Category Archives: Folk speech

104.9 Magic AM Radio

Nationality: USA
Age: 28
Occupation: Oil/Gas
Residence: Midland, TX
Performance Date: 1//20/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The following story was relayed from a cousin during a night at home in south Texas. On frequent occasion during family gatherings, cousins will gather on the porch following dinner to share cocktails, beers, cigarettes, and conversation. When the night has progressed for a few hours more, the conversation shifts into each member of the conversation sharing humorous anecdotes and stories one-by-one.

 

The cousin who told the story works and lives exclusively in south Texas, and being out of college is more privy to hearing the bizarre ramblings of local radio stations in the coastal areas surrounding Corpus Christi. The labor culture that exists in this area is predominantly a mix of English and Spanish-speaking idiosyncrasies, drawing from distinctly Hispanic and Anglo modes of speech.

 

On the night of documentation, the cousin in question told a story of a particular AM radio station known as ‘104.9 Magic’, operated by a 60-something Hispanic man named Lolo Aguilar. As described by my cousin, Mr. Aguilar’s sessions on the radio center on no topic in particular and extend for sometimes a matter of hours consisting entirely of him simply speaking into the radio from whatever is on his mind, with the only interruptions coming in the form of homemade commercial breaks celebrating the popular basketball team of the San Antonio Spurs.

 

One of Mr. Aguilar’s daily ramblings proceeded as follows (to be read/imagined in a Hispanic-American dialect):

 

“Today I thought I’d talk about presidents. Couple good topics the last couple days, but I figured today I’d hold off on having people call in and just talk about a few things that’ve been on my mind lately.

 

Now, you know…the thing about presidents, and we have a lot of good ones too, throughout the years. There was Ronald Reagan. Theodore Roosevelt, uh…Abraham Lincoln. George Washington, he goes without saying. And not just them by themselves either, we had too many good ones. And people normally talk about a few when they’re talking about things like that.

 

But you know who was, maybe, perhaps the best president that nobody talk about too much like the others is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They call him FDR. He was president during Worl’ War Two, and also, he was president The Great Deprechon [Depression]. And you know, he was in office for four times. Which was the most terms of any other president. He had a lot of really goo things going for him in these time. But the thing is, he die. So he could not be president no more.”

 

What particularly stands out to me from my cousin’s story, later tuning in myself the next day to wind up listening to a ten minute discussion on Crayola’s success being measured in how many colors they offer in crayon boxes, is his encapsulation of perhaps not the exact words of Mr. Aguilar, but undoubtedly the spirit with which he carries his day-to-day personality on the airwaves. The most important notion for my cousin to capture and feed our complete understanding (as an audience to his own recollection) depends not on perfectly remembering every comma, pause, and word, instead relying on a sensory recreation of what it feels like to listen to this man on the radio.

Sore Tooth Joke

Nationality: USA
Age: 29
Occupation: Agriculture
Residence: La Quinta, CA
Performance Date: 2/23/18
Primary Language: English

The following story is a joke collected from an older cousin during a brief car ride to a hiking area. Instead of turning to music or media-based entertainment as means to pass and occupy time, my cousin and I tend to exchange long dialogues of personal philosophies and other similar thoughts. Because these types of conversations tend to last for extended periods of time, and given that this car ride would only last about ten minutes, we instead opted to share our favorite ‘dirty jokes,’ ie, anecdotal passages of humor that typically rely on sexual topics as their main basis of humor.

The joke goes as follows:

“So this man, just your average joe, he’s driving around in backwoods Louisiana, taking in the manner of the country and whatnot, looking for some local character.

He comes up on a bar, this nasty old shack of a place right on the water. Rickety, pieced together, looks like a hell of a time if you can manage to handle it. Anyway, he walks up to the front door with a few hints of second thoughts and then sees a bright yellow notice posted on the front. Big capital letters, reads: ‘Lifetime of Free Beer for anyone who completes the Three-Tier Challenge.’

So the guy shrugs and goes on in. Place is a madhouse, needless to say. He doesn’t fit in at all with his office drone attire compared to all these boondocks Louisiana maniacs.  Sure you can picture that pretty easily. Anyway, he goes up to the bartender and tells him he’s interested in the Three-Tier Challenge.

Guy looks at him like he’s crazy. ‘You sure?’

The man nods, and the bartender tells him the details:

‘Alright, well first, you gotta down a bottle of our specialty flaming pepper tequila. Without crying. Second, there’s a mean ol’ fifteen foot alligator out back with a sore tooth. And once you get that tooth out, you gotta head upstairs and take care of the roughest, toughest hooker in all of Louisiana.’

The man nods. And he goes ahead and starts.

He gets set up with the pepper tequila, and after a few long and painful minutes, he gets through the entire bottle without a single tear. Everyone’s impressed.

He stumbles out the door, drunk as shit, where the alligator’s waiting for him. Closes the door behind him. Everyone inside thinks ‘oh boy, this guy’s a goner’.

And then they hear the sounds. Thrashing, roaring, the most terrifying shrieks imaginable. Noises they don’t think could possibly come from either the man or the alligator. Even the toughest souls in that saloon are haunted to the core. The noise stops. Everyone’s quiet.

In walks the man, his outfit torn to pieces, covered in blood. He looks at the bartender and asks

‘ALRIGHT! WHERE’S THAT HOOKER WITH THE SORE TOOTH!’ ”

This particular joke certainly shows the effectiveness of using the combined surprise of subverted expectations and abrupt endings as a comedic tool. In this instance, the listener is expecting to hear the encapsulating line to the joke following the patron’s completion of the third task, but instead, his faulty (and cringe-inducing) completion of the second task serves to cut the joke short without leaving anything unresolved.

Friendships Toast

Nationality: USA
Age: 20 (all)
Occupation: Students
Residence: Austin, TX
Performance Date: 2/17/18
Primary Language: English

The following is a toast collected from a group of five friends who recite a pledge aimed at their longstanding mutual friendship. The pledge is performed during communal games involving alcohol, particularly ‘beer pong’ which is played between teams of two along the ends of a tall rectangular table.

 

The rules and practice of said game do not apply to the situation of the toast besides the table on which the game is played, which plays an integral and symbolic part to the performance of the toast. Therefore, the rules of the game will not be explained further outside of any direct relation to the proceedings of the toast.

 

The context of the situation proceeds as such:

The five friends gather around a handmade table constructed from available and basic wood materials. The table itself is kept at the host participant’s home, whose name has been excluded. While the participant is not the exclusive host to every party, each use of the table and recital of the toast is reserved to his home.

 

While there is no designated time during these parties for the toast to occur, it often falls after a few rounds of initial play of any alcohol-centered games, where everyone will have had at least one turn playing and thus have ingested sufficient amounts of alcohol to be slightly intoxicated at the very least.

 

At this point, each member of the group gathers around the table. The toast itself goes as follows:

 

(recited altogether)

“There are good ships, there are wood ships. There are ships that sail the sea. But the best ships, are friendships. So here’s to you and me!”

 

Each member of the group then simultaneously taps their beer can on the table and raises it up to drink. While raising their drinks, everyone together says (with less intensity)

 

“Down with Hitler.”

 

Each member then drinks until satisfied.

 

The pledge itself is a cheerful acknowledgment of the mutual bonds of friendship between each participant, and for the group as a whole. The concluding mention of “Down with Hitler” serves as a humorous reference to the host participant’s Jewish heritage, serving as a sarcastic assurance of false machismo that underlines the lightheartedness of the toast itself.

 

The table on which the toast is centered is constructed with dimensions of around 8 feet-by-2 feet and standing at waist height. Its top is painted with horizontal stripes of blue, green, yellow, and red, giving it a vibrant and outstanding place in the room.

 

Written in permanent marker across the top of the table are the words to the toast itself, along with various doodles such as star-bound rockets and bizarre imaginary creatures.

 

The names of each participant, accompanied by self-applied nicknames (often overly elaborate and nonsensical, otherwise only a vague relation to a defining characteristic of each person) meant to be referenced in an exclusively ironic manner.

 

These nicknames include:

 

Dr. Dreidel

A play on the stage name of popular rapper Dr. Dre and a reference to the participant’s Jewish faith.

 

Dookie Prada-G

The second part of the name a reference towards rappers’ tendencies to reference high-end clothing brands in their music in public image, itself a play on the word ‘prodigy’ despite Trevor’s complete lack of a musical background.

 

The other names of MC Betty, The Mist, and Boogiewitz 3000 are intentionally nonsensical, unrelated to the participant’s real names in any way. Thus, their humor is derived from this very nature of having no connection whatsoever to their makers.

 

 

 

 

 

Los Deditos

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 18
Occupation: University Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/22/2018
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Main Piece: Los Deditos

The following was an interview of a Participant/interviewee about a folk song, which is a bedtime song. She is marked as LT, and I am marked as DM.

LT: So the type of folklore I have is um yeah I’m just gonna say it “Este dedito fue al mercado/ Este dedito compró un huevito/ Este dedito lo cocinó/ Este dedito lo pelo/ Y este dedote se lo comió” so it kind of like uh it rhythms kind of if you sing it um multiple times I heard it first from my dad um he used to sing it to me when I was younger um and usually they sing it while they like they’re playing with your feet so uh the first “este dedito fue al mercado is with your pinky of your feet and then it moves on to the big thumb finishing with “este dedito se lo comio” because its big toe and it eats the egg and stuff um so and then my dad he tells me that he heard it from his mom so my grandma and um when he was back in Mexico when he was younger and my grandma used to do the same thing um to him and his sister as well so uh he would have that always that kinda like something that he heard in his childhood and he brought it up with me and my sister and yeah it was just me and my sister

Translation of the Song:

This little toe went to the market/ This little toe bought an egg/ This little toe cooked it/ This little toe peeled it/ And this big toe ate it

Background/Context:

The participant is eighteen years old. She is a Mexican student at the University of Southern California. She told me about how her family has been passing down the same bedtime song. This song is played

DM: Why do like having this piece of folklore tied to your family?

LT:Um I think it’s like really funny um something that you can like play with your own kids my dad did with me and it was something like bonding time I guess and it really makes up of who I am like it reminds me of my background, which is being Mexican um and it reminds me of the family that I have when my grandma was back in Mexico too

DM: Why is this piece of folklore so important to you?

LT: Um I mean it’s something that my parent cause I used to sing it after my dad would sing it to me I would sing it all the time after like it was something that they knew me for um and in fact last week my dad reminded me of it and he would just tell me like oh remember when you used to sing this one and he used to make fun of he would make fun of me like not make fun of me but he just reminded me of what I used to sing a lot um and its I remember it because of that because my dad sang it so many times that I used to sing it and I still sing it sometimes or just hum it sometimes and my dad would remember or remind me of it like oh yeah you used to sing that song

Analysis/ My Thoughts:

I have also heard this song, but I know a different version. I don’t remember the exact lyrics, but I know it was not the lyrics above. Hearing a different version of a childhood song I knew is a weird feeling because I thought it was something just within my family. It is just interesting to see someone else having the same traditions but different traditions than you. One gets so used to doing something a certain way that when they see it a different way it is an uncomfortable feeling.  

 

You Don’t Ask

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

Participant – “You don’t ask, you don’t get”

Context:

I asked the participant if she grew up hearing any common proverbs or life lessons from the people around her.

Background:

The participant was born and raised in Mill Valley, California and is currently a second semester freshman engineering student at the University of Southern California. She informed me that this proverb was extremely common in her household and told to her by her mother repeatedly.       

Analysis:

As a child, the participant was told this by her mother as a remind to use her words to get what she wanted rather than whine or pout. As time went on and the participant got older, the proverb gained more meaning and now stands as a piece of advice to work for the things you want and try your best because if you don’t fight for something and ask for it, it will never be yours.