Category Archives: Festival

Inappropriate Chanting in Theatre

Nationality: Dutch
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/23/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Dutch

Informant: In theatre you normally have an opening night to get everyone to, like, get excited and pumped.

Collector: How does that work?

Informant: So normally everyone just gets in a circle and we talk about the experience. Like, what we’re excited about, and what we really wanna show these people tonight. In my old theatre group, in high school, we did this chant. It was ridiculously inappropriate! But it was great because it got everyone pumped up.

Collector: What was the chant?!

Informant: Um..it’s a little inappropriate.

Collector: It’s okay!

Informant: “Fuck that nigga shit, fuck that nigga shit.”

Collector: Oh! Why??

Informant: I don’t know how it got started, but to like build that up it was like “Energy, energy all around. You can bring a nigga up you can bring a nigga down!”  And as soon as that got built up, everyone would go, “Ah! Fuck, that nigga shit. Fuck that nigga shit.” But it was great because it was a sound-proof room, so we would do that before almost every show.

Collector’s Notes: I hear about a lot of circles in ceremonies, and I think it carries a lot of significance.  We talked about circles symbolizing cycles and the seamless movement from beginning to end back to beginning.  A show, in a way, is like a cycle, and the opening night is the beginning of the end.  This is especially true in a high school or college theatre group that puts a couple shows on every year.  They cycle through the different stages of the show.  The opening night is the liminal point where they go from practice to performance.  I’ve also heard about a lot of cases of group chanting for ceremonies.  There is a unity I think that comes from saying things in large groups of people.  Also, when something is chanted and repeated a lot, it lends itself to being learned by others.  That way, people can easily enter into the community.  This particular chant was a few choice words to say the least.  That may have had something to do with the fact they were in high school, and that sort of  language was taboo.  However, the tension and adrenaline they got from using that kind of “forbidden” language at a school function probably gave them a lot of energy to put toward performance.

 

 

Chinese New Year

Nationality: Cantonese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: 4/15/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Cantonese

My informant used to receive Chinese red envelopes when she was a child growing up in San Francisco in Chinese New Year. On those occasions, upon receiving them she would give some traditional Chinese greeting like 恭喜发财 (Geng hei fat choi – congratulations and be prosperous) and 新年快樂 (sun li fai long – happy new year). She says that there were lost of other greetings she said but she couldn’t remember them very well anymore. But after she reached sixteen, her parents stopped giving her envelopes, she assumes that they forgot, and she stopped asking for them because she thought that it was rude.

Analysis

I think that the parents of my informant stopped giving her Chinese new year envelopes because she reached an age where she no longer needed to ask for them. Also, I believe that her family, since she and her parents had essentially grown up in San Francisco, there was less urgency to keep up a Chinese tradition which had no place in modern American society.

Navidad en Colombia

Nationality: Colombian/American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego, CA
Performance Date: 4/17/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

This is a month long celebration of Christmas from December 1 to 25. In general, this is a party where everyone drinks every night, skip school for a few days, and have a huge party. Everyone goes to bed at 5 am everyday, and there are fireworks and canciones about Jesus being born. It is supposed to be about family and people being thankful for each other being in America. It has a lot of religious significance and has more meaning than most.

Analysis

My informant says most Colombians practice this in America, and that all the Colombian families in San Diego would do this. His great-grandparents, grandparents and parents would come over and celebrate this with him with lots of Colombian ‘cumbia’, or Spanish music. He believes that this festival makes him feel special because he has his own kind of Christmas which is uniquely Colombian and brings him closer to his national identity. In my opinion, this is a festival whose original meaning seems to have been replaced with letting go and partying all day, which shows how traditions can change as time passes on.

A Wedding Artifact

Nationality: American
Age: 20s
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English

A Wedding Artifact:

J.S.: “I cannot recall seeing, so much as hearing about certain artifacts that have been a part of my cultural folklore. The first artifact that comes to mind is a broom that would be used in wedding ceremonies. I remember my mother talking about “jumping the broom” at parent’s wedding. To this day she doesn’t know where the broom is. I have even seen a picture of family friends jumping over a broom at the doors of the church at the end of the church service for their wedding. My paternal grandmother, or E’ah, would tell me that jumping the broom was a tradition dating back to slavery, when black slaves technically could not be married, because marriage was a civil contract, and civil contracts could only be entered into by free persons. The couple would jump over a broom at the conclusion of their wedding service, usually held where the slaves would gather for worship. It has some connection to west-African traditions, though my grandmother never elaborated much more than that.”

J.S. explains here his experience concerning artifacts of folklore in his life, especially one that pertains to a wedding ritual. He reflects upon this ritual fondly, despite not knowing where the broom is at present. Jumping the broom is something he regards to be an African American tradition that is even supposed to have roots back to West Africa itself.

Croatian Wedding in 1964

Nationality: Croatian, American
Age: 71
Residence: San Pedro, California
Primary Language: Croatian
Language: English

Croatian Wedding in 1964:

ME: What was your wedding like in 1964, Croatia?

V.H.: In the morning we get up, I fixed my hair, I dressed up, and around one o’clock we go to church. S. comes too, and we had a ceremony in church. After that, we go a little around the village, and one guy had an accordion, he made music, and young kids were singings. After four or five o’clock, at the H. house, his Mom and Dad, and my Mom and Dad fixed the table and made food. We ate dinner, it was a meal like regular meals, with soup, and bacon meat, like that. And then we had cake, and after that, we had singing and accordion music, and after midnight everyone left.

ME: Thank you for letting me know your wedding experience.

 

V.H. explains what went on during her wedding day, being wedded to her husband S.H. in 1964. This wedding was done according to the traditions of the Zadar region of Dalmatia, Croatia, and included a visit to church, and a later afternoon and early evening celebration that lasted up until midnight. Various phases were experienced, such as the dinner meal, the cake, and the music. To this day, the clothing this couple wore on their wedding day also survives.