Tag Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Be Careful of the “Mal Aire”

Nationality: Ecuadorian
Age: 26
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

My informant, who is from Ibarra, Ecuador, was told as a young girl:

“¡No te hagas de noche o so no te va a dar el mal aire!”

 Translation: “Don’t stay outside too late at night, or you will get ‘bad air!’”

She explained that mal aire, or bad air, is something that you catch from being outside in the trees, but is not quite a sickness.  She says, “You feel back pain, but it’s not like regular back pain… You just feel weird, like something is not right.”  I felt that way once when I was little and spent too much time outside with my friends.

She was told when she was younger that her uncle caught mal aire while walking through the mountains to her aunt’s house.  The only way to get rid of it is to place a small candle (like a tea candle) on a person’s back and cover it with a glass cup.  If the skin “inflates” and looks like a lump in the glass, it first confirms that you have mal aire and also rids it from the body.

Yet, the threat of mal aire could just be a way to scare children not to stray too far from home, not stay out too late and stay away from trouble.  Additionally, the method of testing and purifying oneself only reinforces the fear of mal aire in children.  For anyone who tries it, when you cover a candle with a glass, it will create a vacuum and as a result, will raise the skin.  By telling children that it this happens only to people who have mal aire, adults can easily prove and scare children with this technique.  To further prove that it will happen to everyone, the mal aire “candle treatment” is similar to an ancient Chinese practice, called “massage cupping.”  For those who use this technique, cupping produces a deep, therapeutic state of relaxation.  This type of “massage” will likely remove the back pain my informant mentioned as well.

鏡餅 (Kagami Mochi) — Japanese Foodways

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Nagoya, Japan
Performance Date: 4/2/12
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

鏡餅, literally translated from the Japanese, means “mirror rice cake.” This name, though thought to have originated from the mochi’s resemblance to a old-fashioned kind of round copper mirror, has no relevance at all to its folkloric aspects. 鏡餅 is a traditional Japanese New Years decoration, consisting of two round mochi (rice cakes), the smaller placed atop the larger, and a Japanese orange with a leaf placed on top.

鏡餅 -- Traditional Japanese New Years decoration

My informant is a student in Nagoya, Japan, and has had 鏡餅 decorations every year for New Years, for as long as she can remember. Recently, however, she said that her family has settled on buying the cheaper, mass-produced 鏡餅, which are often pre-moulded into the shapes of stacked discs and sold in plastic packages at the supermarket. A plastic imitation bitter orange is substituted for the original. In some cases, there are actual rice makes within the plastic casing; however, even if there is, she said she has not heard of many families who actually enjoy eating the mochi. “Because it’s been there for so long,” She said. “It gets all stale and gross and no one wants to touch it.” The plastic casing, however, is preferred by most contemporary people because it keeps the mochi inside free of rot and germs. They break open and eat the mochi usually on January 11th, in a ritual known as 鏡開き (which literally means, “breaking the mirror”), in order to celebrate the breaking of the old year, for the arrival of the new. By this point, the mochi has become so stale that it usually has cracks on the surface; however, because cutting it with a knife has negative connotations (cutting off ties), they usually crack it open with their hands or some other heavy object.

The two mochi discs are said to symbolize the coming and going years, as well as the balance of yin and yang, although most people, including my informant, do not know exactly how those two concepts apply to the structure of the 鏡餅, or why it has to be mochi at all–it is simply something a ritual they have performed in the past, and so they repeat it, to end their year on the “right note,” and to enjoy a sense of camaraderie with the rest of Japanese society.

That most contemporary 鏡餅 is mass-produced in plastic casings is significant because it indicates the widespread performance of a folk ritual that seems to have no inherent personal meaning in the lives of most households. If there was inherent meaning, they would perhaps be more keen on performing it the traditional way–making the rice cakes themselves or even just buying them and stacking them together, placing the bitter orange on top. As it is, however, it has become for my informant “something my mom just picks up from the supermarket when she realizes it’s almost New Year’s.”

High School Pre-Show Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 24, 2012
Primary Language: English

Maddy Heyman

Los Angeles, California

April 24, 2012

Folklore Type: Ritual

Informant Bio: Maddy Heyman is one of my apartment mates and good friends. She is a twenty year old Sophomore and double major in Theatre and Narrative Studies at The University of Southern California. She is from St. Paul, Minnesota and has lived there her whole life. Maddy is a very active member of her theatre community back in St. Paul. She also has acted and directed shows at USC. Although she is thriving in college despite tearing her meniscus and finding out she has mild Crohn’s disease, she is very attached to her home, family, friends, and Theatre community in St. Paul.

Context: Maddy and I were in our dimly lit apartment late in the night around midnight when I asked her to share some theatre folklore knowing she is a Theatre major. She had just closed a show the previous weekend.

 

Item:

M: There is a super secret pre-show ritual at my high school that no one is allowed to talk about, but now that I’m graduated I can. So we would all gather in a choir room behind the stage in the hallway area. It would be fifteen minutes before the show. One thing we did was the bugaloo, and that was pretty normal (sings) let me see you bugaloo. There was traditionally a leader of the bugaloo. They would be the leader for the whole year. It was passed through, well we had these testaments in the paper at the end of the year, and the leader would be named that way. So we would do the bugaloo and people would do ridiculous ones like let me see you fry like bacon. Or we would do things that make fun of the show. The next one would be ride my pony which was pretty basic. You know, ride, ride my pony and then we would ride our ponies around the room. And then after that we would scope. We would get a bottle of Scope and some Dixie Cups. We would pour the Scope, and we had a phrase. We would say, “Scope that shit up, mothafucka what? Scope that shit up, mothafucka what?” continuously until all people have Scope. The order people got Scope and got to count down would be different every night, some nights would be seniors, or all the girls first, or all the chorus leads. When we Scoped we had to swish it in your mouth as long as everyone counted down from ten. And then right after you’d just go and do the show. Well except on the last night. We would get together early, turn off the lights, and light a bunch of candles on the piano ‘cause we were really safe. Then each senior gives a little speech about their experiences and advice for the uh, the whatever we call younger people in high school that I can’t remember anymore.

A: Underclassmen?

M: Yes (sweeping hand gesture) underclassmen. Then we’d do the bugaloo and everything. And that is the Central High School pre-show ritual. And if anyone knew I’d shared that with you,

A: You would be murdered?

M: An’ you’d be murdered. It’s cool to see each place’s pre-show rituals.

 

Informant’s Analysis: (The following interaction applied to her analysis and why the ritual was important to her)

A: Why is this one ritual in particular important to you?

M: Just ‘cause this was the most long-standing tradition I’ve experienced. They have always been a part of the ritual for as long as people can remember, and like no one knows how they started. We do it for every single show, every single year (hand chop down). Especially since at SC each pre-show ritual depends on the show so they’re different. I also just think the fact that all shows have pre-show rituals is interesting.

 

Analysis: Maddy has a serious attachment to her home and life in St. Paul as well as her childhood. She has a tattoo of Alice from Alice in Wonderland because of that attachment. This particular ritual is most likely important to Maddy because it connects a large part of her childhood home life to her passion and career choice. Remembering these experiences allows her to reminisce when she is having a hard time being away from home especially with all of the stressful physical issues she has had to face while adjusting to living away from St. Paul for the first time. This memory also keeps her spirit and passion going when the Theatre world is less than kind as it is known to be. The ritual itself like many things in the Theatre world was probably developed from personal experiences and inside jokes of various casts over time. Although Maddy claims the ritual has not changed over the years, it has probably been adapted slightly from cast to cast. The bugaloo is one version of several Theatre games actors use to warm up. It combines rhythm and improvisation. Ride my pony is also a Theatre game that is energizing and loosens nerves. The Scope ritual appears to be a combination of hazing and was probably an incident that turned into an inside joke for one of the casts that started this pre-show ritual. The seniors sharing their experiences by candlelight on the last evening of the show is a fairly common occurrence with most show casts. The cast of a show is a lot like a family because there are people that love each other and people that hate each other, but everyone has to interact and work together or the show will fail. Theatre people are also generally more flamboyant and in tune with feelings because they have to express them on stage in front of people, so a final sharing of knowledge and memories is a way to feel like a collective family for the last time before the mandatory time together are over. This is especially true for high school seniors because they are about to or have entered into a giant transition in their lives out of childhood and into an interim phase of college before true adulthood. This ritual is a way to create a collective memory and connection as well as relax before a performance.

 

Alex Williams

Los Angeles, California

University of Southern California

ANTH 333m   Spring 2012

Rain Song

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, Or
Performance Date: 4/21/12
Primary Language: English

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, my fellow schoolmates and I were used to seeing rainy days throughout most of the year. My informant here, a fellow elementary school student of mine, remembers that every time that we would have recess in elementary school (1st through 5th grade), we would sing a song to make the rain go away:

“Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Another Day.

We Want to Play Outside, Come Again Another Day”

He remembers, we would sing this song essentially every day that it rained. Of course, the weather would only clear up very rarely, and most likely not due to our singing of this song. Nevertheless, on the rare occasion that the rain would stop soon after, we would all attribute it to the magic of the song and we would all vehemently defend its legitimacy. On days where it wouldn’t work, we would often attribute it to our lack of singing it correctly or not enough people to make it work, etc. My informant remembers days where we would be sad or he would even cry because the song didn’t work. He remembered thinking that he was the ‘special piece’ of the puzzle, and knew that the song wouldn’t work if he weren’t there. He thought that his friends needed him for the song to be successful.

I believe that this song is mostly known around rainy and wet areas where it would likely be utilized and passed along more often and efficiently, such as Portland. I think it may have some relation to a variety of rain dances that were used centuries ago to have rain fall to nourish the crops. I believe it is a more recent rendition as children saw the rain dance, and believed that if one could make it rain, then they could sing to stop it.