Tag Archives: tradition

Candy cone


Background: Informant is a 51 year old Israeli American. They grew up in Germany for the first seven years of their life, which is where this tradition took place. They are talking about their first day of school in Germany, describing a tradition that’s done there. 

Informant: On the first day of school, kids’ parents buy them this big cone like in the size of a typical kindergartener. Like, early grade, like first grade of school. It was done on the first day of school. They will fill it with lots and lots of candies and snacks and they close it and that’s how you go to school and you take a picture with it and everyone had a cone. 

Reflection: I loved hearing about this tradition as we don’t have it in America at all. When doing research, I saw how present this tradition is in Germany and how integral it is to kid’s culture there. It represnts the modern creation of childhood and how it operates in the West. We do these things in Western culture to celebrate kids milestones, and this is a largely recent form of folklore; kid’s folklore.

Jambo Bwana Song

Background: Informant is a 19 year old of Kenyan heritage. Their parents immigrated to Los Angeles from Kenya and the informant wears a bracelet to feel connected to their heritage. 

Me: Where did this song come from? 

Informant: When I think about a song in Swahili the first song I think of is what I learned when I was four or five because my Kindergarten for graduation they wanted to do a whole cultural thing. So, they asked my mom and another girls mom who was Indian to come and teach us songs. So they taught us songs in Hindu and Swahili. The song we learned in Swahili is… 

Transliteration: 

Jambo, Jambo bwana, 

Habari gani, Mzuri sana.

Wageni, Wakaribishwa,

Kenya yetu Hakuna Matata.

Translation:

Hello, Hello sir,

How are you

I very fine

The visitors are welcomed

To our Kenya, don’t worry.

Reflection: I loved hearing the informant sing this song. It was interesting how they knew this song due to their schools’ emphasis on diversity, and how their mother shared her culture with the class through music. I find it so amazing how music can be used to bring people together in the sharing of cultural heritage. This also reflects the use of folklore in children’s education, with folk music being something that mainly children know today. 

Audio:

Makers Onion Tradition

Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/28/22
Primary Language: English

L is a senior studying computer science at USC, and he also serves as the 2022 co-president of USC Makers, a project-based engineering club. Here he recounts the origins of the Makers Onion Tradition and its significance during the 2022 Makers Spring Retreat.

L:  There was a man named Y, who was one of the founders of USC Makers in 2016. One of the most anticipated events of the semester was the Makers retreat, which was usually held at a venue off-campus. Later into this retreat while everyone was having a great time, some more intoxicated than others, Y decided that it would be a great idea to pass around a whole, raw onion and see how much of the onion the club could collectively consume.

Me: That’s disgusting! Did they actually eat it?

L: Yup! To his surprise and mine, most of the onion was gone. We even saw people who are usually very against onions take a bite. After the onion made its rounds, he handed the remainder of the onion to me and chose me to continue this spontaneous happening, which quickly became a Makers tradition.

Me: Wow, that’s fascinating. Are there certain criteria to become the next onion carrier or can it just be any old person? 

L: Every retreat, the role of the onion bearer is passed on to someone that the previous bearer believes embodies the spirit of Makers – curiosity, determination, and an eagerness to get their hands dirty. This person is preferably younger, but there are no solid requirements. 

As of April 2022, I am the fourth onion bearer, and I have the responsibility of carrying on this tradition for the next year and ensuring that the history of this tradition is not lost. The story of the Makers Onion Tradition has explicitly been orally recounted, and this is the first time that the tradition has been documented. Though this is not to say that it is guaranteed that the tradition will stay the same for the years to come; as oral histories go, change is often expected, and this documentation is purely meant to act as a snapshot of the Makers Onion Tradition in Spring of 2022 and not impede its natural progression.

Slovenian Grandma Song

Age: 19
Performance Date: 4/25/22
Primary Language: English

This is a song that was collected from H, a freshman whose family has Slovenian roots on his dad’s side. This song is one that they used to sing to their grandma as kids, as did their grandma to her grandmother before them.

Granny’s in the cellar

Lordy can’t you smell’er

Cooking pancakes on a dirty stoooove

Her eyes are full of matter

And it’s dripping in the batter

THERE’S A LONG THING HANGING FROM HER NOSE

From her noooose

to her tooooes

there’s a long thing hanging from her NOSE!

This is a goofy song that talks of a grandma cooking pancakes in a dingy cellar, presumably while she is sick with crusty eyes and snot dripping from her nose. Although it picks fun at a grandma, it also fosters a bond between them and effectively eradicates the barrier between an elderly person and a child. As Slovenia is a country with many stories of witchcraft, this song could also be referencing a witch cooking some food or brewing potions, though adapted to be more kid-friendly.

Personally, I find this song quite endearing, as did H’s family, since they continued singing the song after it was passed down to him from his grandma. Instead of painting witches in a negative light or viewing grandmas as old and crippled, this song familiarized them for the children and helped dispel the negative stigmas that usually surround witches by poking fun at their physical appearance.

Pabitin at Birthday Parties

“A pabitin is a grid of bamboo wrapped in cellophane.  We have those at birthday parties and what you do is you essentially buy a bunch of small toys like those packs of sushi erasers or something.  Small dollar action figurines or crayons or candy… you tie or tape all of it onto the grid so it’s all hanging off.  Then you tie a large string to the grid and put it up basically like a piñata with one person handling the end of the rope.  You gather all of the kids under the pabitin and the person holding the rope can decide how far down he’ll let the grid fall to the children, and they have to jump up to try to grab the goodies.  Half of the fun is setting up how the toys and gifts are scattered and preparing the children.  I also like watching the children’s creativity get teased as they jump for the toys.  Bamboo is used for everything, like building houses… I don’t really know how we ended up making our native products out of bamboo, heheh.  So the material in itself already has cultural roots.   If in Mexican parties you always have a pinata, it’s the same idea for us Filipinos, where our children’s parties are characterized by pabitin.”

Background: The informant is a 20-year old college student who has witnessed several Filipino birthday parties in the past.  She has only been a witness, however, as she uses a wheelchair for transportation.

Context: This piece was told to me during a luncheon after our Sunday services.

This tradition puts a more competitive and high-energy spin on the normal act of providing gift bags to party guests.  The kids have fun as the adults tease them out of getting the goodies from the grid, and there are often bigger prizes than others that the children are already eyeing before they get to compete.  The grids can also be made of bamboo, which is light and flexible, and also one of our cultural agricultural products.