Tag Archives: african american

Juneteenth Festival

Context: The informant, a 20-year-old female college student who was enrolled in the ANTH 333 during a prior semester, was eager to participate in my folklore collection. She shared some folklore with me that she has collected throughout her childhood and her time at USC. The following is an excerpt from our conversation, in which the informant described a cultural festival that she has taken part in every summer since she was a child.

Text:

Informant: Okay, so one thing that I think is particularly interesting is that every summer there’s a festival called the Juneteenth Festival. Basically, it’s called Juneteenth because it’s for black Americans and basically June 19th was the day the slaves were freed, but because slaves couldn’t say June 19th, they started saying Juneteenth and nobody ever changed the name of the festival. So, it’s been like going on  since then and so now we celebrate it as “Juneteenth.”  It’s a really cool way for me to personally feel a connection with my African heritage because that’s not something that I normally practice because I have a very American identity. But Juneteenth, what happens at a Juneteenth festival? So there’s a lot of dancing, a lot of praise dancing that happens. A lot of it like revolves around a lot of gospel music and there’s also… gosh there’s like Swahili that’s spoken at a lot of them. A lot of it intersects with Christianity, which is interesting and it’s probably where the gospel music comes from. But yeah, usually they are in parks and there’s usually jazz music. We celebrate a lot of black American culture, so there’s like jazz music and Hip-Hop and… black things. And yeah, it’s a family-friendly event. I think it’s really popular in the south. My dad was the one who made us go to every Juneteenth Festival because it’s really popular in Oklahoma, and that’s where he’s from. And my mom, who’s from Louisiana, knew about Juneteenth and celebrated that there, so I think it’s a really big thing in the south. But there’s a Los Angeles Juneteenth Festival that’s held every summer, which is the one that I went to, and I originally started going to because my dad is a bass player and he always played at the Juneteenth Festivals.

Informant’s relationship to this item: The Juneteenth festival holds a lot of personal significance for the informant because she attends it every year with her family. The informant described how the festival helps her feel connected to her Black American identity, from which she typically feels more removed. The entire festival serves as a reminder of the black experience in America, including the languages that are spoken there, the genres of music that are played, and even the festival’s name, which originated from the speech patterns of American slaves. The festival is also an important event for the informant’s family, as the informant’s father — a professional bass player — plays music as part of the festivities.

Interpretation: The Juneteenth festival is an example of a festival that has spatial and temporal significance. The festival typically takes place in parks in order to emphasize its family-friendly message. Additionally, it takes place on June 19 every year because that is the date in which slaves were freed in America. Thus, the date holds a lot of cultural significance to Black Americans and is a fitting date for a celebration of the African American experience. The festivals appear to have a prescribed syntax, or order of events. The informant described several events that regularly take place at Juneteenth festivals, specifically folk music and dances that always occur. Festivals also usually take place in order to project a certain message to both insiders and outsiders. In this case, the Juneteenth festival appears to communicate pride, resilience, and determination in the context of the history black America and the current experiences of black citizens.

 

Hanish Family Pie Tradition

Background: Lila is my best friend from high school. She has a tradition with her dad, Jon, and her younger sister, Sydney, to hand make apple pies for Thanksgiving together. They have been inviting me to be part of this tradition for the past 3 years.

Context: I called Lila over FaceTime because she attends Drexel University in Philadelphia. I recorded our conversation and transcribed it below.

“Honestly I don’t know when this tradition started but for as long as I can remember when it’s Thanksgiving time we always go to my cousin’s house in Orange County. Everyone in my family brings something because there are so many people, like first and second cousins. Me and my dad and my sister have a tradition every year to make the apple pies. My dad makes sure that a day or two before Thanksgiving me and my sister are home for the night to make apple pies with him. When we got older it became a thing to invite friends. It’s fun and one of those cute little traditions your family has. I don’t know how it started but yeah. My dad found some recipe online or something but we make the dough fresh every year. We start by skinning the apples… or wait we make the dough first and put it in the fridge. Then we do the whole apples and cinnamon for the filling. Then we make the top crust. For the past year or two we’ve started to make a berry pie too. We’ll make a few apple pies and then a berry pie too. My parents have started to buy extra ingredients so that our friends can take pies home with them to take to their Thanksgiving dinners.”

IMG_0576

 

Apple and berry pie at the Hanish household, Thanksgiving 2017.

 

La-a (pronounced “Ladasha”)

The informant told me about this joke when I asked him about some good jokes he had heard.

Informant: “So this is a joke I’ve heard from many people, some of them have claimed it to be true. The joke goes: ‘I heard about this person named Ladasha, and her name is spelled La-a. So it’s “Laa”, but it’s pronounced Ladasha. And I’ve heard this as a joke from some people. But one person who told me, actually insisted that they knew someone who knew Ladasha. Which is obviously not true.”

Collector: “Why is this a joke, what’s the funny part about it?”

Informant: “Oh, its just typography”

Collector: “When did you hear this first?”

Informant: “High school I believe, a couple years ago. I would hear about it every couple months or so. It was a thing people knew about.”

Collector: “Why do you think specifically the name Ladasha?”

Informant: “Because its funny and it sounds like a real name”

Collector: “It sounds like an African American name. Is there any reason why that is?”

Informant: “Some of those names I’ve seen do have vanity punctuation”

Collector: “So do you think this is poking fun at that?”

Informant: “Probably. I think there’s a Tiana in my high school (T’ana) so it’d be like, ‘T’ana’ so that was a vanity punctuation”

Collector: “So Ladasha could be a real name”

Informant: “Yes. But more likely I think is that someone named their baby that after they heard the joke”

This joke, in my opinion, is likely to indeed be poking fun at some African American names with unconventional punctuation, or as my informant called it, “vanity punctuation.”

The Man and the Snake

Context:
I had asked my friend if he had any stories or tales from his childhood that his family would tell. He comes from an area of Kansas City, Missouri that is traditionally an African-American community, and he told me a tale, a fable, that his mother used to tell him when he was growing up.

Tale:
This is a story that my mother reiterated to me many times during her lifetime and when I was a child. There was a man in Africa, walking up a mountain. Halfway up the mountain, it starts to get cold, even though it is hot at the bottom of the mountain. Halfway up the mountain it is kind of frigid. Halfway up the mountain, this man happens upon…a very sickly snake. And the snake is sitting there in this cold climate and its basically freezing and it looks up to the man and says, “Please, sir, please, will you carry me down the mountain?”
And the man is going down the mountain, and he looks at the snake and he says, “But you’re a snake. Not only are you a snake, but you are a very poisonous snake. If I pick you up you will surely bite me!”
And the snake says, “Silly man, now why would I do that? I – I need your help. If – if I stay here I will surely die. If you carry me past the peak of the mountain, and down to the warm foothills, I will not bite you. I will be forever grateful.”
So the man thinks about it. And being a good man, an honest man, decides to help the snake. So he picks the snake up and he walks toward the peak. And he starts to walk on toward the peak and as it gets colder, the snake gets very, very still. But finally they pass the peak and they slowly get down and the weather starts to get warmer and the snake starts to move around. And as they go down the mountain, all of a sudden the frost clears, there’s green foliage and the snake is slithering happily as the man is carrying it in his arms. And finally, they are almost to the foothills and the man feels a sharp pain. Bam! The snake has bitten him. And he falls to his knees as the poison takes hold and he looks at the snake and he goes, “Snake, I’ve helped you, I’ve saved your life, and you promised me that you wouldn’t bite me.” And he goes, “Why!? Why!?”
The snake slithers off, takes a moment to pause as he decides to answer. And he looks back at the man taking his last breaths, and he says, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.” And he slithers off.

Analysis:
This tale is a fable that has a clear moral, like most fables, which is that you should not offer your help, your aid, to someone or something that you know to be dangerous. This tale is also serving as a warning to not trust the promises of a desperate man, and to be wary of those who might stab you in the back. This is the kind of tale that would be told, and is told, to children. After all, the informant’s mother would often tell this story to him when he was growing up. The fact that the informant grew up in a traditionally African-American part of the city he lived in, would suggest that this tale is African in origin.

The Legend of Ibo Landing

This is a legend in the African American community, and the name of the island is occasionally spelled differently: Ebo, Ibo, Igbo.

“It’s sort of this coastal—this island off the coast of south Carolina and Georgia, kinda in between. Kay, so, the story goes that there was a slave ship that was coming—oh wait, let me start over. In Africa, there were this group of, like, native Africans and they were enjoying life in Africa and one of them had a wife who was pregnant. And, you know, the guy loved his wife and loved his child and he was looking forward to having a family, and then one day his wife was sleeping and he was just up doing whatever and he thought he heard the unborn child say “the water will bring you home”. And he was really confused because he didn’t really know what that meant… but it kind of stayed on his mind. Okay, and so later he was walking through, like, the savannas or the jungles of Africa and he was with some other Africans and they all got kidnapped by this slave trader, and so then they embarked on the middle passage and were on the ship headed to America and they were all really scared, of course. They didn’t know where they were going they didn’t know what was going on, they were shackled in these miserable conditions and people were dying, there was disease, like you know all that gross middle passage stuff you hear about. Finally they get to the island of Ibo Landing and they get off the slave ship and they’re led, and then, like, the slave–okay, hold on. They’re led around and then the slave trader just sorta looks at them and says okay this is where you’ll be staying–except less hospitable because it’s not like they’re at a hotel–and so then the slaves look around and they’re like oh no, we’re not staying here, or they’re still Africans, I guess they didn’t really become slaves. And so the main one who had the child gets an idea and he suddenly remembers the phrase “the water will bring you home”. And so, you know, all the Africans are shackled together but they turn, so starting with the native the main guy with the child he whispers a message to the guy standing next to him and then that guy does that to the guy next to him and to the guy next to him and so on and so on until they get to the end of the line. And so then when the slave traders aren’t looking or are preoccupied with something, the Africans turn around and walk back into the water. And it’s just like the child said, the water will bring you home. So the story goes that they never became slaves and that they walked across the water all the way back to Africa. And of course, it depends on who is telling the story because some people are like well they turned around and drowned and others are like they walked all the way back to the continent of Africa so you can take your pick which version you like better.”

This is an extraordinarily meaningful legend on many levels. One of the messages, according to the informant, was the notion of controlling one’s own destiny and doing the impossible to avoid a fate put on someone. The imagery also comes out of the Bible, with Jesus walking on water and telling Peter that he too could walk on water if his faith was strong enough. Clearly, the faith of these Africans was strong enough (or not, depending on the teller) to bring them back home. It also stresses the importance of family, as it is family ties that bring the slaves back home and the unborn child that gives them the idea to do it. All of it happens during a period of change in their lives, a liminal period, in which anything could happen (thus explaining the mysticism). Mysticism is also common in African tales and tribal religions, thus emphasizing that legacy as well.

It exists in a lot of African American popular culture. Toni Morrison uses different themes of it for her books Tar Baby and Song of Solomon, and it is recounted in the film Daughters of the Dust (1991, directed by Julie Dash).