Author Archives: Charlie Blecker

A Serbian joke

Nationality: American
Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/30/16
Primary Language: English

This piece folklore is actually a running joke in my family. I have heard it dozens of times ever since I was a child. My family has a Serbian heritage that we are very proud of. When I told my mom I was collecting folklore she insisted I include it.

“A man goes to visit his best friend. The friend’s wife comes to the door. She says,  “I am sorry but your friend is very sick.” The man says, “Give him this green tea it is very good it will make him sweat,” the next day the man comes back to his friends house and knocks on the door. The friends wife comes out. She says, “I’m sorry to say but your friend died in the night,” “but did he drink the green tea,” the friend asks? “yes,” “and did he sweat,” “yes,” she says. “Very good” says the man “it is good that he sweats.””

Final thoughts: I think this joke say a lot about Serbian humor and Serbian culture in general. Most Serbian jokes I have heard fall into the genre of black comedy. Serbian sayings also tend to be very pessimistic. I think this comes from the fact that Serbia has an incredibly violent and tumultuous history in the last hundred or so years. Multiple genocides as well as an incredibly destructive civil war has led Serbians to focus on more morbid humor. When you have to deal with death on a regular basis you have to find a way to laugh at it and this is what these types of Serbian jokes allow people to do.

Lakota Sioux myth

Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17
Primary Language: English

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.

“We were taught that when we first appeared there was mother earth and that we would know that mother earth was being threatened the day that a big black snake came and the big black snake was basically… It wasn’t necessarily a snake. Because of that we were kind of prepped that it would be anything that was long and could be venomous and could be infectious and would be dark but would not be in human form. We were taught that on that day we will recognize, and this will be in hundreds and hundreds of years, a snake will come to threaten the land and we will know that it is time for the people to collect themselves and start kind of fighting against colonialism.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “The big black snake is something Ive always grown up with from the time that I was like four. This is a story I was told my great grandfather who is kind of like one of the older elders for the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota and we, I used to spend half my year up at the reservation and the big thing which is related now to the DAPL, The Dakota Access Pipe Line. Whats really interesting is that this metaphor is now being used for the pipeline and my community, my native community views the pipeline as the black snake that we were warned about and we are using this folklore to kind of fight against the colonialism in our tribe basically.”

Final Thoughts: “This piece of folklore is very interesting for how it has been repossessed to fit into a more modern context. The original myth has been taken and used as symbol by the Lakota Sioux to help protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. The practice of taking folklore and adapting it to fight for apolitical cause has been going on in America for a long time. Perhaps the most notable example of this practice occurred during the era of folk music and protest songsmith musicians like Woody Guthrie. The power of using folklore as a political tool is that it helps unite the group within their shared culture and can act as universal idea everyone can feel intimately connected to.”

The tale of the Manananggal

Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17
Primary Language: English

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.

“My first story is actually from the Philippines and it’s a tale thats told to children so that at night they don’t go into the forest, they don’t go past where they’re supposed to go in the village and it’s the story of The Manananggal. The Manananggal is a women, she’s a witch but also depending on who’s telling the story she’s also a vampire who is soul sucking and if you go outside she’ll find you and chase you back to your house. The, they take the roofs off of your house, split in half and they eat you. Then they kind of come back together and look like a normal woman and then they go back into the forest and no one knows what happens.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “It’s a story I learned from my partner and he told me it was something you tell to children in the Philippines to get them not to wander off at night. My partner and I were in remote part of Hawaii in the middle of the night and we could here the bamboo slapping back and forth on the yurt and there was no one around for miles. My partner couldn’t sleep because he was convinced The Manananggal  was gonna come eat us. Which I thought was hilarious? The whole thing is that if you don’t go to sleep the manananggal is gonna come get you and its something my partner is still afraid of in his late 20s.”

This story is similar in its function to La Llorona as both serve as cautionary tales designed to make sure children do what they are told. Both also feature women who can serve as mother figures but transform into monsters. These tales are present in many different cultures all around the world. It seems that using monsters to get kids to behave is a near universal l form of parenting all over the world.

Origin for the name Usnavy

Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17
Primary Language: English

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.

“There is this story about all these women who were born in the 1950s in Puerto Rico, a lot of them are named Usnavy and people couldn’t figure out why and then they realized that in the 50s or the late 40s the United States military had a port in Puerto Rico and all the locals saw these huge boats and the boats said  U.S. NAVY but the letters were all evenly spaced and they thought the name of the boat was Usnavy and so they named all these little girls Usnavy.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I think I was visiting a friend in Puerto Rico and he was just telling me little known fact about Puerto Rico and this was one of those. Like did you know that the national frog is not even native to Puerto Rico? It’s from Hawaii ETC.”

Final thoughts: This piece of folklore is an example of folklore connected to the tourist industry the story operates a s apiece of trivia specifically designed for tourists from the United States who will get the joke. It is a piece of folklore designed by the population of the Philippines but the audience is meant to be a tourist.

variation on La Llorona myth

Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17
Primary Language: English

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.

“This is a legend back in Mexico that this mom, she had children. I don’t recall how many but she drowned them, she drowned her children in a river and now the conscience of that or her penalty for that is she must you know every day and every night… She just walks around everywhere crying and crying “my children, my children,” and in Mexico they threaten kids or they worn kids that if you don’t behave La Llorona is gonna come get you. So if you don’t go to sleep or you don’t finish your food or whatever La Lorna will come get you.”

Background information about the performance from the informant:” I remember when I was a child. I think I was around, I would say maybe 5 or 6 that my parent told me this legend that I learned about it. You kind of learn how to behave. Like ok so if you don’t behave or if you don’t do this La Llorona is gonna come and get you or scare you.”

This piece is particularly interesting because it reveals how pervasive the La Llorona myth is. I had three different vacations on that story given to me in my brief time collecting folklore. They were all surprisingly consistent. I think this shows that the La Llorona myth is very prevalent both in Mexico and in California.