Category Archives: Folk Dance

Money Spraying

Text:

“People will come forth and spray them with money to show love and support — and oftentimes, if it is something like a service of songs, it’s also financial support in a time of need. So essentially, the celebrants are just dancing in the middle, and then people will come with dollar bills or sometimes five-dollar bills. Typically, it’s small amounts because what matters most during this act of celebration is that there are a lot of bills on the floor. People essentially shower the celebrants with money.”

Context:

The informant is a 21-year-old of Nigerian descent who recounted a money spray at her own graduation party. A common practice in Nigerian celebrations, especially those with Yoruba and Igbo roots, is for guests to dance up to the person being honored and press or toss currency against them as a blessing and a show of collective support. She recalled the experience as joyful and deeply validating, noting that the loving words accompanying the spray added a layer of emotional richness that far surpassed the monetary value of the act itself.

Analysis:
Money spraying is a cross between material gifting and ritualized blessing — economically meaningful, and symbolically prophetic all at once. The bills are not for the practical transfer of wealth. Their value is in their accumulation and display. A floor covered with money is a visual statement of the collective love, communal investment in the future of the person being honored, and the strength of the social network surrounding them. This is consistent with what folklorists refer to as “gift folklore”: exchanges in which the social relationship enacted and reaffirmed is more important than the object given. For the diaspora, where Nigerian and American cultures coexist, the money spray also serves as an assertion of ethnic identity, a way to mark a celebration as uniquely Nigerian, even when it occurs far from its place of origin.

Feast, Festival, and Fur – The rituals of a furcon

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Age: 27

Text: Interviewer – “When was the first time you heard of a furry convention?”

JP – “I’ve for sure sure known about them since I was younger but I didn’t really think positively about them until years later. I was a bit of an edgelord back in the day.”

Interviewer – “Have you been to one before or many?”

JP – “I’ve been to the same one, TFF, or Texas Furry Fiesta for 3 years as of now. So a couple times, I’d say.”

Interviewer – “What has been some notable elements of these, some highlights that you get excited about when traveling and going to these conventions?”

JP – “To me, the Artist Alley, a large room in the convention center where tons of different artists are posted up to sell their merchandise, get commissions in person, or advertise. It’s super cool. Besides that, the various community events that TFF has have been the highlights for me.”

Interviewer – “What rituals do you feel are active elements of every furcon, or you feel should be a part of them if not?”

JP – “Fursuiting for sure, and while it’s unnecessary I particularly have fun playing a bit of a character. I have 2 different suits, so I’m able to change up the characters I go as, which adds to the fun of it all since a lot of other people are doing the same. Some conventions even have events to show off all of the different attendees suits! Though despite it being a very integral thing, it’s still unnecessary and one doesn’t need a suit in order to attend.”

Interviewer – “What’s been your most memorable or best memory in the fandom or at a furcon?”

JP – “As far as my best memory, it would prolly be my first con just getting to spend time with some friends and having the opportunity to explore the city with them.”

Context: Similar to other fandom based conventions, a “furcon” is just that, a convention for furries or fans of the furry community to gather, go to panels, buy art, and be a meeting point for friends who would usually be online to meet up in person. When talking to JP about his involvement within the fandom, since I knew he recently went to Texas Furry Fiesta, I wanted to delve in and ask about the folk practices done at this kind of event, as I know other conventions akin to comicons have their cosplays, panels, celebrity features, and art galleries.

Analysis: Furries are one of the fandoms that have such deep cultural ties to industries, popular culture, media, and their own complex traditions, rites, and rituals. One of said rites of passage is attending a furry convention, or a furcon for short. Aside from this rite of passage, many traditional events occur, some mentioned by JP. These would include the sharing of community folk art at the artist’s alley, a dance competition, showing off the hard work and craft of fursuit makers by featuring your own, as well as being a pseudo-pilgrimage for a friend group all within the fandom to meet up. A furcon is a multi-faceted treasure trove of lore for all of those who attend, their passions, and particular interests in their characters, how they present themselves, and the boundless memories, activities, and events at their disposal.

Children’s Game (Down by the banks)

Age: 21

Text:
“Down by the banks of the hanky-panky where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky with a heap, off, over the top, land on a lily pad with the curplop.”

Context:
A girl from Denver, Colorado describing a game she used to play with her friends as a child where they sat in a circle with their palms facing up. Each person goes one by one, singing and clapping their neighbors hand at the rhythm of the song, typically increasing speed as the game progresses. If you are the last person to be slapped, you’re out of the game. The last man standing is the winner.

Analysis:
It was interesting to hear this rendition of the song because mine was slightly different in the second half from what I can remember. The beginning was the same, but the end of mine was slightly different, going, “heap, hop, soda pop, he missed the lily pad, he went curplop.” However, the heart and content was still the same, with the general storyline of the song and clapping hands while seated in a circle motion, trying to not get eliminated. This demonstrates the multiplicity and variation when passing along games.

South African Folk Songs – “My Sarie Marais” & “Deur die Bos”

Collection date: 4/25/2026

Context:

My mom immigrated to California with her parents and two siblings from South Africa when she was four. They moved for work opportunities. Growing up, her family wanted to preserve their culture as much as possible. They learned Afrikaans (the primary language in South Africa) to use around the house, ate traditional foods, and learned some smaller customs. As she tells me, my family comes primarily from the Dutch Huguenots who settled in South Africa and are called Boers. Aside from passing the culture down to their kids, my family also made a point of teaching others. One way, mom told me about is how she and her family used to teach South African folk dances and songs to kids.

Text:

My mom and her siblings learned the children’s songs or “Boeremusiek” around the house from my Ouma (grandma) and Oupa (Grandpa) growing up, similar to “how most people might learn Patty Cake or Ring around a Rosy.” My Ouma organized the lessons and taught my mom and her siblings the basic dance moves to choreograph. Her siblings, who were older, already knew some of the dances because they were children’s playground dances they played back in school. To get people involved, they would invite friends, or people they knew through Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, or other social communities.

My mom and her siblings borrow a room from the local community center and walk the kids through the dance moves. One of the moves she remembers is kids making arches with one another and then running through the middle, They would learn the moves to these dances for about a month then put on a performance once they were all ready for everyone’s parents. For the performance itself, my Oum (uncle) would play the accordion, and my Tannie (aunt) would play the recorder while my mom would sing the lyrics in Afrikaans.

Some of the lyrics as she remembers:

My Sarie Marais:

Unique melody for this song.

“My Sarie Marais is so ver van my af
Ek hoop haar weer te sien
Sy het in die wyk van die Mooirivier gewoon
Nog voor die oorlog het begin
O bring my terug na die ou Transvaal
Daar waar my Sarie woon
Daar onder in die mielies by die groen doring boom
Daar woon my Sarie Marais (2x)

Ek was so bang dat die Kaakies my sal vang
En ver oor die see sal voer”

Which she translated to:

“My Sarie Marais (Sarah Marie) is so far from me now
I hope to see her again
She lived on the shore of the Mooi river
Before this old war began
O bring me back to the old Transvaal
There where my Sarie lives
There under all the corn near the green tree with thorns
There lives my Sarie Maraie(2x)

I was so afraid, that the redcoats would catch me
and send me far away overseas”

She believes the song originates from the Boer wars of the 18th century as England was trying to colonize the land. The story of the song is from a prisoner of war longing for his girl being sent overseas as a prisoner of war. We looked up the lyrics for reference after and saw that the final two verses were cut from most versions. My mom suspects this is done to make the song more timeless, less sad and removed from the war.

Deur Die Bos

To the melody of London Bridge

“Janna Janna deur die bos
deur die bos
deur die bos
Mama kook mos lekker kos
lekker kos”

Which she translates to:

“Janna Janna through the bush
through the bush
through the bush
My mom does make good food,
she makes good food”

My mom imagines this is just a fun children’s song of kids playing in the woods convincing themselves to go back home because the food is tasty or they smell good food cooking back home. We tried looking this one up, but couldn’t really find much on it. Maybe not as much history behind this song as Sarie Marais, but still quite a fun song and it was definitely given more meaning being a representation of South African culture.

Analysis:

We had difficulty finding copies of Deur Die Bos online. This suggests that the folk song may have strong oral roots, but might not be recorded anywhere, especially not on an American folklore site. That makes the entry quite unique and valuable for me.

Although my mom and her siblings grew up learning and singing some of these folk songs in South Africa, the performances weren’t the same when they performed the same songs in California. The context, like the location and reason for the song’s performance, changed completely, changing the overall meaning of the performance under the ideas of performance theory. Back home, they were common children’s games, not much to look at; everyone knew them. But in California, the songs were a way to connect people and communicate identity. Because they were foreign, it was kind of like displaying new things in a museum to show what they’re about. The dances and songs were a way for my mom and her siblings to stay connected to their family history and culture. Alone, the dances might not seem like much, but they were part of larger family traditions carried to America that included speaking Afrikaans and eating traditional foods. My Ouma (grandma) and Oupa (grandpa) allowed their kids to adapt to much of American life. But they wanted to preserve aspects of their unique culture and traditions. By learning and performing these songs in America, they were able to hold on to and preserve those.

My mom said that she knew many friends who had immigrant parents and sometimes those traditions are lost or forgotten. Her mom taught the dances and shew grew up learning the songs from friends and family. She’s glad she learned the songs and played them with her siblings because being a first generation immigrant isn’t always easy. There are many pressures to fit in and forget about who you were of what your family is because it’s weird, unfamiliar or foreign. But the performances rejected that assimilation. They also were a way for her and her family to connect with each other. They didn’t really know any other South African families, so they had to be there for each other. The performances brought the family closer together by uniting everyone with a goal and identity. My mom thinks the dances were kind of silly looking back, but she’s glad she did it because small things like that made them a closer family.

The dance lessons also were a way for her family to share who they were to others. Especially when not many people knew about South Africa. Often, the few things Americans knew about South Africa wasn’t always positive. It was a very time where her and her parents had to navigate a complicated but generally negative global reputation. So, her family were in a way acting as diplomats to share what it really means to be South African. To humanize the culture and people beyond what the news might focus on. These folk music lessons were a small but impactful way to share that culture with others.

Hula Dance – Performance Rituals

Context:

The informant is a 19-year-old student from Santa Monica, California. Her dad is from Hawai’i, so she has been learning and performing hula since she was 5 years old.

Text:

“At the start of every practice before entering like the practice space, we all circle–stand in a circle at the entrance and do like a chant, which is it’s called like Kunihi Ka Mauna. And basically like any hula dancer you ask, they know this chat because it’s like in every halau, which is like the school’s, they do this chant. It means like ‘steep and calm is the mountain.’ And so the idea is that before you start practice, you’re asking permission to learn the hula and like enter the space. And so you’ll do, it’s called like an Oli Kahea and the Kumu, the teacher, will respond back and then when you hear like a certain line of their response, that means you can enter.

And then also you always put on and take off your skirt, like, over your head. Like, you never like step into it or like step out of it if that makes sense because, like, it’s about like– It’s, like, disrespectful to, like, put the energy, like, below you or something. Yeah, so you’re putting it over yourself, like, over your heart.

Something kind of similar to that is whenever you have a lei, the flower, the direction of the flowers goes like upward facing on your left side. So like on your left side, they’re, like facing up same thing with, like kukui nuts, are like those, you know, like the blonde or black, like, nuts. And they’re kind of like heart shaped. Same thing, like the heart shape goes up on your left side because it’s like, your heart is. So, for flowers and any kind of lay that it goes in that direction because it’s like the, since your heart is on your left side, it’s like the circulation of the energy in the correct direction.

And you dance barefoot to be closer to Mother Earth.”

Analysis:

This is a ritual that the informant says, everyone who practices hula learns early on. Hula seems to have a strong connection to both Mother Earth and their home of Hawai’i. They want to show their respect every time they perform with these rituals. Performing these rituals repeatedly every time they perform dhow their dedication to respecting Mother Earth and the culture.