Gaucho Song

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Barbara
Performance Date: 2/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Informant Description/ Context of performance: My older sister and a bunch of my friends go to UCSB. The big sport there is soccer, and when I went to a couple of games, I quickly learned some of the UCSB sports traditions. I interviewed my friend to expand on the traditions.

Original Script:

Interviewee: Yeah so we like throw tortillas onto the field after scoring, especially when we play our rivals – Cal Poly. At first I thought it was super weird but people get like SO into it. It’s like our “fight on” because it’s just us showing off our school spirit. Because tortillas are kinda relevant to gauchos..? Kinda sucks for the person cleaning up at the end though.

Me: Do you know how the tradition started?

Interviewee: I think it started in like the 90’s but I don’t know the “first time” it happened or anything. It’s just spread a lot since then, like it’s more and more known each year. And we like sing our unofficial school song or like chant as we throw them onto the field.

Me: Oh what’s the song?

Interviewee: Ole ole ole ole, gauchos! Gauchos! And then we just repeat that a few times.

Conclusion: I always wonder how these school spirit traditions started. For example, how did “Fight On” at USC begin? Who made the “V for Victory” symbol? How did it spread? Every school has its own traditions and practices, but UCSB stands out from the rest with its tortilla-throwing spirit. 

Cinnabons at Macalaster

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Paul, MN
Performance Date: 3/17/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Informant Description/ Context of performance: Over our spring break, one of my friends told me about a tradition they hold in a music group she’s part of at school. The music group is called AME, which stands for African Music Ensemble. They have concerts a couple times throughout the semester, and after each concert there is an after party filled with various drinking games and traditions. The professor who runs the group is called Sowah.

Original Script:

Interviewee: In Ensemble during our after parties we make Cinnabons… while we are hammered out of our minds. And ALL the people who take singing lessons with Sowah sing a song that has a word in it that sounds like “Cinnabon” and then we feed pieces of the Cinnabons to everyone. But the rule is that you can’t feed yourself, you MUST feed someone else a piece.

Me: Do you know when that tradition started? Or like how it started?

Interviewee: It was started by this person named Natalie like 6 or 7 years ago, and people enjoyed it so we just kept it going. I’m not 100% sure as to like why it started though.

Me: Got it, did she just randomly make it up or was there some reasoning behind it?

Interviewee: Yeah okay so the reason it was Cinnabons was because the song has a word in it that sounds similar to Cinnabon, like if a person who doesn’t know anything about AME or any of the African songs at all and head this song, they’d be like “why are they talking about Cinnabons?” And then at the very end of the song, we go MMMMMMmmmmmm. So it’s like MMmmm its so yummy at the Cinnabons.

Conclusion: One thing I’m always curious about is how these traditions came about. How did someone just decide to set these rules that would soon to go on to become tradition for many years to come? There was no clear answer in this case, but it was interesting to observe a culture like a music group in a small liberal arts school in Minnesota.

 

Yiddish Superstition

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Seattle, WA
Performance Date: 3/19/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Polish

Informant Description/ Context of performance: My friend’s grandma told her this superstition growing up.

Original Script:

Interviewee: My grandma told me if I want to remember something by morning I should write it on a piece of paper and put it under my pillow, and it’ll soak into my brain while I’m sleeping.

Me: Did she just make that up or did someone tell her that?

Interviewee: Honestly, not sure… I know she used to do it though, and my brother and I still do it all the time. We’re like so old-fashioned hahaha- we don’t even use our phones for reminders. It’s like on a paper under our pillow!

Conclusion: In a world that’s becoming increasingly dependent on technology, I found this superstition to be refreshingly old school. I could not tell if this was specific to Yiddish culture, but nobody else I interviewed carry this same idea. I think it’s something that was made up as a joke in Yiddish culture and got passed down between generations.

Hum Honge Kaamyab

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Saratoga, CA
Performance Date: 3/23/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

Informant Description: My friend is an Indian American; her parents immigrated here, but she was born and brought up here. Her primary connection to her Indian heritage and family history is through her grandparents.

Interviewee: Umm stories so my grandparents were in the partition of India and they all were Hindus who lived in Pakistan and then had to flee during the partition and so my grandma was the 5th out of 10 but the oldest girl so she was responsible for like taking care of a ton of the younger kids.

Me: So did she tell you this story all the time growing up?

Interviewee: Yeah. She used to say hum honge kaamyab which means we can overcome anything and it’s also a song that’s to the tune of “We Shall Overcome” and she used to sing it to me all the time when I was a kid.

Me: Do you remember the song?

Interviewee: I just remember the main chorus which was just “Hum Honge Kaamyab” repeated.

Conclusion (written by Interviewer): I had heard “We Shall Overcome” a lot throughout my childhood. To the best of my knowledge, it was quite an old song but became relevant to pop culture again during the Civil Rights Movement. Through this story, I see history repeat itself. When there was intense political and social stability during the partition, this song made its way to India and Pakistan. This song has spread and been translated in many languages, including Arabic and Hebrew. For the English, Arabic, and Hebrew version, see the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBgkWd5GG_M

“Snowbirds” flock to Arizona in the Spring

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Phoenix, Arizona
Performance Date: March 14, 2017
Primary Language: English

Living in Arizona in the spring, we are flocked with what are colloquially know by Arizonans as “snowbirds”. These are tourists from areas who have terrible winters that bleed into spring, so they escape their snow for a few months (march to may) and live in Phoenix. I was in the car with a friend on a visit home, she was driving behind a car driving particularly slow and she turned to me and complained about “snowbirds”.

Me: “Explain what a snowbird is, and why they are called that?”

KC: “Snowbirds are tourists that come to Arizona in our spring, their winter and just live here, they are usually older couples. They are called snowbirds because they like, migrate here in the winter for the warmer weather.”

Me: “Why do you complain about them?”

KC: “Because they are so annoying haha. They are the single worst drivers ever, driving behind this one now is an example, Minnesota plates, they just crawl along because they usually don’t know where they are going or don’t know the speed limit. The sad thing is, is Arizona is so easy to drive in, I mean we are on a grid system, so east to navigate. Also they just cram up the streets, I mean usually Phoenix is so spread out that you don’t see to many cars, but come this time a year the traffic is awful because all you see are the Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas or like Illinois plates mixed in around with the Arizona ones. It’s really just driving that it’s annoying, I mean old town gets crowded, but it’s not bad, and they only go to the tourist place in the day, which are like far out of town anyway.”

Me: “Where did you learn this term from”

KC:”Hmm. I don’t know really, just heard it around growing up, probably my parents complaining about their driving too or something.”

Analysis:

This term is one local to the Arizona or perhaps even the southwest region of the United States, one used only by the locals to describe the tourists. This term is one where the locals perform their identity with one another by creating the “other” of the snowbirds. It brings the people together under a common annoyance of these tourists and those who know and understand the term in this context would be deemed as part of the group. It is creating the locals as a group, as ones who know how to drive properly in their home and instantly can recognize when someone is not simply because of their driving.