Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

IBO Fest

Nationality: Nigerian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2016
Primary Language: English

Description: “IBO fest happens every year. Every August. Every second week in August. The cultural association will like rent a festival space. People are selling food. People are giving away food. There’s live music. Choreographed dances, masquerade shows. It’s the biggest collection of IBOS in the area and around the state. It’s fun. The food is overpriced but it’s good. It’s just good to see everybody. There’s always jollof rice. There’s plain rice with tomato soup. Chicken, meat pies, fried fish, fufu, mashed yams you eat with your hands, Nigerian biscuit.”

2. My informant knew of this tradition because he had been to one first hand.

3. I walked into his dorm and he was just about to go to sleep. His roommate had fallen asleep and I asked him if I could grab some quick folklore from him before he crashed. He said sure.

4. This is an interesting piece because it’s very Nigerian but is happening in America. It’s this entire subculture of people who have their own folklore and jokes and riddles. They’re not entirely Nigerian and they’re not entirely American. Even so, it’s hard to say who exactly is American. We all bring our culture to this place, and that’s what IBO fest does. Except it’s arguable that this isn’t even Nigerian. It’s some new mixture and combination that results in its own identity.

Crew Celebration

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student, athlete
Residence: LA
Performance Date: 4/1/16
Primary Language: English

JD is on the captain of USC’s crew team. He has been racing for over two years now, and the sport has, in his words, “become my life.” Rowers are dedicated athletes that train every day at the crack of dawn. The sport is brutal on the body. J tells me that if he doesn’t puke during practice than he’s not going hard enough.

Races are intense affairs. They only last a few minutes long, and rowers are pushing themselves to the limit the entire time. As in any sport, competition is taken very seriously, and winning means everything.

But rowers have an interesting way in which they celebrate their victories. At the end of the race, the winning team gets the shirts from the team that lost. As J described it, the losers literally remove the shirts they wore during the race and hand them to the victors. “The other team is basically publicly humiliated by having to take off their clothes and give them to us,” J explains.

I think this is a very aggressive celebration that encapsulates the intensity of the sport. It’s almost war-like: the champions are claiming their spoils from the competition. It is very symbolic. The winning team goes home with a material memento that symbolizes the opponents they have defeated. And the losing team goes home with nothing but their (nearly) naked bodies. Of course, I am dramatizing the celebration a bit, but the way J describes it, and from what I’ve seen of their practices and get-togethers, rowers take their sport very seriously. The war-like attitude is very much a part of it. They yell throughout the entire race, and have various other pre-race chants to pump themselves up.

These celebrations are an important part of any sport. In our society, sports have replaced war and fighting as the main way that the lay-man proves his worth. In war, victory was clear because the opponents were literally dead. But in sports, athletes have created new ways to perform and recognize their victories.

Fan Lhor

Nationality: Thai
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: LA
Performance Date: 4/4/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Thai

LS is from Thailand. She explained the folk superstition surrounding eating. According to L, “If you eat the last piece of food on a plate, you’ll get a hot boyfriend, or a fan lhor as we call it.” Food is generally shared in Thailand, served family style with a bunch of plates in the middle of the table that everyone eats from. L told me that this was a favorite custom of hers because all her family and friends took it very seriously. She explains how you say “fan lhor” as you reach for the food. “Whenever we were at the end of the meal,” L recounts, “me and friends would all shout it [fan lhor] and race for the last piece. We always wanted a hot boyfriend, obviously.”

I love this custom because it is so much fun. I have seen L perform this in person at a few dinners. It is a natural thing for her to do at the end of a meal because she is so used to doing it at home. The custom captures the spirit of Thai meals, which are meant to be lively affairs with a big group of people.

I believe the custom exists because it encourages people to finish all of the food served by making a fun game out of it. Table manners are such an interesting part of a culture because they vary greatly. In some cultures it is rude to be aggressive and loud at the table, but in Thailand it is encouraged. Furthermore, these dining customs encourage good eating habits in a fun way. Folklore has this power to stick in our minds because it is performed for us in such casual, quotidian ways. It is easier to remember folklore than traditional rules or literature because it is so informal that it can be repeated and reheard daily.

Horsemint

Nationality: American
Occupation: Botanist
Residence: San Antonio, TX
Performance Date: 4/16/16
Primary Language: English

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Horsemint is purple plant that grows in Texas. PL identifies it on nature walks, and often tells about how it was used as an insect repellant, which is how it got called horsemint.

PL: “One time a man was there whose dad used it often. His dad had horses, and would bundle up the horsemint, tie to rafters in barn, and shoe horses where the plant would rub on their backs. It worked as an insect repellent to keep flies off horses, that way they wouldn’t more or become too agitated for the farrier.”

Horsemint actually contains citronellol, a natural insect repellent, so it turns out the folk practice in this case is actually very functional. Bug sprays and other commercial products use the same type of ingredients.

 

 

Pelmeni

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Germany/California
Performance Date: 4/19/18
Primary Language: English
Language: German

My informant’s grandmother is Russian, and what was a common food in her country became a family tradition for holidays and other get togethers once they moved to the United States and settled in New Orleans. Her memories associated with that side of the family always involve making pelmeni together, giving it a lot of sentimental value. It’s interesting how the tradition is passed down and each person has their own role that they fill, including the younger children being given something to do so that they also feel included.

“Whenever we’re all together, we always make pelmeni, a Russian dumpling. My great grandma would sit down and make everything by hand (dough, meat, etc) and would pound out hundreds of absolutely perfect and soft pelmeni, the most amazing you will have in your entire life. She had 5 kids, the oldest is my grandma and youngest is my Aunt Tanya (a 24 year difference between them). As a little kid, would go to grandma’s house and get little wrappers and sit around the table and make the dumplings. My grandma would give my little sister one tiny piece of dough and meat, and my sister would fix it and say “okay that’s good but I think you could do a little better” with same piece. She would play with same piece of dough and meat for hours while the older kids and adults made the actual pelmeni. My great grandma’s five kids each have several kids who have several kids, so I have tons of super close cousins all living in new Orleans. The torch was passed down from my grandma and my mom is now the honorary one in charge of making them, and it will probably be passed on to my sister later on, since she has the knack for it.”