecutive year, the stritch and manzello he won for 14 consecutive years (these were instrument he devised himself), he won the flute too. As soon as Quincy Jones is done with the lauds, Kirk tears into a mesmerizing version of Pedal Up. Kirk plays multiple horns, McCoy Tyner is on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Lenny White is the drummer on this track that reaches high into the Top 100 for the 3rd consecutive year. It doesn't get old this one. I have a version on the 2LP-set Bright Moments but I prefer the Downbeat version. It's great to see him perform even just on video as I never had the chance to see him perform live in concert. Ronald Theodore Kirk was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1935, he died in 1977.

Albanian clarinettists

Laver Bariu   
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Laver Bariu (b. 1929) is a virtuoso Albanian clarinet player who is, despite his old age, still active today (as far as I can tell, I hope I'm right). There are a few videos of him performing on line, so you can check out some of his wonderful music. In the context here he's only a stand-in for his fellow clarinettist and compatriot Ajdin Asllan of whom I could find find no available image on line. Asllan was born in 1895, recorded in Albania before moving to the United States where he started a record label featuring Balkan music including some of his own. He died in 1976. I found Valle Devollice on Excavated Shellac, a site that is an authority when it comes to early recordings from 78s. The tune is a duet of Asllan's clarinet and the traditional Albanian llaute, recorded circa 1930. There is actually a lot of information concerning this obscure Albanian 78 record but rather than poorly paraphrasing I'll direct you to the source here in the words of master excavator Jonathan Ward.

Hungarian Tangos

Ilona Nagykovácsi12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Not that there are so many Hungarians where I live, not that I know of at least, but there are certainly a lot of Hungarian records to be found at local second hand stores. I got myself something that might be considered a collection. From traditional music recorded in the field, via popular gypsy orchestras, to a record full with tangos, the whole gamut of records from a certain era from a certain country is to be found. In my blog Musical Thrift Store Treasures you can read about, and listen to some of these records. So many records from one place naturally reflects the content of the yearly list of 100 songs too. Ilona Nagykovácsi (1910, Hungary-1995, Canada) was a Hungarian actress, comedienne, and singer who moved to Canada during the second World War. One of the Hungarian recordings in the list of 100 is her song Gyűlöllek, a tango featured on that album Svívbajok ellen, kisasszony, szedjen tangót! that is dedicated to tangos only.

Back to Burkino

Maurice Sempore
12" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Maurice Sempore is the sax player and leader of the group L'Orchestre Harmonie Voltaique from, as the name implies, Upper Volta which was renamed Burkino Faso. The group was formed in 1948 by Antoine Ouedraogo. Sempore took over from Ouedraogo in 1964 and 'africanized' the sound of the group that had a repertoire mostly consisting of French popular songs (like those of the singer Sandwidi Pierre, also in the Top 100, who I painted in May). The song Killa Naa Naa Ye Killa was recorded in 1970 and appeared as a 7" single.

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.