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: Musical
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.
You Are My Sunshine
As a morning ritual before school days, Cat’s mom would always come into her room to wake her up. Since Cat was such a terrible morning person, her mom would try and perk her up by singing the song: “You Are My Sunshine.” He mom would come into the room singing You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray, you’ll never know dear how much I love you, please don’t take my sunshine away. Every time that her mom got to the line “love you,” her mom would pull off Cat’s covers to lovingly force her out of bed. Because her mom would pull her covers off every day on the same line, Cat would clutch onto her covers as strong as she could to try and thwart her mom. However, every day Cat’s mom would always succeed in waking her up to go to school. They performed this ritual every school day morning from Fifth grade through senior year of High School.
Kookaburra Christmas Song
Hannah’s Aunt lives in Australia and would visit Hanna in California every other year for Christmas. It was a tradition after Christmas dinner to sit in the living room and play games and sing songs together. One year, her Aunt changed the lyrics to the Kookaburra Song and sang it to everyone. After that Christmas, it became a tradition that every year her family would sing the Kookaburra Christmas song. The song went like this:
Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Merry, merry Christmas king of the bush is he
Laugh Kookaburra! (*everyone would laugh) Laugh Kookaburra! (*everyone laugh)
What a life you lead
Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Merry, merry, merry Christmas bird is he
Sing Kookaburra! (*everyone would sing ahhh) Sing Kookaburra! (*everyone sing)
Sing your song for me
Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Eating all the sugar plumbs he can see
Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone would yell stop) Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone yell)
Leave some there for me
Kookaburra sits in the Christmas Tree
Counting all the elves he can see
Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone would yell stop) Stop Kookaburra! (*everyone yell)
That’s not an elf that is me
Hannah and her family continue to sing the Kookaburra Christmas song every Christmas even without her Aunt. The Christmas adaptation to the song is a unique way of taking a cultural song from Australia and integrating it into a fun family song that Hannah’s family can sing that symbolizes Christmas.
Camp Song
“The final campfire, we would sing a song, well, it’s been a while so I forget how it goes, but so our camp was on one side of the lake and on the other side of the lake was a Jesus camp. Apparently that’s what it was called, I dunno, but that’s what we called it. We kind of liked to mess with them a little bit, I dunno if we thought that we were better or something, but it was just a fun thing to do for us during camp. And so what we were singing about was really, I mean it wasn’t malevolent at all it was just a fun camp song, but the last line of the song was “AND NOW HE’S DEAD”* and we would just scream it across the lake. And we had all this fire, so, it would look at all scary.”
*At this line, all of the campers would shake their arms up in the air.
This was a custom enacted by the children at my informant’s camp. It always occurred at the end of the summer, a last huzzah of sorts. The religious camp across the lake was different from the camp my informant attended; it’s possible that there was something of a rivalry, or perhaps they just didn’t get along, but the screamed last line was a definite intentional goading. More importantly, though, it’s a tradition at the camp that unites the campers against the ‘others’ across the lake, and most likely played into numerous jokes at the other camp’s expense. It would be done on the final night to re-cement this impression and the unity among the campers before they had to disperse, ending the period of the summer to start a new one.