Informant is a Peruvian friend who was visiting me this week. She first heard of the Amancaes festival from her grandmother. The Fiesta de San Juan was a festival that took place in the hills of the Amancaes located in the seaside Rimac district of Lima. The Amancaes are bright yellow flowers that grew on these hills during the months of June and July.
The Festival of Amancaes evolved from the pilgrimage site because of the beautiful Amancay flowers that blossomed during the months of June and July and covered the hills in their entirety. In these celebrations, limeñans of all classes and races came down to the hills for unlimited food, music and dance. This celebration went on until 1952 when it was discontinued because the hills of Amancaes were invaded by squatters coming from the outskirts in search of better opportunities in the capital.
This festival was meaningful because Limeñan society has always been very stratified and segregated by class and race. Limeñans of European descent always looked down upon the indigenous and African populations, but on this one day (like Mardi Gras and the Ancient Roman’s Saturnalia) all of these social mores are forgotten and people of all races and classes would party together and share food and drink. Now, there is a festival that was started two years ago called Mistura, this is a gastronomic festival organized every year in Lima and it has become so popular that tickets are sold out almost immediately after they go on sale. This festival is doing the same purpose that the Festival de Amancaes used to do which was to bring society together by providing them with something that people of all ages, races and social classes enjoy: good food.
Category Archives: Kinesthetic
A bag of potatoes
Context
This short song/lullaby is performed to a child of the ages 0-3 years of age for no particular reason. When sung, the adult is usually hugging the child and swaying along to the beat of the song.
Material
Yo vendo un costal de papas, ¿quien me lo quiere comprar? Lo vendo por diabluriento y porque me ha pagado mal.
Translation
I sell a bag of potatoes, who wants to buy it? I sell him for mischief and because he has paid me wrong.
Meaning of the Song
The child is being referred to as a bag of potatoes that the adult wants to sell because the child is always getting into trouble and doing wrong.
Analysis by the informant
The informant is unsure as to where she learned the song but she believes it was once a romance song but she changed the wording of a section of the song so it would be a childhood song instead. The informant does not remember singing it to her daughters but she does sing it now to her grandsons whom live with her and are of ages 2 and 4. Her youngest grandson sometimes sings along with her as she sings it to him. The informant performs the song as a playful form with her grandsons because she carries them and they sing it with her. It is a playful form in which she tells them how much of troublemakers they are but that she still loves them.
Analysis by the interviewer
I think this is a nice short song that is not exactly a lullaby but not a full song or proverb, just a short saying which has a lot of meaning to both the informant and the child. Seeing it in its original context, I believe that the children get the same meaning from the short song as the informant because the children are always smiling and in a good mood when it is being sung to them.
Dance Shakeout
This is a ritual performed by my informant’s dance team prior to every performance. The team would stand in a circle and the team captain would select a number, generally 10 or 15. The girls would start to shake their right hand in the air at the wrist, counting up from one to the number previously selected by the captain. Once they had shaken that hand that many times, they would switch to the left hand and repeat the process. Then the right foot, then the left. Then they would return to the right hand and shake that one fewer times than the previous shake, and the ritual would continue on. Each round would be counted slightly louder than the previous. When it got down to where you only shook every hand and foot once, all of the girls would either do a pre-decided cheer or simply jump up and down yelling to prepare them for their performance, and then go out onstage.
This is a very common warmup exercise in many performing arts; it is described in the book Acting Antics: A Theatrical Approach to Teaching Social Understanding to Kids and Teens with Asperger’s Syndrome (29), and was also mentioned to me by another informant from Georgia before her dance competitions. It’s important because it loosens the muscles after stretching them and honing focus, and it is done together in a circle to encourage the connection between the performers before they go onstage. It increases in volume to either release some of the tension or egg it on, throwing into a constructive use. The cheer or scream at the end fosters team unity and spirit, and prepares the team to go out and perform.
Miss Lucy
This is a children’s hand-clapping game that my informant played when she was in elementary school with other girls. The hand motion is similar to paddy cake; the participants’ right hands meet, then each participant claps their own hands together, then the left hands meet, and then it repeats. Some specific lines go with specific movements: at “operator”, the participants put their hand up by their ear with their thumb up and pinky sticking out, mimicking a telephone; at “dark dark dark”, there is just continual clapping with the word for emphasis; at “bra bra bra”, it is the same thing as “dark dark dark”.
“Miss Lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven, and the steamboat went to
Hello operator, please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me, I will chop off your
Behind the ‘fridgerator, there laid a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it, and it went right up her
Ask me no more questions, please tell me no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom, zipping up their
Flies are in the meadow, the bees are in the park
Miss Lucy and her boyfriend are kissing in the
D-A-R-K
D-A-R-K
D-A-R-K
Dark dark dark!
The dark is like the movies, the movie’s like a show
The show is like a tv show, and that is all I know
I know I know my ma, I know I know my pa
I know I know my sister with the 80 meter, 80 meter bra bra bra!”
This particular clapping game song has very simple hand movements, but the text is very interesting. It engages in a lot of scandalous tabooistic discourse, and is cleverly constructed so as not to actually say any inappropriate words. For example, at “Miss Lucy went to heaven, the steamboat went to/Hello operator”, the word “hello” serves both as the greeting and as the word “hell”, where the steamboat presumably went. However, because it’s inappropriate for primary aged children (generally female) to be talking about such things as boys zipping up their flies, it’s recited in a way where they’re not technically saying anything inappropriate, though they do mean it. This tabooistic discourse is indicative of the kind of things that children at this age would be wondering about, or hearing about, and it is often passed among children and taught by friends in older grades or older siblings, continuing its tradition.
The Butterfly Stretch
“I remember, we would wake up friggin’ early ass in the morning, and then, we would, like, warm up together and do the butterflies, with, like, our legs crossed, and we would, like, flutter, I don’t know… It’s a stretch, and um… then for some reason, we’d be okay, like, all the little girls, you’d see, like smiling, like oOOoOo… and then we’d do, like, the little circle—the arm circle things, and like you know, you were flying somewhere, like I could just imagine that. I was seven, that was, that was fun. It was fun, pretending to be a butterfly for a little while… because I guess you’re supposed to be graceful, with gymnastics in some sense.”
The informant recounted a stretching ritual she would perform with her gymnastics peers at the beginning of each class as something to help break the ice that existed between them at the beginning of the session. She found it especially helped shy or quiet kids and enabled her to talk to her friends after the moment of silliness (her and her peers pretending to be butterflies). She thought it might serve a purpose for her as a college student (“Like, can’t we all do butterflies in class, like, the first day of class?”).
I agree with the informant that a shared performance represents an opportunity for conversation because it creates a shared experience. This is similar, perhaps, to other types of “ice-breaker” performances for adults (which are often other sorts of games), though it has the added benefit of being an exercise.