Monthly Archives: May 2019

Up You Men

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Barista
Residence: Burbank
Performance Date: March 16, 2018
Primary Language: English

Official pep song of the Aleph Zadek Aleph (male Jewish teen youth group). Commonly started by president/board member/event leader drawing out the first word before everyone jumps in and forms a mosh pit.

Lyrics (More shouted than sung): Up you men and sing to AZA

Time will pass and we’ll be on our way

As the years go by there will be

Happiest of memories (Ra ra ra!)

Stand and then

We’ll sing this song again

All you loyal men

Sing the praises of our order

Sing up you men of AZA

(Once it reaches this part the song usually winds down with everyone matching a “heartbeat” rhythm pattern on their chest.)

 

The song is a shortcut for whatever peer leader is running a given meeting or event to bring up the energy in the group and get them to pay attention in one fell swoop. The lyrics themselves serve to hype up the group and its individual members in a way that’s somewhat jingoist. No official origin is known, but the full lyrics are included in the official AZA handbooks which speaks to its deep history and significance to the folk group. The organization’s origins (also detailed in the handbook) as a very pro-American group which contributed to the nation’s WWII war effort probably explains the jingoist vibe of the piece. Little details such as the second verse present in the handbook being absent in favor of the heartbeat rhythm (explained to me once with “Every Aleph’s heart beats the same way.”) as well as the mosh pit aspect (the handbook doesn’t comment on dances for the song) indicates that the song is still a living, breathing folk tradition that defies standardization and continues to evolve in use.

How 420 Became the Stoner Number

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

OK so pretty much what the story of the Waldos is the story of how four twenty became the stoner time as well as the stoner number. And pretty much, there was this group of high school students in San Francisco that every day- well like a small part of San Francisco- where every day at 4:20 after school they would meet at this one statue to smoke weed and shit. And that was just because like that was the most convenient time to like go home, get your stuff, come back, and smoke weed with your homies. And pretty much because of the Deadheads that were following around the Talking Heads? the Grateful Dead? and stuff at the time pretty much they met those kids and picked up that lingo from them, and it got spread across the entire country. And now 420 is the stoner time. Congratulations, you now have a piece of stoner folklore.

 

Background

The informant is well-versed in stoner culture, to say the least.

 

Nationality: American

 

Location: Los Angeles, CA

 

Context

I was talking about the collection assignment and they had talked to someone about it before and wanted to tell me their favorite piece of folklore.

 

Notes

This is a textbook legend, and a really fun one at that. It’s obviously taking place in our world, because you have the Grateful Dead and the Talking Heads, but it’s unclear if it’s true of not. Would those huge bands ever really have the chance to talk to some high school kids long enough to pick up their lingo? Who knows, and doesn’t matter!

 

Awkward Silences are Called Tumbleweeds

Z is the informant, L is interviewer

Main Piece

Z: So in Texas, when there’s an akward silence or an awkward moment, we call it a tumbleweed.

 

L: So when a tumbleweed happens, what do you do?

 

Z: We don’t really call it a tumbleweed until after it’s happened. Like if we’re referencing a different awkward moment we’ll be like “oh that was a tumbleweed.” Now that I think about it, that’s so southern, oh my god. But yeah, it would be very weird if an awkward silence was happening and someone was just like, “oh this is a tumbleweed.” Like, it’s never a thing that’s mentioned at the time, it’s always in reference to it.

 

L: Do you know why?

 

Z: I think it had something to do with the fact that before the cowboys did their gun-dueling thing, like when they paused and waited to like, do the thing, there would be like, a tumbleweed that went by in the movies. I think that’s where it came from. It’s very Texan.

 

Background

The informant is from Dallas, Texas.

 

Nationality: American

 

Location: Los Angeles, CA

 

Context

I asked if she had any very Texan folklore

 

Notes

This story reminded me a lot of “awkward turtle” from back in grade school. I think there’s folklore surrounding awkwardness in social interactions because we evolved as social beings. Without social interactions, we would quite literally die, so anything that implies poor social standing or interactions, such as an awkward silence, feels intimidating. Being able to break the tension with shared folklore is a great way to counteract the negative social effects.

 

Tunnel Folk Belief

Nationality: Brazilian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese, Spanish

J is informant, L is interviewer

Main Piece

J: If we drive through tunnels you have to hold your breath from the beginning of the tunnel until the end. And I- literally my grandpa, because he’s a psychopath as we have already discovered, his explanation to [my mom] was that literally some crane would come down and swipe your head off. So I don’t know what my grandpa was trying to teach us, but yeah.

 

L: So you hold your breath because you don’t want to get hit by a crane?

 

J: Yeah apparently. But obviously, you know that that doesn’t happen, because you’re not dumb. Because you look around and you see that there’s no crane in the tunnel because it is tiny and- anyway, it just doesn’t make sense.

 

Yeah. So but I still do it and like sometimes I mean I obviously don’t force myself, if I’m gonna die, like, yeah you know we’re good. But it’s still something that I think about when I go into town.

 

Background

The informant is Brazilian-American, and currently lives in America. Half of her family still lives in Brazil, the other half is from the U.S.

 

Nationality: Brazilian-American

 

Location: Los Angeles, CA

 

Context:

I asked about any superstitions people had.

 

Notes

I would categorize this as a homeopathic folk belief, but I’m unsure. It’s a protective/preventative belief. You perform and action in order to prevent something from happening. Very similar to knocking on wood. Although the informant doesn’t believe a crane is going to swipe her head off, she still does it, just in case. And for tradition, as well, as it was one that she shared with her grandfather.

 

Cars and tunnels are both dangerous, which can lead to a lot of folklore about them. Especially considering how much time is spent in cars by Americans, it’s no wonder that there’s so much folklore surrounding the two.

 

Urban Legend: The Children with the Black Eyes

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: FedEx Office of Management
Residence: Plano, Texas
Performance Date: 3/22/2019
Primary Language: English

I’ve lived in Texas for about a year now, and all the locals I work with have told me a lot about the mysterious events that are connected with the state.  The creepiest one I’ve heard is The Children with the Black Eyes.

In the nineties, a man was returning to his car after work when two kids knocked on his door asking for a ride.  He could tell the kids were odd in some way, and he became very anxious and scared.  He looked away from the kids for a second, and when he looked back, their eyes turned pitch black and they started screaming at him to let him in.

Obviously he drove away, and later he spread the word about the event.  Weirdly enough, other people who heard about his experience came forth and said that they and others have had similar encounters.

Context:

The informant is my sister.  After college, she moved to Texas for her work at FedEx.  Her colleagues told her about many folkloristic and supernatural legends about the state, but this one was the one she feared most.  She is not a fan of real supernatural encounters—she would rather watch fabricated stories on television—and was scared during the entire work day.  The knowledge is fairly fresh in her mind, having heard it less than a year ago, and when I confronted her in order to obtain interesting examples of folklore from her new home, this was the first one that came to mind.

Thoughts:

In contrast to my sister, hearing about the supernatural, hauntings, and real-life ghost stories is both scary and intriguing.  Safe in my California residency, I have no need to fear these children, but I can empathize with the origin story and the man involved.  I think this legend is different from most others because it was not just the one man who encountered the children, but many people; this statement gives the legend more validity—I actually believe that instances like this did occur—and makes for a more enticing and interesting legend.