Monthly Archives: April 2017

Coconut oil remedies

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hawaiian

Background Information: RJ is a senior at college. He was born and raised in Hawa’ii, but his family is Filipino. I heard him mention the use of coconut oil, and how his grandmother told him to use it for dry skin or to massage into sores, and it struck me how similar this folk remedy was to what I had heard in my own culture. I interviewed him about the practice and what it means to him.

Ankita: Can you tell me about how your family uses coconut oil?

RJ: My grandma uses it…well, she makes it. She takes coconuts and…I’m not sure what the process is, entirely, but I know she cooks it somehow, until the oils…um, are rendered, and then strains that, puts it in a bottle, and labels it ‘coconut oil’. But she only makes it on a specific day, and that day—she only makes it every four years. I’m not sure why. I think it has to do with some type of superstition, where it’s like a good luck type of oil. It’s an all-purpose oil, and you use it on your skin, or on your hair or on your lips. And she also uses it to like, massage into sores or like, when you have aches…body aches. It’s good for skin…Or like, it has healing properties.

Ankita: Do you know where she might have learned it maybe?

RJ: Well she’s from the Philippines, and I guess like, her parents…probably did that.

Ankita: Did she ever try to teach you or your parents or something?

RJ: Not intentionally, but we’d just like be around the house and see her make it, so we’d witness the process…But there’s also like the residue of that, so like the parts that are strained, she uses that in a dessert. So like, all parts of the coconut are used.

Ankita: Do you think you believe it? Like believe in its healing properties?

RJ: Um…I think so. Well, only when she applies it to me. Or the rest of us. But if we do it ourselves…not really.

Thoughts: From the way RJ described it, his grandmother’s process of making this oil is elaborate, time-consuming and specific, and it was a tradition that was passed down to her from her family. I find it interesting how RJ said that when his grandmother applies the oil, he believes in the medicinal properties of it, but not if he were to do it himself. The value that he places on this particular folk remedy, therefore, is tied to his grandmother, and perhaps his relationship with her. He does not believe in it enough to make the oil or go through the process of applying it himself, but his grandmother’s act of applying it for her family members becomes a ritual with heightened symbolic meaning and significance.

Spanish Lullaby

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background Information: Shawn Barnes is a Junior at college, and his family is Mexican on his mother’s side. I interviewed him about a Spanish lullaby that he remembers his mother singing to him at night as a child.

Original (Spanish):

“A la roro niño

A lo roro ya

Duérmete mi niño

Duérmete mi amor.

Este niño lindo

Que nació de mañana,

Quiere que lo lleven

A pasear en carcacha.

Este niño lindo

Que nació de día

Quiere que lo lleven

A la dulcería

Este niño

Que nació de noche

Quiere que lo lleven

A pasear en coche.

Este niño lindo

Se quiere dormir,

Y el pícaro sueño

No quiere venir.

Este niño lindo

Que nació de noche

Quiere que lo lleven

A pasear en coche.”

Translation:

“Lullaby baby

Lullaby now.

Sleep my baby,

Sleep my love.

This pretty baby

Who was born in the morning,

Wants to be taken

For a jalopy ride.

This sweet baby

Who was born during the day,

Wants to be taken

To the candy shop.

This pretty baby

Who was born at night,

Wants to be taken

For a stroller ride.

This pretty baby

Wants to sleep

But the naughty sleep

Doesn’t want to come.

This pretty baby

Who was born at night,

Wants to be taken

For a stroller ride.

Shawn: “So, it’s a way to like, put a child to sleep and then say all these good things about them. And then oftentimes my mom would like to rush it a little bit, because I’d go like, ‘Mom can you sing “La Roro”, and so she’d just like rush through one verse and say ‘se acabó’, or like “it’s over, go to sleep.” But like, I still remember her tucking me in and it was sort of a cute thing.”

Thoughts: Lullabies are interesting, and I have found that they often stick in people’s memories, even if it is in a vague form, perhaps because they are repetitive and musical. This lullaby seems to be meant for encouraging a child to go to sleep, while also showing the child love and talking about sweet and pleasant things. Perhaps this is an attempt to ensure pleasant dreams for the child as well.

Thanksgiving

Nationality: American
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English

Background Information: Clarise is a second-year student at USC, and she grew up in Wisconsin. I interviewed her about her family’s Thanksgiving traditions, as she celebrates it with them every year.

Ankita: So what do you guys usually do, or like eat at Thanksgiving dinners?

Clarise: Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, gravy, corn, green beans… A lot of the usual Thanksgiving things.

Ankita: Do all families make like, similar things?

Clarise: Ya, I’d say similar things. I think certain families have their own like, familial traditions, like one of ours are these like mini cinnamon rolls? I dunno why, it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, and we still make that. And we make pies, that’s a big Thanksgiving thing… My mom’s really into that, so.

Ankita: And who usually makes the food?

Clarise: Um, usually it’s just one aunt that cooks like, the main stuff, but then the other aunts and uncles that have like, specialty dishes, will bring those. So it’s kind of a collaborative effort.

Ankita: Have you ever helped make something?

Clarise: No, I’ve never helped…Actually, once, in the middle of summer, I was really craving Thanksgiving,  and I was like 13 years old, so I was like, ‘Dad! We have to go to the grocery store!’ So like I looked up recipes for all the things that you make at Thanksgiving, and I made a whole dinner by myself.

Ankita: Wow, and did you call your whole family over too?

Clarise: Yeah! Cus I wanted it to resemble what we had at Thanksgiving time. So yeah, I made a turkey.

Ankita: Does your family get together often?

Clarise: No, it’s mostly holidays. Or like, birthdays or special occassions. But it’s like, super rare that we all hang out, like just cuz. Because you know, we all have like our own schedules and stuff.

Ankita: And do you guys ever talk about like… the origins of Thanksgiving, or like, why it’s celebrated or anything?

Clarise: No. It’s never acknowledged. We just do it, because it’s… very American, haha.

Thoughts: Thanksgiving is such a widely celebrated holiday among Americans, so it is interesting to me how it has evolved from it’s origins to becoming simply a time when families can get together, and students can go home for a week, to make food and eat together. I also enjoyed Clarise’s story about constructing her own faux-Thanksgiving. While all the traditions were adhered to, and she even invited her whole family over, it still was not technically Thanksgiving, as the date was not right. This shows that the timing itself is significant for holidays and festivals or celebrations.

Hair-cutting superstition

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English

Background Information: Fatima is a Sophomore in college, and she grew up in a Muslim household in San Diego, CA. While not a devout believer herself, , her mother is, and as such has some beliefs and superstitions that she does not necessarily follow herself. Throwing one’s hair in the ocean after cutting it, for example, is one of them.

F: So, ok, so whenever I cut my hair, my mom says that I have to put it into a plastic bag and throw it into the ocean, otherwise someone is gonna steal it and do voodoo on it, and it’s because she’s Muslim, and apparently it’s a Muslim thing.

A: Do you actually follow it then?

F: Um, I personally just always cut my hair at home… I don’t throw it in the ocean, like I normally just throw it away just because I don’t really believe it, but every time my mom cuts my hair she’ll actually bag it up and throw it in the ocean.

Thoughts: Like what we discussed in class, the origins of many folk beliefs are unknown, or become lost. I find this interesting, especially in the case of superstition, as superstitions are often ingrained into the way people live their lives.

Passover

Nationality: American
Occupation: Professor at USC
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/25/17
Primary Language: English

Background Information: Julia Haft-Candell is a professor at USC, and she grew up in Oakland. Her family gets together every year to celebrate Passover, a Jewish occassion where people commemorate their liberation from slavery under the Egyptian people. I interviewed Julia about the origins of the day, as well as what her family does to celebrate it.

Julia: So, the Jews were slaves in Egypt, and… gosh, this is really hard, haha.

Ankita: Just like, whatever you remember about it is good.

Julia: So…the pharaoh… Like, the evil pharaoh. Not all the pharaohs were evil, but this one was, and he was worried about, I think kinda like, about the Jewish uprising, and the potential of Jewish men to like, overthrow their masters? So he ordered all Jewish sons born to be killed. And, a woman had a son, and couldn’t bring herself to do that, so she put him in a basket in the water, and flaoted him down the river, and the evil pharaoh’s like, daughter, or sister or something, found him, and raised him as a Prince of Egypt, even though he was Jewish. And, at some point like… and this is Moses, like this is the origin story of Moses… and at some point God said to him like, you are a chosen Jewish person, and he was like ‘woah’, and then like, God said like, you are gonna lead the Jews out of slavery, and I’m gonna show you how. And because he was in with the evil pharaoh and one of the Egyptians, basically, he was able to just like, talk to him and say like, ‘you should let us go because God is gonna get mad…’ and the pharaoh kept saying like, ‘ok I’ll let you go’, but then changing his mind… And then, eventually, God did the plagues? Like, the 10 plagues? So he ordered these plagues against the Egyptians as like a punishment for holding the Jews as slaves, so there are all these plagues like locusts, and blood… and all the cows died… and, I dunno, there were all these terrible afflictions. So the final plague was death of the first born? For Egyptians. So God told the Jews to rub lamb’s blood around their door, the night that the Angel of Death was gonna get the first borns and kill them… so the… Angel of Death ‘passed over’ the Jewish families, because they knew to put the lamb’s blood on the door. So that’s where the name comes from. And that’s when the pharaoh was finally like, ‘okay fine go’, because his son died… And then so, they gathered, like they had no time, so they just gathered everything, all their  belongings real quick, and left, like they didn’t even have time for the bread that they were baking to rise, so that’s what matzo is, this like, unleavened flat bread that we eat on Passover. And, um, Moses’ people, the Jewish people, went across the desert, and got to the Red Sea, and they were like, ‘oh crap, the sea’, and Moses was like, ‘don’t worry I got it’, and he parted it, and they all went through, and by then the pharaoh had changed his mind and sent soldiers, and they were chasing them, but when they were in the middle of the sea then the sea went back together and all the soldiers drowned, and so on… So that whole time is commemorated as Passover.

Ankita: So what do you guys do to celebrate it?

Julia: Okay so, you have a seder, like a seder plate, and it has, traditionally a lamb shank, to represent the blood on the doorway, there’s parsley, that you dip in salt water, to represent spring-time, and bitter herbs, and like, tears I think? And um, there’s this stuff called charoset, which is like apple, and nut, and like wine, like a mixture that you eat with the matzo, and it symbolizes the mortar between the bricks that the slaves would have to use to build the pyramids and stuff… And, there’s a hard-boiled egg to represent life I think, and there’s horseradish for like, bitterness… There’s also the Haggadah, kind of like this prayer book that you read through, and there’s a leader who reads through, and it tells the story of Passover, as well as prayers that you say before you… so there’s just a lot of like, reading and talking and singing, um, before you can eat. You can eat the parsley and you can eat the matzo, but you can’t eat the actual food till like, you’re done through the whole prayer book.

Ankita: Is the leader usually like a Rabbi or someone?

Julia: It’s usually just like, I mean traditionally it’s like the dad, or like the man of the house, you know, but that can of course, you know like I did it this year…In all of my family seders we’ve just kind of like, taken turns to be leaders.

Ankita: So there’s no rule like it has to be the oldest person or something?

Julia: No, but there is a rule for the youngest person in the seder. There are these four questions that the youngest participant has to ask — um, ‘why is this night different from all other nights’, ‘why do we eat this, instead of this’, and then we answer, and so on.

Thoughts: It was interesting to hear the unofficial way in which Julia told the origin story of Passover. To me, it shows how this story has been in her knowledge for a long time, as she seems deeply familiar with it, and is able to use her own words to explain it. I also enjoyed hearing about the various little traditions during the seder that are usually performed, and how there may be such variations from family to family.