Cossacks from the Caucasus

Nekrasov Cossacks women's group
(from Old Believers cd jacket)
16" x 12"
oil on canvas panel, 2013

Anastasia Nikulushkina, Elena Gulina, and Varvara Gorina – I matushka moia

In the late nineties one of the first library holdings I browsed in order to find my “keening song of the banshee” was the Ohio State University Music Library. I found several theses dedicated to weep-singing and one even to keening in Ireland specifically. They did not come with sound recordings however. At the time I worked at the Ohio State University but I wasn’t brave or ambitious enough to contact the writers of such pieces, neither did I contact their underwriter directly. She was Margarita Mazo, professor in ethnomusicology, head of the Music Cognition program at the university and an authority on the subject of weep singing. At that library I did read up on various analyses of lamenting techniques and social circumstances of such practices and it was there where I found the CD Old Believers, which was the start of my collection, the very first sound example of funeral lamentation I had found. The recordings were made by Professor Mazo in her native Russia in 1989. Years later I did get it in touch with Margarita Mazo, when I was curating an exhibition of 12” vinyl record sleeves. I had invited several record collectors to display a selection of their collection. Mazo one of them, chose to display about 20 Russian folk albums for the occasion. The song I matushka moia translates as “Oh. Mother of Mine”. Professor Mazo was not able to record at an actual wake but encouraged singers to perform laments in the memory of deceased relatives, the emotion came through nevertheless: “Though their lament began somewhat reserved, as the women gradually became absorbed and involved emotionally, memories seized them entirely, and they cried” writes Mazo in the liner notes.

Unlike the custom in most other Catholic communities, the Cossacks of the Caucasus do not employ professional wailers to sing at wakes, or funerals. Laments are always sung by close relatives of the deceased.

Richard Tauber

Richard Tauber
16" x 12",
oil on canvas board, 2013

Dein ist mein ganzes Herz is the opening track of an LP, a sort of greatest hits album with the same title as the opening song, by the Austrian born lyrical tenor Richard Tauber (1891-1948). Of course I was familiar with the name Richard Tauber, but I had never bothered to listen to him before. Operettas in fact had always been a genre I avoided. But as it goes with so much music you think you don't like (without ever even considering it with an open ear), it comes back at you and blow you away. It seems to happen mostly with music that I have the strongest aversions to. I don't know what got into me, why I decided to buy this Tauber record at a second hand store but yet I did it anyways. It could have been this rather sympathetic face looking at me from the photo on the sleeve, or because of my occasional infatuation with German language art songs (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was once in the my Top 100), or it could have been that there was nothing else of interest for me in the store to buy, I don't know. I was still so disinterested in the record that I don't think I even played it for several weeks after I bought it. And then when I finally did: Wow! I knew Tauber was a well known singer but I had no idea that he is acclaimed as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century. Not only that, he was also the author of many of his best known songs. Dein ist mein ganzes Herz was written by Franz Lehár though, the famous opera and operetta composer who wrote many lieder just for Tauber. The song comes from the operetta Das Land des Lächelns. Lehár is also the conductor of Das Orchester der Staatsoper Berlin heard behind Tauber in this historic recording from 1929.

Bodega Pop 101

Mariko Gotō (Midori)
8.5" x 11", 2013
watercolor, pencil

We blijven nog even bij de bodegas bezocht door Gary Sullivan. De specialiteit van zijn collectie zit 'em in de orientale popmuziek en al helemaal als die dan door mooie meiden met zwoele stemmen bedreven word. Ik had zelf al het een en ander verzameld in die categorie maar ik kwam niet verder dan Shonen Knife, Melt Banana, Hang on the Box, en nog wat anderen die iedereen nu zo'n beetje wel kent. Dank zij Bodega Pop heb ik de afgelopen twee jaar een heuse cursus orientale pop genomen en kan nu op mijn curriculum vitae bijschrijven dat ik de nodige kennis heb op dat gebied. Soms is dat gebied zeker wel een beetje Hello Kittie, een beetje anime of manga, maar soms is het ook geweldige muziek. Midori, een band uit Japan wiens gezicht is de zangeres en gitarist Mariko Gotō, valt zeker in die laatste categorie met muziek die meer met jazz van doen heeft dan met bubbelthee. Hoewel het genre wat ondervertegenwoordigd is dit jaar (het vorig jaar—het eerste jaar in de bodega cursus—had ik er wat meer) is het nummer ㇼㇲㇺ toch wel een hoogtepunt te noemen. Ik zal je hier naar het artikel in Bodega Pop leiden zodat je het met je eigen oren ook kunt beluisteren. Best wel de moeite waard hè!

Los Grandes Exitos

Maxima Mejia
11" x 8.5", 2013,
ink, pencil, watercolor

The year 2012 saw a great increase in that part of my record collection labelled Latin, South America, and the Caribbean. I bought records of so many wonderful singers of songs in the Spanish language that I had never heard of before. All very cheap; I seemed to have moved the land where you can find all these Latin records for a buck or less at the thrift stores. Many of such records have a title that goes like: Los Grandes Exitos de... but the one of the greatest "greatest hits" records I came across last year was not from my own collection but from that of Gary Sullivan, proprietor of the wonderful Bodega Pop: Los Grandes Exitos de Maxima Mejia. One of these "grandes exitos" is Imploratión de Amor, a very passionately sung love-ballad. Maxima Mejia is from Ecuador, and that's about all Gary and me know about her.

The Moldy Peaches (3)

The Moldy Peaches:
Adam Green and Kimya Dawson
11" x 14"
oil on canvas, 2013

One year ago, almost to the date I was browsing through a box of CDs at a friend's house. Out of curiosity I pulled out the CD The Moldy Peaches (Rough Trade, 2001). I borrowed the CD and several tracks ended up in the Top 100 2012. The Moldy Peaches were a band formed in 1999 around friends Adam Green and Kimya Dawson. They formed in New York, moved to Washington (state) and back again. A host of musicians, friends were part of the band, but they quit in 2004. They had made a name for themselves in the anti-folk scene that was happening in New York but their breakthrough came from the inclusion of the song Nobody Else But You in the soundtrack for the film Juno. This was in 2007, and the song hit the charts in 2008, seven years after it was recorded and four after they broke up (but still four years before I first heard of it).

A Roro Song

Roro Girl
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2013

The second Roro song in the Top 100 provided me once again with the opportunity to paint portraits of people who weren't affected yet by Western civilization. I gotta say that these are my favorite subjects to paint. Had I lived a Century earlier I probably would have been a painter of just such portraits, and it would have been respectful then too. But now I can only indulge when the concept of the larger series prompt me do do so. The girl depicted here may well be the singer of the Aroba song she illustrates as the image appears right with the description of the song in the liner notes from The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Volume V: Australia and New Guinea. Both the photo (taken by Dupeyrat) and the singer of the Aroba remain anonymous. I singled out the Roro recordings made in 1952 from that album, and from the volume of the Columbia World Library on Indonesia as well, because they're just too wonderful. The beautiful singing voices, melodic instrumentation, yet brutally uncivilized aura, make these recordings the most fascinating of all that I've encountered in 2012.

Kid Baltan and Tom Disselvelt

Kid Baltan and Tom Disselvelt
11" x 8.5", ink, watercolor, pencil, 2013

My record collection houses records from all over the world and I have a fair share from that little Netherlands country I was born and raised in. I buy records predominantly at thrift stores these days and usually I scoop up all the international vinyl I find there. But records from the Netherlands you don't find much in thrift stores and those that occasionally show up I mostly leave behind. Heintje is the one that most frequently appears at a thrift store, and sometimes you'll find a draaiorgel (mechanic organ) record, or one by the few international pop stars such as Herman Brood or the Golden Earring. I'm not interested in any of those, but if I would find more sophisticated ones, like free jazz records, or modern classical, or experimental, I certainly would be a happy taker. The last Dutch musician I bought music of was Willem Breuker, when I saw a CD of his at a thrift store some years ago. I was excited about it but I didn't like the CD. I've never even seen a record by Dick Raaijmakers or by his alias Kid Baltan (I was familiar with the music of Dick Raaijmakers but never heard of Kid Baltan—Tom Disselvelt I had never heard of either—until I chanced upon their music on YouTube.) So naturally it's been a while since I had some music from my own country in the Top 100. Dick Raaijmakers as Kid Baltan produced a number of experimental electronic recordings together with Tom Disselvelt in the years between 1954 and 1960. Quite a few of these can be heard on YouTube and it is the first one I ever heard that features in the Top 100 2012: Vibration from the extended play single Electronic Movements (Phillips, 1962—originally released on the LP Electronic Music under the moniker Elektrosonics in 1957).

Greeting from Herzegovina

Greeting from Bosnia and Herzegovina
(four) stages, 12" x 12", oil on masonite, 2013

Last weekend I taught a class titled Expressive Landscape Painting. A day before it started I went to work in my back yard and took pictures as I progressed my painting. The 3rd from the four pictures above, was the "finished" painting I took with to show to the students, while also bringing in photos of the progress. When all was said and done, and the weekend gone, I took it back back to studio and painted on it the next image for the Top 100 2012. And next was the song Kaharli Sam, Večerala Nisam (poetically translated as "I am distraught, I have not supped" in the liner notes to the CD World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, Vol. V: Yugoslavia) sung by Naza Muhović, a Muslim woman from eastern Herzegovina. The song was a familiar one to me, a version that appeared on the LP Folk Music of Yugoslavia made all the way to #2 in the Top 100 2009 (on the liner notes to that record the song is translated less poetically but is perhaps more poetry as "I am sad, I have not eaten". Curiously it is the distinguished Professor Albert Lord—an authority in ethnomusicology as well as in Homeric poetry—who was involved with the translation of both. The recording for the World Library was made by Peter Kennedy in 1951, while Laura Boulton recorded the Folk Music version in 1952—the recordings actually sound identical to my untrained ear.) Muslim women from Herzegovina do not play instruments as a rule but in the confinement of their kitchen they do play with utensils, such as in this song where the singer sings into a reverberating spinning copper tray. ("The same type of instrument has been observed in the Arctic among the Hudson Bay Eskimo women" —Folk Music of Yugoslavia. I love those theories concerning disparate geographical occurrences. I also love conspiracy theories, and most of all I love scientific anthropological theories.)

Top 100 2012, #1-25

 

The Top 100 2012 list is finalized. I'll publish it in four installments over the next few weeks. Here are the first 25. Clicking on an artist's name below will lead you to the original post for the song. All images are to scale, every single one painting is 12" wide.

1. Beth Orton – Magpie
2. M.I.A. – Born Free                            
3. Beth Orton – Something More Beautiful                        
4. The Moldy Peaches – Nothing Came Out                       
5. Land Dyak Women – Rice Song                           
6. Lady LeShurr – Lego                                   
7. Pussy Riot – Putin Lights Up the Fires                       
8. Béla Bartók – Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion                   
9. Ajdin Asllan – Valle Drvollile                               
10. Sviatoslav Richter – Saint-Saëns: Concerto No.5                   
11. Kitty Gallagher – Keening Song                           
12. Cat Power – Cherokee                                   
13. Sandwidi Pierre – Je Suis un Salaud                           
14. Mukim Tahir – Yaram Sizlar                               
15. L’Harmonie Voltaïque – Killa Naa Naa Ye Killa                   
16. Kimya Dawson – Being Cool                              
17. Marika Papagika – The Dervish                           
18. Rizeli Sadik – Erkek Kadin Oyun Havasi                       
19. The Alwood Sisters – Summer Wind/Our Time                    
20. Super Djata Band de Bamako – Bimoko Magnin                   
21. Flor Sinqueña – Mi Ultima Avisa                           
22. Anon. Romania – Lament for a Dead Brother                    
23. Cat Power – Silent Machine                               
24. Kel Hamza – Kişlatar Doldu Bugün                       
25. Hallo Dawe – (track 5)                                     

Beth Orton

Beth Orton
12" x 12"
oil on masonite, 2013

The third and final entry from the Sugaring Season LP, and the third and final Beth Orton song in the Top 100 2012 as well. And it's a silly painting. Once it was a decent back yard painting, but that's nothing new in these series, then it became a Bob Marley portrait playing soccer. A very awkward Bob Marley painting it was, and I added, like in the photo I used, Jimi Hendrix to the scene. The result was only slightly less awkward and I set it aside. Today I recycled it again and superimposed Beth Orton onto the scene while blocking out all that was left of Bob Marley, and now it is finished, and part of the Top 100 2012 series. As in an earlier Beth Orton painting I used the cover of Sugaring Season for the Beth Orton portrait and it is now forever attached as illustration to the song Candles.

Putin Zassal

Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot)
11" x 8.5", ink, watercolor, pencil, 2013

I read the Pussy Riot manifesto the other day. It is called Art and the Human Manifesto and was written by Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the two members of the band jailed for hooliganism in Russia, and now serving a two year sentence. The manifesto was written to protect the integrity of the band and makes for a good read that I would recommend to anyone interested in punk rock, politics, current events, feminism, to anyone reading this blog really. It's on the Free Pussy Riot website. Putin Zassal (Putin wet himself) is the second Pussy Riot track in the list. (For those of you who pay close attention to these writings: I indeed made an error a few weeks ago when I stated that Hirut Bekele was the only non-English speaking musician in the Top 100 this year. I had simply forgotten about the band Pussy Riot.) Here's a link to the video for Putin Zassal.

Mountain Music of Kentucky

Roscoe Holcomb
11" x 8.5", 2013
ink, watercolor, pencil

There aren't that many pictures available of Roscoe Holcomb without a hat. In the past I've painted him many times but always with a hat. Most of these paintings were done from the jacket to the CD An Untamed Sense of Control that shows a photograph of Roscoe Holcomb playing a banjo in front of a barn. A young boy also figures in the photo. I painted him too several times. John Cohen, who recorded Holcomb in the field in Daisy, Kentucky, was responsible for that image on the jacket, as well as most all of Holcomb's pictures that you'll find in a Google image search. John Cohen, a well known photographer, musician, and musicologist, "discovered" Holcomb during one of his field trips to the mountains of Kentucky, which resulted in the highly influential album Mountain Music of Kentucky (rec. 1960). Across the Rocky Mountains, in this year's list, is just one of a score of Holcomb tracks on that record that have passed the Top 100 review in the past decade. I don't know if the photograph without hat that I used to draw this image from was also taken by Cohen. I wanted to use it because of the challenge it provided. Holcomb looks like a different person without the hat. Roscoe Holcomb (1912-1981) lived his whole life in Daisy and was a coal miner for most of it.