Kolobok

Nationality: Georgian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2/23/2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

T is 18 years old and a student at USC. She grew up in Georgia and spent a few years in London as well, learning to speak Georgian, Russian, and English as a child.

T was in the room with me and one of our other roommates when we were talking about stories we remembered from our childhood, and told us about the story of Kolobok:

“There’s this pastry made of dough, and this old woman baked it and put it on the windowsill and then it rolled and rolled and rolled away and everyone threatened to eat it because it’s so tasty…and they thought it was so clever. It met a hare, a wolf, and a bear, but the kolobok was so smart that it escaped all of them and tricked them. It kept saying ‘I managed to escape from the old man, the old woman and the bear’ and thought it was so smart and then the kolobok met a fox and it outwitted it and ate it”

“It’s kind of a story about how you can’t be too cocky because…yeah. About pride and cockiness and that you shouldn’t be too prideful because you will get eaten. He had a lot of pride..the kolobok got a bit cocky with how he was outsmarting everybody and because he let his guard down the fox ate it. This story is very famous where I’m from [Georgia].”

“I learned them from a collection of stories and every night either my grandma or mom would read them to me..that’s for sure how I learned them. I had a book of fables, a book of short stories, and tiny books with hard covers…same style of Russian caricatures”

This story reminds me of a kind of mix of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. It made me think about how many other variations of “fairytales” that I grew up hearing exist in other cultures, and more so what they mean to the people in those cultures.

The Meatball

Nationality: Italian-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2/15/2023
Primary Language: English

K is a 20 year old student at USC. She grew up in an Italian-American household on the east coast, but places more emphasis on the American part than the Italian.

K and I grew up together, and one day we were reminiscing on things we remembered from elementary school (we went to different ones), she got very excited and asked me if I remembered the Meatball song, clearly expecting me to remember, and when I told her I had no idea what she was talking about she quickly launched into song:

On top of spaghetti,

All covered with cheese,

I lost my poor meatball,

When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table,

And on to the floor,

And then my poor meatball,

Rolled out of the door.

It rolled in the garden,

And under a bush,

And then my poor meatball,

Was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty

As tasty could be,

And then the next summer,

It grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered,

All covered with moss,

And on it grew meatballs,

And tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti,

All covered with cheese,

Hold on to your meatball,

Whenever you sneeze.

K doesn’t remember where she first heard it, but she knows her dad used to sing it randomly. “He’s just an odd man and he would say it when we would sneeze and my mom would play into it when we sneezed and didn’t cover our mouths.”

What surprised me most about this piece was that she was so shocked that I had never heard it before. Growing up in the same town and spending a lot of time at each other’s houses, it surprised her that I had no recollection of it. I was especially intrigued by the vigor with which she recited the song, as it clearly made an imprint in her mind.

The Turnip

Nationality: Belarusian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2/23/2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

Y is a 19 year old student at USC. She grew up near Chicago, with a mother that had lived in Belarus until she was roughly 25 years old.

Y and I were chatting about silly stories that we were told as children, and she relayed the story of “The guy and the turnip” to me. She originally learned the story in Russian, but can only remember it in english.

“There’s a turnip…there’s a farmer who plants a turnip, and then it grows, it grows, it grows and get huge and every member of the family pulls on it. Grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, the dog, the cat, and the mouse is the last to pull on the turnip and that’s when they’re all able to get it out. It’s a story about how everyone has to work together to accomplish something, even the smallest and insignificant individuals matter in the quest for the turnip. Everybody is important, and if you have big problems you need everybody’s help to work together…everybody pushed and pulled on the turnip, but it took everyone working together to get it out.”

When I asked her what the story meant to her, she said: “When I was a kid and I would…like not share or not want to work with someone, like normal kid stuff, teachers and my grandma would remind me of this story.”

“I just remember this story…it’s like in my head it was the first thing I thought about” [when we started talking about stories from childhood]

After hearing this story from Y, I was immediately reminded of an english proverb I’ve heard for as long as I can remember: “It takes a village.” One of the main qualifiers of folklore is that it has multiplicity and variation, and I can’t help but wonder about what these two versions of the same idea say about our respective cultures. As far as I can remember, there wasn’t any kind of story attached with the phrase, “It takes a village”; it was just something people would always say, whereas Y has a whole story in her heard about a turnip to remind her of that same idea.

Arak to cure a stomach ache

Nationality: Lebanese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2/19/2023
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic

L is 20 years old and a student at USC. She grew up in Michigan, but spent most summers in Lebanon with family. Her dad grew up in Lebanon and immigrated to the United States in his early 20s, and her mom grew up in the United States in a Lebanese immigrant family.

L and I were sitting a coffee shop talking about all of the homeopathic remedies our parents taught us for curing ailments and she shared a Lebanese one with me; she said that if you have a stomach ache you can pour arak (Lebanese liquor/moonshine) on a towel and put that over your stomach to make you feel better.

L learned this from her mom and dad, who learned it from their parents and other family members that grew up in Lebanon or grew up around Lebanese Culture.

L doesn’t necessarily believe that it works, but it was a big part of her childhood and she has strong memories of her mom telling her to do it whenever she had a stomach ache.

What interests me the most about this folk remedy is that L didn’t really have any idea how it was supposed to work, but knew that it was widely-practiced by people in her community and in her culture. While she was talking about it, I could see that L was a bit confused herself as to why she so easily believed it to be a natural course of action when one had a stomach ache. It certainly speaks to the power that folk remedies can hold through generations; so much so that even though more recent generations may not have any reason to believe it will work, they’re still ready and willing to practice it.

Slogan: “Two lines, one stripe, 干!”

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Near USC Campus
Performance Date: 2/21/2023
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Text: “两横，一竖，干！”
Pinyin (Simplified): liang heng, yi shu, gan
Translation: Two horizontal, one vertical, fight!

Context:
G is a Chinese international student from Anhui Province, Hefei City in China. During high school, he played in a soccer team.
G: “It’s about my soccer team in high school. It’s what we do before game. It’s a like slogan that we do before a game. Every player comes and together to form a circle and we put our hands together and we yell it. And the slogan goes “两横，一竖，干！” It’s not really a good translation, it’s like fighting but not in a good way. We’re using it positively but not in a good way. It’s almost near “f**k” but it’s a positive way we’re using it.”

Interpretation:
There is an interesting juxtaposition to be mentioned with the positive denotation of such a negatively connoted word in this chant. This folk phrase, or folk chant is said for good luck and to release tension. It invokes a feeling of unity and comradery between players, which completely changes the meaning of the word in this specific context and therefore, changes the tone of the chant. On the surface level, it is merely a saying that describes how to write the word “干“ in Mandarin. The word itself, as G describes, means something negative and almost taboo whenever spoken aloud in a social setting different from this one. Perhaps because of the presence of the specific competitive sport team-player like atmosphere and tension about competing at all, this phrase seems to take the aggression of the phrase and repurpose into a chant of good luck and release of nerves. The act of doing it with fellow team members joins this community together and that they have something to share strengthens their bond. The meaning changes once it is uttered aloud in this context, making this folklore exclusive to this group of people and therefore only understandable to those who can understand the context that it is said in. This phrase has the exclusive purpose of bringing good luck and releasing tension similar to that of a charm.