Author Archives: Kevin Comartin

May Festival

The source went to a private school in San Francisco, and every year the school has a May Celebration.

“Every year we’d have this huge festival, where each grade would sing a song. And um. Then we’d, the eight graders would do the May Pole, and all of the grades would do turkey in the straw, you know line dancing. And then at the very end, um, all- the whole school would line up, um, and each grade would line up shortest to tallest. And we’d all line up and make this huge line, and um, the tallest 8th grader would hold this, uh, dragon head, and behind it would be this sheet that would cover the entire rest of the school. Cause like each grade had 16 or 18 kids, so you know. It was K through 8. So the entire school would then do the dragon dance. The school was built in like 1918, and it was this woman’s house. But um, the house was in a fire, and so they had to leave the school. And then when the original school reopened, they did a parade, from the, from the temporary school to the renovated old building. And the dragon was like a part of the parade, so they do the dragon dance every year to commemorate it.”

 

This festival seems to take a lot from many different cultures. It reflects what a multi-cultural city San Francisco is. The fact that they’d have a may-pole, a European tradition in the same festival as a Dragon dance mirrors the East meets West aspects of the city. While the school was neither European or Chinese, they included aspects of both traditions.

 

 

Advanced Easter Egg Hunt

“So, my mom is an artist, she’s a painter, and my dad did, um like a lot of writing and stuff, he’s like an English dude. He’s American. Anyways. Um, for Easter, we would, we would have Easter Egg hunts, my sister and I. And um, it started off, we’d come, we’d come downstairs and there’d be these Easter eggs, and you’d open it, and it’d be a scrap of paper that would be cut in a weird shape, and on one side would be like, a part of a drawing, but you don’t know what the drawing is, and on the other side, would be, um, a clue. A poem or a limerick my dad made. That would lead you to, it would be a clue to like, find the next egg, in a different part of the house. And so you’d read the clues and try to find each egg, until you, you finally find the basket. And each of these papers, its the poem on one side and the drawing on the other, and once you got the basket, you’d have all the pieces, you assemble them and you tape it together, and then you’d flip it over and it’d be, like my mom would have, um, she’d uh, she’d have drawn like an Easter themed drawing, like one of them was like me from my senior yearbook photo, but with bunny ears drawn on, and she, um, also drew like the Scream, but with like bunny ears. It’d be a clever take on Easter themes.”

 

This tradition interests me, because it takes the candy, which is usually what Easter is about for kids, and makes it secondary. The riddle clues the source’s dad wrote are almost a sneaky way of making Easter Egg Hunts educational. It is also a way for both of the source’s parents to pass down their love for the arts to their children, and it worked, as the source never mentioned candy once when talking about the Easter Egg Hunt, she remembers her parents for being artists, and taking time to create something for her and her sister.

Texas Ranch Safety

“When I go to my, my dad’s ranch. In southwest Texas. It’s about 45 miles from the, from the border to Mexico. Um, and when I bring, uh, when I bring friends down there, to the ranch. He’s huge on safety. Because of rattlesnakes that are out there, and coyotes, and just other animals, and sharp plants that can, that’ll be, detrimental to your health. So he brings all my friends together, and he like, makes us be silent. And he goes, ‘Alright boys, I want you to know, that in all these 800 acres, anything out there can either bite ya, sting ya, prick ya, or even kill ya. And he basically scares all my friends before we, we go out.”

The speech the source’s father makes changes, except for the one saying that is always constant. “Alright boys, I want you to know…” Click here for an audio clip of that saying.

To me it’s important to note a piece of irony with this safety speech, because a big part of Texas ranch culture is shooting guns.

“He, he warns us about the plants and animals, and then we go, shooting animals with guns”.

 

As someone who lived in Texas for ten years, to me this really just reflects Texas culture, especially West Texas. It shows a profound respect for the environment, while at the same time maintaining the idea that Texans have a right to shoot everything in it.

Nigerian Lullaby

“So my sophomore year, one of my acting professors was this big crazy guy that did a lot of volunteer work around the world. He was like, really big into using theatre as therapy and stuff like that, and he goes to Nigeria every few years to work with the people there, and give aid, and use theatre to help them deal with the situation over there. And anyway, he taught us this song, which is a Nigerian lullaby, and its a round. And I don’t remember if he actually told us what it meant, no one in the class remembers what it meant, and we might even be singing the wrong words. But we like sing it, the people in my acting class, that took that class with him sing it. We use it as a warm up song before performances, because its pretty gentle on the voice, and also sometimes when we get together, and we’ve been drinking we sing it, because everyone knows the tune, and its a round so it sounds good without people having to know how to create harmonies and stuff like that.”

Nigerian Lullaby

 

I find it remarkable that the song has really been re-purposed from a lullaby to essentially a drinking song by the group of actors, who really don’t know what the song means, and could be singing the wrong words anyway. I think it’s a testament that certain sounds, like harmonies are almost universally pleasing. I don’t believe the meaning of the song is the reason people in Nigeria still sing it to their children, but rather that the sounds are relaxing and pleasing to the ear. That’s why people from cultures as disparate as Nigeria and the United States can find so much enjoyment in the same tune.

A Grandpa Song

The following is a song that the source’s Grandfather used to sing to her when she was a kid. She originally thought that he wrote the song just for her, but really he took the song “Daisy Bell” a very popular and famous American song, and substituted “Daisy” with the source’s name, Maisie. The clip below has the source first sing the original song, and then her Grandfather’s version.

Grandpa song

“He sang that song to me when I was little and he was, dandling? Is that the right word? Bouncing me on his knee”

 

The song really accomplishes two things. First, it helps the source’s Grandfather expose her to a song that he knows, and shares a piece of his generation with her. Also it created a special connection between Maisie and her Grandpa.

“He was my favorite Grandpa” she said.