Author Archives: Charlie Blecker

Urban legend relating to the origin of the song In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Residence: Ketchum, Idaho
Performance Date: 4/25/16
Primary Language: English

This piece of folklore was told to me by a friend while we were talking about music he mentioned the story offhand and I got my recorder and asked him to tell me the whole story

“This is sort of like a music urban legend and it has to do with the song In the air by Phil Collins. Anyway the story goes that In The Air Tonight is actually based on a true story. So like the story goes that a while before Phil Collins wrote the song he was standing and he was on a bridge and he looked down and he saw that there was this guy drowning but Phil Collins was too far away to rescue him but he saw this other guy who was near enough to save the guy who was drowning and that man just let the guy drown. So the story goes that after that experience Phil Collins wrote In The Air Tonight about that incident and thats what all the lyrics like “If you were drowning I would not lend a hand” come from. And supposedly after Phil Collins wrote the song he saw the man again at one of his concerts and Phil Collins looked the guy dead in the eyes and played In The Air Tonight right at him. And thats sort of the legend that goes along with that song.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I heard this when I was in a record store and I was talking to someone there about music and Phil Collins came up and he was like “do you know what In The Air Tonight is actually about?” and I told him I didn’t and told me this whole crazy story and since then I’ve heard it a couple other times and its just one of those rock and roll legends that probably aren’t true but are fun to talk about.”

Conclusion: This piece is interesting because it is a very modern piece of folklore. In the Air Tonight was released in 1981 which means that the legend is only a couple decades old. It is also interesting because it appears to be a complete fabrication with no basis in reality. Phil Collins has stated multiple times that none of the events described above occurred. I think that this stories serves as a musical creation myth. A fun explanation for why a song came to be that people can share with each other.

Annotation: If you would like to learn more about the history of this urban legend read “FACT CHECK: In the Air Tonight.” Snopes.com. N.p., 21 Feb. 2016. Web. 25 Apr. 2017.

Indian marriage ritual

Nationality: Indian/American
Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“I’m planning a wedding so I have a lot of wedding things on my mind and one ritual I participated I not long ago is this ritual where a woman, It’s so patriarchal, its awful. But I tried it out and it was pretty cool and it really brings the family together. So basically the woman fasts all day long from sunrise to sundown all day long. You eat nothing, nothing at all and then at the end of the day the woman get together they eat they celebrate and the whole point of it is for us to pray and ask the gods for a long life for your husband. Sometimes its for your kids to but it’s really for the husband. Its super patriarchal right but the cool thing is that nowadays the husbands fast with the wives as well, so they do it as well. You cannot break the fast until you go and see the moon. You can’t look at the moon directly. You have to look at it through this thing that almost like a cheese cloth. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s a circle. It’s a metal circle and you can shift through stuff. A sifter I think is what it’s called. You look at the moon through that and you can’t look at your husbands direct face either. You have to look at the moon first. Its bad luck to break your fast before being the moon. You look at the moon first and you look at your husband and then your husband gives you your first sip of water and he thanks you and he feeds you your meal and he washes your feet and all these other things he does for you for praying for him all day long.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I heard about this ritual while planning my wedding and this is just one of the rituals. There are a thousand different rituals and superstitions associated with getting married. I was told about his one and I decided to try it out. I remember when I did this I couldn’t find the freaking moon so my partner had to drive me around for three hours looking for the moon. We were living in Santa Cruz and we just had to drive forever looking for the moon.”

Final thoughts: This is the only marriage ritual I collected which is interesting because I think marriage is one of the most folklore heavy rituals there is. This specific one seems to tie marriage to the moon and I would be very interested in seeing if other marriage rituals in other cultures also connect the moon to marriage. It also interesting how marriage helps connect people back to their cultural rituals in a way they are not when they are not in the process of getting married.

The origin behind The Qixi Festival

Nationality: Chinese American
Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“So a long time ago there was a very poor cowboy who was a really nice person and worked really hard in the farms and one day from heaven came down seven fairies. They were the seven daughters of the heavenly father and the heavenly mother. The daughters came down and they really enjoyed what they saw on earth and they played around and had a lot of fun. One of them, the youngest of the siblings, the youngest fairy noticed this cowboy who was very hardworking and she fell in love with him immediately. When all her sisters went back into heaven after that random visit she stayed married to this cowboy and they had an old tree as witness of their marriage and lived very happily. Not ever after though. They had two kids and were very happy however eventually this news went to the heavenly mother shepherd about this and she got really really upset because it was against the heavenly rule that very cant marry earthly men so she came down to get her daughter to take her back to the heavens. This was very, very sad for the cowboy and for the whole family. The cowboy tried to catch them while the heavenly mother was trying to take the daughter away and the heavenly mother noticed that she drew a river to stop the cowboy from catching them and that river ended up actually becoming The Milky Way.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: One well know Chinese festival or holiday which you don’t get work off for but is very popular is July the seventh which is called The Qixi Festival or Chinese Valentine’s Day. The origin of it is from this sad story. The day that the mother took the daughter away was July the seventh and that story became the foundation of Chinese Valentine’s Day. And only on this day can the cowboy and his kids reunite with his wife.”

Final Thoughts: “The fact that this holiday is referred to as Chinese Valentines Day is interesting in itself because it implies the holiday is some sort of offshoot of the american holiday when in reality it is much older. The story behind the festival works as a creation myth. The story both explains why Chinese people should celebrate the festival and also serves to explain the origin for an important piece astrological image.”

Annotation: If you want to learn more about the original myth of the Weaver Girl and The Cowherd read Idema, Wilt L. (2012). “Old Tales for New Times: Some Comments on the Cultural Translation of China’s Four Great Folktales in the Twentieth Century” (PDF). Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies. 9 (1): 25–46.

Peruvian Sun ritual

Nationality: Peruvian American
Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“One thing in Peru thats really important is the sun. In Peruvian mythology because the sun god is who created the Inka empire so it’s a huge thing for Peru to celebrate the sun. To this day they have festivals of the sun and for that everything is supposed to be toned yellow or gold so everything you where is gold or golden white and you try to replicate what Inka’s might have worn during those times to celebrate the sun. And its huge because the sun  featured in lots of Peruvian art and gold and yellows are huge colors in Peruvian clothes and art and architecture. It’s interesting as well because it was the gold and the riches that attracted the conquistadors in the first place to kind of ruin that. Still to this day The Festival of the Sun is a huge festival.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I began learning about this festival in order to help reconnect me to my Inka roots. This festival has been going on for hundreds of years and I’m very happy that they continue doing that every June and it’s a wonderful festival that is designed to thank the sun and also the  earth. Which for me is important because it is making me closer to my roots and who I am and because so much of who I am comes from the other part the Spanish part.”

Final thoughts: This is a large communal ritual which associates a group of people with an elemental force, in this case the sun. The fact that this festival is still going on helps reconnect the Peruvian people to their Inka roots and reminds them of their own history and importance. In this way they act as both the teller and the audience for this piece of folklore. The celebration also serves the duel pour pace of connecting the people to their culture and connecting their culture to the natural world by using the sun as a symbol.

The Festival of Colors

Nationality: Indian/American
Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“One big Indian tradition is a celebration yearly celebration called The Festival of Colors. Im sure you guys have seen images of things like the color run on the internet but all that actually originates from this Indian festival called The Festival of Colors. There are so many different stories as to why we have this tradition where we just go out and we throw colors at everyone. Some people say its because it’s a celebration of spring but the reason why ww do it  that I have heard the most is that what happened was there were two gods. One was goddess and the goddess asked the god to prove his love for her. So the god thought for along time about how to prove his love for her and in the end he created the colors just to show her how much he loves her. So at that point the god was also able to distinguish between good and evil and so when you’re throwing color you throwing goodness into the people around you’s lives.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “That celebration has always been one of my favorite celebrations because of the story behind it and the idea of colors representing love. In fact I liked it so much that me and my fiancée took our engagement photos at The Festival of Colors. Also throwing colors just looks so beautiful.”