Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Friends and Spicy Food

Nationality: Gabon
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/25/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandinka

Subject:

Social custom regarding spicy food

Informant:

Saran Kaba grew up in Gabon. Her family is mostly from Gabon and Guinea, and strongly identify with Mandingo culture which is prevalent throughout the region. Saran immigrated to the United States in 2014, where she now lives and studies at the University of Southern California.

Original Script:

“We are not allowed to pass, like, directly pepper, to like somebody, because that means that you want to, like you will be in conflict. So like if you like a person, you don’t give pepper at first. You know, like, pepper, like something spicy, because it will lead to some sort of conflict or miscommunication.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Saran doesn’t know where she learned this, or the reasoning behind it, only that it is a widespread custom not to give somebody any kind of very spicy food.

Thoughts About the Piece:

Very spicy food can be painful. Perhaps this custom arose from the concern that feeding people food that is more spicy than they can handle might upset them, and hurt the relationship. Spicy food also causes your nose to run and tongue to hurt, which might make it difficult for them to have a conversation or maintain a graceful countenance, which may cause awkward social situations.

Stealing Gold

Nationality: Gabon
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/25/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandinka

Subject:

Custom regarding gold

Informant:

Saran Kaba grew up in Gabon. Her family is mostly from Gabon and Guinea, and strongly identify with Mandingo culture which is prevalent throughout the region. Saran immigrated to the United States in 2014, where she now lives and studies at the University of Southern California.

Original Script:

“Okay, I mean you are not allowed to steal in general, but like, if you steal gold in my culture, like, bad things will happen to you. You become, uhh, unfortunate for the rest of your life. Like, what my mom told me is that gold is, gold is like a metal that comes from the ground and water, and that earth, and everything related to water is related with, like, spirits. So, if you steal gold, that means that you steal something spiritual, and yeah it will just lead to like, everything bad, so that’s that. Whenever I say spirits… it’s a lot of things. It’s like, just umm, it’s just different… first of all like bad energy. But also it’s like people giving bad luck to you. Also what else, like, people from the dead like, ghosts, kind of haunting you.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Saran’s mom taught her about this. She seemed reluctant to mention any details, but she did briefly state that somebody in her family had stolen gold, and that that was viewed as very bad. She couldn’t think of any reason for why stealing gold might be seen in such a drastically negative light.

Thoughts About the Piece:

Gold is a precious metal. Somebody’s most valuable item might be a gold item, or perhaps somebody saved some money in gold. Gold items might also be sentimental, such as wedding rings. Perhaps for these reasons, stealing gold is held as a much worse offense than stealing any other item.

Naming Children

Nationality: Gabon
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/25/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandinka

Subject:

West African Rituals Regarding Newborn Children

Informant:

Saran Kaba grew up in Gabon. Her family is mostly from Gabon and Guinea, and strongly identify with Mandingo culture which is prevalent throughout the region. Saran immigrated to the United States in 2014, where she now lives and studies at the University of Southern California.

Original Script:

“Whenever a child is born, we always wait um seven days to name the child and to… yeah to name the child. And um, we shave, like, the complete hair of the child after seven days. Just because, like, we want to remove any kind of, like, bad energy because like, babies are born with hair, so like it’s kind of impurity for us, it’s… a sign of impurity so like by shaving their hair we just remove like any kind of impurity and yeah to make like the child kind of… pure. Umm, and if the born child is like a female, we sacrifice one sheep, and if the child born is a male, we sacrifice two sheeps. I guess just because guys are… more wealthy than girls I don’t know. So that’s something that, like, my mom taught me.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Saran learned of these rituals from her mom, and also knows that waiting seven days to name the child is based on a Muslim tradition, which she says is prevalent in in her culture. She doesn’t know any more details than that.

Thoughts About the Piece:

This is similar to some European traditions I have heard of, which involve waiting to name a child in case it does not survive early infancy. However, the head shaving is interesting: I know that many mothers I’ve encountered prize their baby’s hair, and I also know that in Jewish tradition, you are not supposed to cut a child’s hair until after their third birthday. Regarding the sacrifices, it seems like the birth of a baby boy is celebrated much more than that of a baby girl, although I don’t know enough about Mandingo culture to say whether that is an artifact of underlying sexism or if there is some other reasoning.

Eating In Chinese Restaurant on Christmas

Nationality: American
Age: 55
Occupation: Musician/ Web Producer
Residence: New York City, NY
Performance Date: April 20
Primary Language: English

“Ok… the tradition is every umm year for Christmas Eve or ummm Christmas Day we are Jewish, we do in fact go to a Chinese restaurant to eat ummm dinner and it’s a very silly thing. and we do it because we heard about the tradition and it’s a very… you know… as somebody who’s Jewish, you do feel a little out of place during Christmas because it’s all consuming everywhere in society and so it’s kind of like a funny thing that’s become a tradition of actually participating in your own way christmas which is if you’re Jewish you go to a Chinese restaurant so… it’s…that’s… it’s funny it’s almost like a counter tradition or a part of the tradition of Christmas that a Jewish person would eat in a Chinese restaurant”

That’s interesting about this tradition is that it isn’t really traditional to Jewish culture, it’s a very new thing for Jewish people to celebrate christmas in this way. It’s a way to feel included within Christmas. The informant seems to have gotten the tradition from his peers. He is from New York City which does have a high population of Jewish people. The fact that New York City has this high population of Jewish people seems to permeate the culture of his current residency.

Cinnabons at Macalaster

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Paul, MN
Performance Date: 3/17/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Informant Description/ Context of performance: Over our spring break, one of my friends told me about a tradition they hold in a music group she’s part of at school. The music group is called AME, which stands for African Music Ensemble. They have concerts a couple times throughout the semester, and after each concert there is an after party filled with various drinking games and traditions. The professor who runs the group is called Sowah.

Original Script:

Interviewee: In Ensemble during our after parties we make Cinnabons… while we are hammered out of our minds. And ALL the people who take singing lessons with Sowah sing a song that has a word in it that sounds like “Cinnabon” and then we feed pieces of the Cinnabons to everyone. But the rule is that you can’t feed yourself, you MUST feed someone else a piece.

Me: Do you know when that tradition started? Or like how it started?

Interviewee: It was started by this person named Natalie like 6 or 7 years ago, and people enjoyed it so we just kept it going. I’m not 100% sure as to like why it started though.

Me: Got it, did she just randomly make it up or was there some reasoning behind it?

Interviewee: Yeah okay so the reason it was Cinnabons was because the song has a word in it that sounds similar to Cinnabon, like if a person who doesn’t know anything about AME or any of the African songs at all and head this song, they’d be like “why are they talking about Cinnabons?” And then at the very end of the song, we go MMMMMMmmmmmm. So it’s like MMmmm its so yummy at the Cinnabons.

Conclusion: One thing I’m always curious about is how these traditions came about. How did someone just decide to set these rules that would soon to go on to become tradition for many years to come? There was no clear answer in this case, but it was interesting to observe a culture like a music group in a small liberal arts school in Minnesota.