Category Archives: Gestation, birth, and infancy

Generally up to the first year.

“Morning Accordion Song” – Russian folk song

Nationality: Russian-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 30, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Morning Accordion Song

(The attachment contains the song in Russian, a general translation, an explanation of the accompanying motions, and some additional commentary.)

Transcript of audio file (condensed and edited):

Informant: This one is…my mom always woke me up with it. [the song] She touches both my cheeks and says, “Wall. Wall.” Then she touches my forehead and says, “Ceiling.” And then she makes an electronic doorbell and touches my nose, “Zing.” Then she asks, “Is the owner home?” Then I say, “Yes,” grudgingly. Then she says, “Is the accordion ready?” Then I say, “(sighs) yes.” Then she says, “Can I play it?” Then I say, “Yes.” Then she plays the accordion with my ears (makes motion of tugging at each of the ear lobes). And that’s just like a waking up ritual.

When I asked him when he first learned the ritual, the informant said that his mother had probably doing that since he was baby. When asked whether he knew where she had learned it, he replied that he did not. “I would guess probably from her mother…It never really mattered to me,” he said. “I mean of course now I’m curious and I’ll probably ask her later today, but it had never crossed my mind to ask her. For me it was just a way she showed that she loved me.” And it seems that the ritual even today, when the informant is 20-years-old continues to function as a demonstration of affection. While his mother no longer wakes him up with the chant, she “does it whenever I’m down, and it pretty much works every time.”

In this instance, the folklore functions as a link for the informant to his childhood, his mother, and his heritage. In the sharing of other folk songs and jokes, the informant would preface them by saying, “In my broken Russian…” Nevertheless, despite any uncertainty he may have regarding his language skills, he didn’t stumble with any of the examples of folk speech he shared, having grown up with all of it.

With regards to the piece itself, it’s interesting to me that the face is the facade of a house, in which the occupant must undoubtedly be the mind, more specifically, a conscious one. The informant mentioned nothing about this distinction between the mind and body, but I can imagine that even a little chant could engrain the delineation between the two for any child’s thinking. More research would be required to account for the significance of the accordion in Russian culture.

Reincarnation

Nationality: Indian-American
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles/Palo Alto
Performance Date: April 1, 2014
Primary Language: English

This piece was performed by my co-worker. She was born in India but moved to the United States when she was three months old. Her mother comes from Delhi, but her father’s family is originally from the area that is now Pakistan. She told me this story of learning about reincarnation from her grandmother and learning that her family believed that she (the informant) had been reincarnated.

“So, when I was in middle school… I don’t know it came up but someone asked me once if I believed in reincarnation and I was like, actually I don’t know that much about it even though I am Indian. So I asked my grandma about it when I went home and she was like, ‘Actually we believe that you were partially reincarnated.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa this is really cool!’ So I asked her how she knew and she told me basically after my great-grandpa died (so her grandfather) after he died she did a little prayer, and there’s this whole ritual that you do in India….Basically she did this prayer for about a week, and at the end of the week you have this dream that tells you, or shows you what the person who you’re asking about is doing. In the dream, if you see them praying at a temple, or a mandir as you would say in Hindi, it means that they’re going to stay in the afterlife. Their soul is not coming back, but if you see them, I don’t know, doing something else that would hint they were coming back, they were coming back. My grandmother did it, I think twice, for my great-grandfather and then he, the first time, was definitely staying there. And then later on, when my mom was pregnant with me it was actually…somehow he ended up coming back, supposedly. The reason why it was weird is because this only works, you can only tell if someone is going to be reincarnated if someone else in the family becomes pregnant within six months of the person dying. So, the person died, grandma tried the thing the first time, didn’t work out. but she tried it again later, I think, and then that time… the first time it said he wasn’t coming back,  the second time he wasn’t but it was so close to me being born that we thought, maybe he is. And so when I was growing up, and the signs of reincarnation supposedly are within the first five years of life, my grandma said I used to walk exactly like him and that’s a little sketch maybe that doesn’t mean that much, you could walk like a bunch of different people and it’s not that really specific, but he had such a specific gait that they thought, wow, he’s in her, I guess. And I had a bunch of other things, like the way I would talk, it would be just like him.”

Q: Is it common to try multiple times to see what will happen?

“I don’t think so, my grandma just was curious. I think that was the first time she had ever done it, too. I know there was little bit of confusion when she interpreted, in fact I think that may be why she did it the second time because of the interpretation, and she wasn’t sure.”

 

Even though reincarnation is a fairly well-known kind of folklore, this piece is interesting because it shows that folklore doesn’t necessarily work the same way every time. The informant’s grandmother didn’t seem very experienced with the rituals, so she had to try a second time to make sure she got it right. However, that didn’t make the ritual any less legitimate, as her family still believes she was reincarnated.

 

Cihuateotl

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 22
Occupation: student/nanny
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 28 April 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant (L) is a 22 year old film student at California State University Los Angeles. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma before coming to Los Angeles for college after high school. Her family is Mexican and Catholic. At the suggestion of our mutual friend who had heard the story before, she told me the legend of the Cihuateotl. She mentioned prior to telling me that the story was not told often within her family because of how sad it is. She was told the story by her grandmother when L’s fourth cousin died in childbirth, when L was around seven years old. Though L does not tell the story often within her family, L does tell the story when other urban legends are being discussed among her friends in Los Angeles, which is where I heard some of the story prior to beginning to collect folklore for this database.  The story involves the following legendary figures:

In “native ancient Mexico,” the cihuateotl are the spirits of the women who died in childbirth. Their sadness is the reason the sun goes down at night. Once a month, the spirits haunt the streets to hold the children they were never able to hold. After sunset, they try to abduct children. Because ‘good’ children should be inside and safe by the time the sun goes down, the children they were trying to abduct are the bad, misbehaving children. This is also used to scare children into behaving, as the cihuateotl would not give the children back.

This mix of ancient myth and urban legend is an interesting intersection between old and new. Though the spirits make sense in both modern and ancient contexts, the haunting of streets does not make as much sense in ancient Mexico, which probably did not have the sort of streets and highways L referred to in her retelling.

The story also presents some interesting contrasts. The fact that the cihuateotl only abduct bad children seem to say something about how either those children  do not deserve a real mother or the mothers who allow their children to be  bad don’t deserve to have children when there are mothers who died trying to have them. While these ideas are in the background, the practical use of scaring children into behaving probably plays more of a role in why the story is told than the more subtle themes.

Hawaiian “Baby’s Firsts”

Nationality: Okinawan, Filipino, Korean, Hawaiian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Aiea, Hawaii
Performance Date: March 18th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Hawaiian

ʻahaʻaina māwaewae

The rituals start with the baby’s birth. ʻAhaʻaina māwaewae is the celebration 24 hours after a child’s birth—so what happens in this one is that… it’s like whereas the ʻahaʻaina palala (one-year celebration) is a physical celebration of the child surviving, the ʻahaʻaina māwaewae is more of a psychological celebration. This is where you decide the pathway for the child, and decide to take the responsibility of its safety and welfare. This is also when you dedicate the child to the ʻaumakua, and the reason for this is so that the child won’t be high strung and unruly; so that the child follows the traditional values of the family and their belief system. ʻAumakua is a family guardian that can take shape in the form of animals or plants or elements.

 

hiapo

Hiapo is the first born. Doesn’t matter what gender, it’s just the first born child. The reason why hiapo is so important is because that’s who the elders are gonna look toward for responsibilities and to perpetuate the traditions and to prepare and teach the younger siblings and the younger generations when they come. That’s why the ʻahaʻaina māwaewae is so important, especially with the first child, because they need to be nurtured and they take so much time.

When a woman finds out she’s pregnant, her husband will start raising a pig for the ʻahaʻaina māwaewae, and then as soon as the child is born, there’s special seafood that’s secured—these foods are like symbols of the child to be like. So… they’ll get a crab/fish (ʻamaʻama and/or āholehole) because these are the `aumakua of the area, and these are mainly specific to the families that grow up in Kaʻū because a lot of these peoples’ guardians (`aumakua) is this animal…

So the ʻamaʻama crab and the āholehole fish are the `aumakua—so they (the family) eat it to pay homage to him (the guardian), and that’s like a form of dedicating the child to the `aumakua… and then they also have lūʻau leaf (taro leaf) because kalo (taro) is the plant form of Lono, and Lono is the god of harvest and fertility. And they also have mahiki, which is a kind of shrimp, and mahiki literally translates to “peel off,” like fish scales… that one is meant to peel off as in peel off the bad; you want your baby to be “clean,” like they don’t want him sheathed in bad things.

Then they have kala, seaweed, and that word means “to loosen or set free.” Like you’re literally separating the child from his mother and that child is now independent in a way, and now, with the support of his family, is going to learn what he needs to, grow up and survive and eventually actually be independent from the family. And at the same time, they’re going to eat ʻaʻama, because that means to paʻa … “to stay close with the family,” because although the child is going to learn to be independent and learn to take care of himself, he is also going to remain close with the family and understand that he needs to take care of them. Because the Hawaiian way of thinking is that you can’t have any… there’s no rogues—everyone belongs somewhere, you are a part of a family unit and it’s uncommon if you aren’t. If you’re not, that means you did something very wrong. Family is the most important thing.

They also have mele inoa and mele maʻi that they have at the different `ahas… `aha `aina is like a party, it’s like a pa`ina… so a mele inoa is a name chant—pretty much self explanatory; a chant about your name. But when you get your name depends… Some people will go to a kahuna (priest), and they’ll ask the kahuna to dream—that’s how a lot of people get their names, through dreams. Someone will dream it up. There’s other ways you could get it, you could be named after a grandparent or an elder. You could have an inoa hoʻomanaʻo (a name in rememberance of a person or an event), relating to a past event or mostly to recognize a person or event close to the time of your birth. Queen Liliuokalani, her middle name is Kamakameha (“sore eye”) because when she was born her aunt had an eye infection. The names don’t need to be pretty, they’re to remember people.

I have a friend, Mahue Matekino (he’s from New Zealand), his name is an inoa hoʻomanaʻo and his name means “the one forgotten”—‘mahue’ means forgotten, and ‘matekino’ means death/dead, like a body… it relates to cancer, and he was named that because two weeks before he was born, his grandpa died of cancer, so he was the forgotten grandchild because he didn’t get to meet his grandpa… It’s really sad, but to Mahue it’s not sad, because you get to remember the best—the name physically ties you to that person.

And we have inoa pō, and the inoa pō actually kind of relates to having a dream, but not strictly. It doesn’t necessarily need to come in a dream, but this name is in honor of the `aumakua, and can sometimes be given by the `aumakua in the form of a dream.

There’s a lot of names in Hawaiian that are not pretty, but nowadays everybody just wants fricken’ pretty names… (less legit)

Then there’s ‘mo ka piko,’ and this name is given in contempt to anyone who has been rude to the family or rude to one of the chiefs. And, I guess that because they strongly believe that what your name entails are the traits you’re gonna inherit—it’s very common if you have this name to be very protective of the family or chief (inoa kuamuamu). ‘Inoa aloha aliʻi’ is “to remember a beloved chief.” Ākeamakamae (my sister) almost had an inoa aloha aliʻi.

The other chant, a mele ma`i, is a “genetalia chant,” as weird as it sounds, and that one is for the main purpose of procreation—a lot of ali`i (chiefs) would have it, would have one done for them—to spiritually influence them to procreate. And for the child, a mele ma`i explains how you came about and that this is what you need to do and why it’s important. It’s not so much the numbers of people that’s important, but they need the tradition to keep going, that’s why it’s important. When one kupuna (grandparent) dies, they need a baby to be born to “counteract” it, in a way.

 

ʻahaʻaina palala

This is the celebration after the child’s made one year, counted from birth (not conception). And then this is a celebration of the child surviving, which doesn’t have as many embedded traditions other than the physical ceremony where everyone celebrates the child passing the critical year mark. Usually this celebration is a lūʻau, a huge family gathering with traditional food, dance, music, and chants. A lot of preparation goes into the lūʻau and literally everyone comes because the first birthday is such a big deal.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “I’m in a Hawaiian Studies class called Hawaiian `Ohana, and we learn about the traditional family system from a particular area on the Big Island, and we chose this place because there’s a lot of history and traditional values that have been maintained from ancient times, which isn’t common around the rest of the islands in the state.”

Other information: “This is one of the most important ceremonies and traditions in the collection. When you’re born is a huge event, but coming of age—it happens when people have their baby’s first lu`au—it’s a ceremony that comes with it. Your first year is critical if you’re gonna make it, so it’s a big deal. That’s when the baby’s diet changes, when you start accepting that the baby’s gonna grow and be part of the community and stuff… but birth, naming, taking responsibility, etc. is a related ceremony all by itself.”

These ceremonies ritualize the transition from gestation to birth, and from birth to infancy in the life cycle. As my informant mentioned, even though the child is very young, this is kind of like a coming of age ceremony, when the baby essentially becomes a real person and therefore part of the community. Naming the baby officiates his/her presence in a family, which is marked by other parts of the ceremony, such as dedicating the baby to the family ‘aumakua, and is when parents/family members decide to acknowledge the baby and to take responsibility for him/her, to nurture and care for him/her.

Italian Christening robes

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2013
Primary Language: English

“On the Christening robes of babies, they have these little charms, little golden charms. There’s a monkey fist, a bull horn, all different ones, and they’re all supposed to keep the evil eye away.”

 

My informant comes from a devout Italian Catholic family. Although the evil eye is not a Christian belief, it has seeped so deeply into the culture from pre-Christian folk beliefs to the extent that a modern Catholic family believes in it enough to take precautions against it harming their infants. Again, there is the idea that celebration can draw the wrath of the evil eye; even a religious celebration is dangerous.