Demigod Maui

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/20/2017
Primary Language: English

Informant: My informant, D.L., is 20 and was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. D.L. mother works as an admissions director for his high school. He has one older brother who also attends USC. Both of D.L. parents are full Chinese, but have completely adopted the Hawaiian culture. D.L. spends most of his free time at the beach and considers himself more Hawaiian than Chinese.

Folklore: “There is the Legend of how the demigod, Maui, was the one who created the Hawaiian Islands. Maui is said to have created Hawaii’s islands by tricking his brothers. He convinces them to take him out fishing, but instead catches his hook upon the ocean floor. He tells his brothers that he has caught a big fish, and tells them to paddle as hard as they can. His brothers paddle with all their might, and being intent with their effort, did not notice the island rising behind them. Maui repeats this trick several times, creating the Hawaiian Islands.” D.L. heard this legend growing up in school from his parents when he asked how the islands were created. He was also told after the islands really came to be with volcanoes, but he was more interested in the story version. D.L. likes how this story is a part of his culture and likes telling people about these myths.

Analysis: I really enjoyed this story and think it’s a fun and creative way to tell children how something so incredible and hard to believe could have happened. This story reminds me of the legend of Paul Bunyan and how he created the Grand Canyon when he dragged his axe behind him when he was tired after a long day’s work. It is interesting to see how similar stories originate in completely different cultures.

Hawaiian Warriors

Nationality: Ameican
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/20/2017
Primary Language: English

Informant: My informant, D.L., is 20 and was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. D.L. mother works as an admissions director for his high school. He has one older brother who also attends USC. Both of D.L. parents are full Chinese, but have completely adopted the Hawaiian culture. D.L. spends most of his free time at the beach and considers himself more Hawaiian than Chinese.

Folklore: “There is a rule in Hawaii that you’re not supposed to whistle at night. The night marchers are ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors and they’re said to roam the islands at night visiting old battlefields and sacred sites. Whistling at night is said to summon the huakai po (night marchers). If you make eye contact with the night marchers, you’ll die and be forced to march with them for all of eternity. If you happen to have an ancestor marching, however, no one in the procession can harm you.” D.L. was told this story from one of his teachers in elementary school to try and scare the kids in his class as a joke. D.L. doesn’t actually believe in the myth and thinks of it as just a story to scare kids.

Analysis: This myth is more of a ghost story that sounds familiar to a story I heard when I was growing up. I look at this myth as just a scary story and nothing more.

For more information on the myth, see http://www.to-hawaii.com/legends/night-marchers.php

The Woodsman’s Hatchet

Nationality: Korea
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/19/2017
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

Subject:

Korean Fairy Tale

Informant:

Kyujin Sohn was born in Korea but moved to the United States as a young child. The majority of his family is from Korea, and many of them still live there. Although he has spent most of his life in the US, he has visited Korea often and identifies closely with Korean culture.

Original Script:

Essentially there’s a, there’s a… woodsman, and woodsmen in Korea are for some reason, like very traditionally like characterized as very pious people, like they work hard and like they’ll like, do the most to like get buy and survive, but, like they’ll never steal from people and they won’t do like bad – it’s just like, it’s this characterization that exists. But essentially this man was working, this woodsman was cutting down some tinder because he has to sell the wood so that people can have wood to burn flames with, right? Because it’s going to be winter soon. But anyway, he’s working next to a lake, and he accidentally tosses, like, the hatchet, and it falls into the lake. And this happened, this particular lake is imbued with like a spirit, so the spirit comes up, and he says ‘I think you dropped something.’ And he’s like ‘Yes I dropped my hatchet.’ So the spirit goes down, and comes up with a silver hatchet, and says ‘Is this your hatchet?’ and the woodsman says ‘no that is not my hatchet.’ And so the spirit says ‘Okay’ and so he goes down again, and brings up a gold hatchet, and he says ‘is this your hatchet?’ and so the woodsman says ‘no that’s not my hatchet, my hatchet is just a wood and iron hatchet.’ So the spirit goes down and brings up the actual hatchet and he says ‘Is this your hatchet?’ and the woodsman says ‘yes.’ And the spirit is confused because he’s like ‘I offered you a better hatchet, a more expensive hatchet, that you could have easily sold, and lived the rest of your life happily with.’ Right? Like a golden hatchet, that thing must weigh plenty, right? And so he’s like ‘why did not take the golden hatchet?’ and he was like, ‘because it’s not mine to take.’ And so the spirit, being so impressed with the piety of this man, gives him all three hatchets. Now the woodsman’s brother, who is a farmer, hears about this story, and wants his brother’s success so he goes into the woods, and intentionally drops the hatchet. But he doesn’t realize that, like, the reason that he got all three hatchets is because he chose not to take any of the hatchet. And so when the spirit comes up and provides the same test, he denies the silver one, but he accepts the gold one. And so, the spirit being angry at the greed of the man, curses him, and blinds him.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

It was the first Korean Story that kyujin ever learned. He learned it as a young boy from his grandmother on a visit to Korea.

Thoughts About the Piece:

Kyujin mentioned in the script that woodsmen are typically seen as very good, honest people in Korean culture. However, Kyujin’s grandma (who he learned it from) was a farmer, so I don’t believe that farmers are perceived as dishonest people. I would imagine that the farmer just represents the Korean average Joe, and so the story holds this moral lesson about how anybody could be tempted by such a trial, and that they could be punished for letting their greed make decisions for them.

Flooring Technique

Nationality: South Africa
Age: 72
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Folsom, California
Performance Date: 04/18/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Zulu

Subject:

Rural Southern African Flooring Technique

Informant:

Amelia Giles grew up in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, and lived there for most of her early life. She moved to South Africa in her late thirties and to America in her late sixties, where she lives today.

Original Script:

“The local Africans in Zimbabwe who live in the rural areas obviously cannot get their hands on any cement or any modern day materials, so what they used to do, and what they probably still do today is they collect the manure from cows paddocks, from the cattle paddocks, and they mix it with soil, and they actually use it as a flooring in their little huts that they build with the thatched roof, and they smear it, almost in a plastering motion, and that is, is very very strong, it doesn’t crack, and it’s also an insect repellant. It, it definitely… they believe it stops snakes and insect from coming into their, their little huts, because of obviously the scent that it gives off. It’s not, not a scent that I could smell when I went into the huts unless it had only just been done, but they feel that, you know the snakes and the different animals can smell it. So, they don’t, um, that’s what they do.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Amelia learned about this piece in her very young days. She remembers being a seven or eight year old girl when she first walked into a hut using this flooring technique, and has since been in many such homes. The idea of using cow feces interested her because it seemed like a weird, gross idea, but at the same time seemed to have a number of valuable properties, from being a good, hard flooring, to serving as pest repellant.

Thoughts About the Piece:

It makes sense that in rural areas where more conventional materials are hard to come by, people would develop novel ways of flooring their houses. I think it is interesting that feces were chosen as a building material, and I am surprised that they claim it to be an insect repellant: if anything, I would expect this technique to attract pests like flies and dung beetles (which are common in the area) into the house. I would guess that they just learned of some effective ways to mix it with soil and probably some other things to help it set better and change the smell.

Nyami Nyami

Nationality: South African
Age: 72
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Folsom, California
Performance Date: 04/18/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Zulu

Subject:

Nyami Nyami

Informant:

Amelia Giles grew up in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, and lived there for most of her early life. She moved to South Africa in her late thirties and to America in her late sixties, where she lives today.

Original Script:

“The Nyami Nyami is Zimbabwe’s version of the Loch Ness Monster, and he’s a river God who is believed to inhabit the deep waters of the mighty Zambezi and, um, at the foot of Victoria falls and lake Kariba, which obviously was dammed for hydroelectric power, and this mythical god-spirit has the head of a crocodile and the body of a snake, and he was dead against anybody, um, building lake Kariba, because he felt that he was separated from his lady-love who was a similar reptile, and who was believed to have been left on the other side of the river. So, anyway, he just swears that eventually lake Kariba is going to collapse and he’ll be reunited with his love, and um… also the Zambezi river is Africa’s fourth largest river, and even today, um, as a display of solidarity, you can buy the Nyami Nyami necklace at the foot of Victoria falls, and people buy it and they wear it, and hope it will protect them from it’s wrath, and, um it’s said because he’s supposed to control all the fish in the water and whatever happens in the water. And, so that’s the story of Nyami Nyami, and um, it was obviously… the Tonga people believe strongly in the Nyami Nyami, and somehow they’ve managed to get that belief to come through to even the generation of today. When people, when they go to Victoria Falls they seem to believe the story, and that stories been going through at least three generations. And so that’s the story of Nyami Nyami, and whether he ever breaks through lake Kariba and reunites with his lady love, we just wait to see what happens.”

Informant’s Background Knowledge and Relationship with this Piece:

Amelia remembers hearing this story throughout her childhood, but only paid attention to it and started to believe the legend when she visited Victoria falls for the first time in her late teens. She knows that Nyami Nyami merchandise is commonly sold around Victoria Falls, and that his legend is widely known and believed in across Zimbabwe.

Thoughts About the Piece:

I think it’s interesting that Nyami Nyami is viewed as a wrathful God, who only appeared in the last few generations. I also think it’s interesting that a God is so strongly associated with a modern, man-made structure.