Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Indian marriage ritual

Nationality: Indian/American
Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“I’m planning a wedding so I have a lot of wedding things on my mind and one ritual I participated I not long ago is this ritual where a woman, It’s so patriarchal, its awful. But I tried it out and it was pretty cool and it really brings the family together. So basically the woman fasts all day long from sunrise to sundown all day long. You eat nothing, nothing at all and then at the end of the day the woman get together they eat they celebrate and the whole point of it is for us to pray and ask the gods for a long life for your husband. Sometimes its for your kids to but it’s really for the husband. Its super patriarchal right but the cool thing is that nowadays the husbands fast with the wives as well, so they do it as well. You cannot break the fast until you go and see the moon. You can’t look at the moon directly. You have to look at it through this thing that almost like a cheese cloth. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s a circle. It’s a metal circle and you can shift through stuff. A sifter I think is what it’s called. You look at the moon through that and you can’t look at your husbands direct face either. You have to look at the moon first. Its bad luck to break your fast before being the moon. You look at the moon first and you look at your husband and then your husband gives you your first sip of water and he thanks you and he feeds you your meal and he washes your feet and all these other things he does for you for praying for him all day long.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I heard about this ritual while planning my wedding and this is just one of the rituals. There are a thousand different rituals and superstitions associated with getting married. I was told about his one and I decided to try it out. I remember when I did this I couldn’t find the freaking moon so my partner had to drive me around for three hours looking for the moon. We were living in Santa Cruz and we just had to drive forever looking for the moon.”

Final thoughts: This is the only marriage ritual I collected which is interesting because I think marriage is one of the most folklore heavy rituals there is. This specific one seems to tie marriage to the moon and I would be very interested in seeing if other marriage rituals in other cultures also connect the moon to marriage. It also interesting how marriage helps connect people back to their cultural rituals in a way they are not when they are not in the process of getting married.

The Festival of Colors

Nationality: Indian/American
Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“One big Indian tradition is a celebration yearly celebration called The Festival of Colors. Im sure you guys have seen images of things like the color run on the internet but all that actually originates from this Indian festival called The Festival of Colors. There are so many different stories as to why we have this tradition where we just go out and we throw colors at everyone. Some people say its because it’s a celebration of spring but the reason why ww do it  that I have heard the most is that what happened was there were two gods. One was goddess and the goddess asked the god to prove his love for her. So the god thought for along time about how to prove his love for her and in the end he created the colors just to show her how much he loves her. So at that point the god was also able to distinguish between good and evil and so when you’re throwing color you throwing goodness into the people around you’s lives.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “That celebration has always been one of my favorite celebrations because of the story behind it and the idea of colors representing love. In fact I liked it so much that me and my fiancée took our engagement photos at The Festival of Colors. Also throwing colors just looks so beautiful.”

Peruvian Sun ritual

Nationality: Peruvian American
Occupation: Social worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“One thing in Peru thats really important is the sun. In Peruvian mythology because the sun god is who created the Inka empire so it’s a huge thing for Peru to celebrate the sun. To this day they have festivals of the sun and for that everything is supposed to be toned yellow or gold so everything you where is gold or golden white and you try to replicate what Inka’s might have worn during those times to celebrate the sun. And its huge because the sun  featured in lots of Peruvian art and gold and yellows are huge colors in Peruvian clothes and art and architecture. It’s interesting as well because it was the gold and the riches that attracted the conquistadors in the first place to kind of ruin that. Still to this day The Festival of the Sun is a huge festival.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: “I began learning about this festival in order to help reconnect me to my Inka roots. This festival has been going on for hundreds of years and I’m very happy that they continue doing that every June and it’s a wonderful festival that is designed to thank the sun and also the  earth. Which for me is important because it is making me closer to my roots and who I am and because so much of who I am comes from the other part the Spanish part.”

Final thoughts: This is a large communal ritual which associates a group of people with an elemental force, in this case the sun. The fact that this festival is still going on helps reconnect the Peruvian people to their Inka roots and reminds them of their own history and importance. In this way they act as both the teller and the audience for this piece of folklore. The celebration also serves the duel pour pace of connecting the people to their culture and connecting their culture to the natural world by using the sun as a symbol.

The origin behind The Qixi Festival

Nationality: Chinese American
Occupation: Social Worker
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/16/17

This piece folklore was gathered at the San Fransisco trauma recovery center. I met with a group of social workers and over the course of one hour we all got came together in a meeting room and in one big group we decided to go around the table and each discuss folklore from their lives. At the beginning of the discussion I gave a brief description about what folklore could be. After that everyone shared pieces of folklore from their lives.

“So a long time ago there was a very poor cowboy who was a really nice person and worked really hard in the farms and one day from heaven came down seven fairies. They were the seven daughters of the heavenly father and the heavenly mother. The daughters came down and they really enjoyed what they saw on earth and they played around and had a lot of fun. One of them, the youngest of the siblings, the youngest fairy noticed this cowboy who was very hardworking and she fell in love with him immediately. When all her sisters went back into heaven after that random visit she stayed married to this cowboy and they had an old tree as witness of their marriage and lived very happily. Not ever after though. They had two kids and were very happy however eventually this news went to the heavenly mother shepherd about this and she got really really upset because it was against the heavenly rule that very cant marry earthly men so she came down to get her daughter to take her back to the heavens. This was very, very sad for the cowboy and for the whole family. The cowboy tried to catch them while the heavenly mother was trying to take the daughter away and the heavenly mother noticed that she drew a river to stop the cowboy from catching them and that river ended up actually becoming The Milky Way.”

Background information about the performance from the informant: One well know Chinese festival or holiday which you don’t get work off for but is very popular is July the seventh which is called The Qixi Festival or Chinese Valentine’s Day. The origin of it is from this sad story. The day that the mother took the daughter away was July the seventh and that story became the foundation of Chinese Valentine’s Day. And only on this day can the cowboy and his kids reunite with his wife.”

Final Thoughts: “The fact that this holiday is referred to as Chinese Valentines Day is interesting in itself because it implies the holiday is some sort of offshoot of the american holiday when in reality it is much older. The story behind the festival works as a creation myth. The story both explains why Chinese people should celebrate the festival and also serves to explain the origin for an important piece astrological image.”

Annotation: If you want to learn more about the original myth of the Weaver Girl and The Cowherd read Idema, Wilt L. (2012). “Old Tales for New Times: Some Comments on the Cultural Translation of China’s Four Great Folktales in the Twentieth Century” (PDF). Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies. 9 (1): 25–46.

African Christmas Festival

Nationality: Korean
Age: 19
Occupation: undergraduate student
Residence: Zimbabwe
Performance Date: 2017-3-20
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Main piece:

On African christmas festival, the kids sing african songs such as “christmas in africa” song. The song is about family gathering in Christmas and slaughtering a cow and chimombe (means cow). Whenever there’s a festival, there’s a slaughtering. All of that was in the informant’s school. She said that maybe in rural places they might still be against white people and avoid white tradition. However, she is from the part of Africa that is urban and the capital city.

On that day, they eat Christmas cookies and cake but if they want a more traditional food they eat sadza or fried worms, which some people like and some don’t.

She recalls performing a play. In the play, she married a guy. Since it’s christmas they’re coming back to their hometown and the family celebrates their return. They’re so excited that their son is bringing wife. In a Zimbabwe wedding, the whole family gathers and in a book it says they are supposed to hide in a rock and come out.

Yulule is the sound that comes up from stomach that the natives make. Even though the informant is not a native, she just copies them. The sound means that you’re happy.

 

Background information (Why does the informant know or like this piece? Where or who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them?):

Informant knows about this festival because she participated in it when she lived as a foreigner in Zimbabwe. She was the main character (wife) in the play.

Context (When or where would this be performed? Under what circumstance?):

It happens during Christmas. This particular event was at an elementary school.

Personal Analysis:

This festival seems very different from the American traditional Christmas festivities. I don’t think anything is similar except christmas cookies. Americans sing songs too, but I’ve never heard of a “Christmas in Africa” song before. As a non-native in Africa, the informant has a more objective view on this festival because it was new to her at one point too.