Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

“El Ojo”

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/12/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

LP, the informant, is 19 years old and grew up in Mexico. She now lives with her mother and sister here in LA while her father still lives in Mexico City. She learned the following superstition from her mother who said that when LP was a baby, she suffered from this curse and had to be cured by her grandmother. LP doesn’t quite believe it, but her mother and grandmother truly do.

“Mexicans have this thing where when you’re a baby and for example you’re on a train and other adults look at your baby from far away thinking about how cute they are, if you don’t let that person touch your baby, it translates to the stink eye, or as we know it “el ojo”. So it’s known as they gave me the eye. The baby comes close to dying, becomes really sick, they get a cold and chills, and the only way to get rid of it is to let that person hold your baby. And we also wear a red and black beaded bracelet to protect your kid from the stink eye. I actually still have my bracelet back at home.”

This curse only applies to babies and can happen whenever someone looks at the baby, admiring them but doesn’t ever touch them. It’s as if looking at them and admiring them can invite the Devil to snatch them, because they will become vain and narcissistic, LP tells me. If the person staring doesn’t come into contact with the baby, then it’s believed that the curse of “El Ojo” is upon them.

I think this superstition is common in many cultures but also in various forms. I feel like I’ve heard something similar to this, but not necessarily applying just to babies. I also never really knew why the evil eye was bad, but now I understand it’s religious connotations concerning the Devil and sin. It’s also interesting that her culture has a specific bracelet that an infant wears to defend them from this curse. It’s similar to the evil eye amulet that people wear to protect them from a similar type of curse.

Dia de los Muertos

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 31 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background of informant:

My informant (AG)’s parents moved from Mexico to Los Angeles before her birth. She speaks Spanish to her parents in home and is surrounded by Mexican culture.

Main piece:

AG: “I think here in the State when talking about ghost people think of horror films, but for me, I think of deceased family members. In Mexican culture, the dead is not seen as scary as it might be in some other places. Especially, when someone really close to you dies, you kind of want to have a experience to know that their soul is still out there. So ghost for us, of course they are scary, but there’s another connotation to them, because it’s such a big part of our culture. We feel more acceptable to believe in them. Oh, and we even have a whole celebration, the Day of the Dead. ”

SH: What is it?

AG: “We call it ‘Dia de los Muertos’ [AG wrote this down on my note]. It’s every year between October 31st and November 2rd. It’s originally a indigenous festival, cause then the Catholic church said, ‘No, don’t do that’, so they catholicized the festival. The indigenous name is ‘Dia de los Muertos’, which means ‘the Day of the Dead’, but the Catholic church don’t allow them to worship the dead, so they changed it to ‘All Saints Day’. I went to this festival several times here in LA. It’s not a super big festival, since we’re not in Mexico. So you juts build little altar in your home, it’s the day that you remember the deceased. So you just put those orange flowers, called ‘cempasúchi’, that has the smell to attract the dead to their way back home. With a picture of the deceased member on the altar, you put everything that they loved, or anything that reminds you of them on the altar as well. Real food. Or since my grandpa loved soccer, so we put a soccer ball on the altar.

“Here in LA, you can go to some cemetery and it will be parties where you’ll have ‘Mariachi’, which is the ‘Mexican Band’. So you just bring the favorite food of the deceased family member to the party. For example, my grandma loved coffee, so we made her a pot of coffee and put it on his grave. Just anything they loved, we would bring it to their grave.

“This is the day that people believe, that the gap between the living and the dead is the thinnest. So the dead can actually come back to be with the living people. On that day, they are with us. Or they are supposed to be us on that day, in spirit. It’s just a way to make sure that we never forget them. ”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section of the entire conversation about believing in ghost and respecting the dead in Mexican culture.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Recalling the proverb, “The cactus on your forehead”, and the story of La Malinche that my informant AG told me, I observe some similarities among these folk pieces. The importance of the past, the ancestor, and the lineage is always emphasized. Just like what AG said, Mexican people don’t see the dead as scary things but deceased family members that come back to reconnect.

 

A related folklore piece is discussed in a short ethnographic film, “Muerte Querida (Dearest Death)”, by Ileana de Cardenas, USC MVA 2016. This film explores a Mexican folk icon, Santa Muerte, and a community of devotees in East Hollywood. The special attitude about death and toward the dead of Mexican culture is further discussed in this short film.

Description of the film: http://cool939.wixsite.com/mva2016/muerte-querida

To watch the film, you might need to contact the department of Anthropology in USC.

Qing Ming Festival

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 47
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: March 12 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

Background of informant:

My informant LWQ is a 47 years old Chinese artist. She was born and lived in southern part of China, especially Nanjing for many years before she moved to the north, Beijing at age 36.

The conversation is in Chinese.

 

Main piece:

LWQ: “This is the day that we go to cemetery and pray to the ancestors. In total, there’re four day in a year that people pray to their ancestors, but each day has different name and each of them is different. In winder solstice, that day, it’s the first one. And April 4rth on the lunar Calendar, which is the one that is coming, is called QingMing Festival. Then is July half, also on the lunar Calendar, is the Festival of the Dead. And then is the New Year Eve day. These are the four. There are commons among these four days, that people burn those money made from paper, the money that is only efficient in the ghosts’ world, not our human world.”

SH: What kind of money?

LWQ: “We have a piece of paper in the shape of normal RMB, but the portrait of Mao is changed to the God in the ghost world on the paper. And also, there’re paper money in the shape of ancient Chinese copper coin, which a hole in the center. And also some in the shape of Chinese shoe-shaped gold.”

LWQ: “For the differences of the four days, I think… the most recent one, on April. 4th, we bring some green plants or flowers to the deceased family members tomb. That’s why QingMing festival is also called ‘Tomb-swiping Day’. We need to revitalize the ancestor’s tomb because spring is coming. [laugh] I remember when I was little, I followed my parents to ancestors’ tomb on the day QingMing Festival, and it’s a day to play and enjoy the warm weather for me and my other little friends. Now, I will go to my grandparents tomb on this year’s festival next week, and it is now to me a day to reunion with my family, because my brothers and my parents will be there too.”

 

Context of the performance:

My informant LWQ told me one day that she will travel back to her hometown recently because the QingMing Festival was coming. This conversation was done two weeks before the festival day.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

My informant said that the day of QingMing festival is an official holiday set by the government, so it’s a day off for everyone in China. Respecting to ancestor is always a major focus in Chinese traditional culture, and there’s a huge emphasis on family lineage and bounding between family members. However, this emphasis was neglected once around 1970s in China. Now, for the recent 20 years, the traditional focus on lineage is recollected and reemphasized. Since the festival is highlighted to the public as an official holiday, this is another example of how institution helps revitalize folklore.

Carnival of Binche

Nationality: Belgium
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brussels, Belgium
Performance Date: April 1 2017
Primary Language: French
Language: English, Spanish, Dutch

Background of informant:

My informant YF is an international student from Brussels, Belgium. He spent the first two years of high school in Los Angeles, and the last year back in Brussels. He lived in Wallonia in Belgium, which is the French-speaking region that accounts more than a half of the country.

 

Main piece:

YF: “We have the Carnival of the year around spring break. Every region in Belgium will have different character for the carnival. Each one has its story, its name. ”

YF: “The most memorable one that I went to is the Carnival of Binche. The most famous character in the carnival is called “Gilles de Binche”, directed translated as “Gilles from Binche”. This is the name of the character of the Carnival. So depend on the different city the Carnival is taking place, there will be different character, also different names. Gilles de Binche are only done by guys. They have white outfit, and orange jacket that has patterns of roasters on it, because roaster is the Coat of arms for Wallonia. And on the jacket there are also lines in black, yellow and red since those are the colors on Belgium flag. And also straw on the edge of their jacket. On their head, they have a huge hat with feathers, and traditionally, they also wear mask on their face made of wax. They walk on the street at the days of Carnival, and each of them carries a basket with blood oranges inside. They throw the oranges to the crowd and people will try to catch them. ”

SH: Why do they throw oranges?

YF: “Oh, so blood oranges are seen as gift given by the Gilles and they carry good luck.”

YF: “The Gilles also wear wooden shoes. The special thing about Gilles de Binche is that they are the only group of Gilles that stay in the city, so they can only stay in Binche, while others can go around and participate the parade in other cities.

“At night, we have ‘feu de bengale’, which means ‘fire from Bengol’ for people to dance around. It’s about the size of a human. Two meters high. Basically, when you’re a kid, base on which city in Belgium you’re from, you’re assigned to one character. It’s really old-fashioned, that based on the town you were born, you have the character that you can become when you’re older, and then you choose to take part into the culture and go into the circle of the character.

“So every early, like 6 am in the Carnival day, participants will go to people’s family to party with them. So you’ll have numerous cups of champion in each house you went to at the end of the day. And I did practice this!!”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a part of the interview I had with my informant YF.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Though Belgium is a small country, the differentiation within the country is huge and obvious. Not only do people from different regions speak different languages (three main languages: French, Dutch and Germany), the Carnival are different and the characters for each Carnival are different.

Durga Puja

Nationality: Singapore
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: Apr 13 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

My informant AM is an international student from Singapore, and her family is originally from Bengal, India. She goes back to Bengal every year, and spends most of the time in the capital city Kolkata.

 

Main piece:

“Durga Puja” is a traditional festival of India. People celebrate the festival for 10 days. “Durga” is the goddess Durga, and “Puja” means “prayer”. The festival is in different time every year, but is around October and November.

 

AM: “We’re celebrating several things in this festival. Firs of all is Durga. We call her “the mother”, she is very respected, because she’s really powerful. She has ten hands, each of the hands hold a weapon. She is known as defeating an evil Buffalo demon. Thinking about Indian Gods, there’re so many of them. So Durga have so many forms, that she shared the same identity with some other gods and Durga is one form. In Bengal, we celebrate this incarnation of the goddess, which is Durga. She is married to one of the three main gods, Shiva.

“During a traditional Indian marriage, there’s a whole ceremony in the wife goes to the husband’s home. So during Durga Puja, these 10 days are believed as the time when Durga come back to her mother’s home. And at the last day of the festival, she goes back to Shiva’s home.

“The festival in total is 10 days, but the celebration starts at the 6th day. I don’t really know the reason behind this, but I do think we celebrate Durga Puja differently in Singapore than how people do it in India. So on the 6th day in Singapore, we have food fair for the festival. But there’s one common thing. Just to clarify, during the festival, it is Durga and her four children come to visit us, and we have statue of the five of them – Durga in the middle and her children aside. At the tenth day, in India, people will rewrap the statue of Durga and float it into the Bengali Rive. But we don’t do it in Singapore, cause it’s illegal, so we just rewrap the statue and send it back, which symbolizing she goes back to her husband’s home.”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section from a conversation with my informant AM about how Indian culture and traditions are practiced in Singapore.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

I later discussed with AM about the how Indian culture regard women, and gender difference in general. I remember a ethnographic film Mardistan (2014) directed by anthropologist Harjant Gill, which talks about how patriarchal order is controlling over both women and men, specifically in the city of Chandigarh. I mentioned this to AM and she told me this is a really tricky thing to say, because there’re really modern cities like Mumbai but there are also many rural areas. But it seems to both of us that, due to the fact that there are so many festivals celebrating goddess, mother gods, Indian is not as what people would stereotypically regard as the typical patriarchal country. The part of Indian identity is really matriarchal, that people respect to the mother figure, but there’s also sexism in society too.

 

See the ethnographic film Mardistan here: https://vimeo.com/120182667