Cultural Musings
Here's one from last weekend...
What a great weekend I had. I went to DC again so Allison and I could go the Smithsonian Folk Festival on the Washington Mall. It was important to me to go to this since one of the features of the festival was the country of Bhutan.
I first became interested in this tiny country in the Himalayas while watching the Today Show’s “Where in the World is Matt Lauer?” They showed pictures of the Temple of the Tiger’s Nest built into the cliffs of the Himalayas looking out on the edge of the world, high mountains and fertile valleys, traditionally dressed people performing thousand-year-old dances, colorful textiles, and buildings crafted with beautiful Buddhist architecture. A place few people have visited and apparently Bhutan is presenting itself to the world. It seemed a magical place, but of course, I romanticize.
So due to my budding interest in this little known country between India and Tibet, Allison and I took off to check out the festival. We got there a little early, so we started off with a good walk to the Monument and then the Lincoln Memorial. The Memorial was my favorite monument when I visited as a child. It was the first gigantic marble statue I had ever seen, and I couldn’t believe how real the waves in his clothes looked carved out of stone. He was this huge regal figure in this temple-like building and I was awed by it. It still has the power to awe even after experience David and the Pieta.
When we got back to the Mall, the festival was in full swing. We first stopped at the stage tent. There were four musicians playing traditional music--two vocalists, a flutist, and a percussion or string player. A troupe of dancers were onstage as well doing a pair dance. After they finished, six barefooted men with drums and cymbals came onstage to perform a dance for the gods that existed before Buddhism came in the 8th century. In a constant synchronizing rhythm, the five drummers and one cymbalist danced by jumping and twirling in the air while banging out a rhythm on their drums. It was very much a dance of power and masculinity.
After that was done we went in search of lunch which was some traditional Bhutanese cuisine. I had a couple of dumpling-like things--sausage inside of dough with a dip that tasted a lot like salsa. Allison went all out and tried the Jasha Tshoem--chicken in a brothy sauce with onions, chilies, and a light egg-like cheese over rice. It was pretty tasty.
After lunch, we decided to check out the rest of the tents and started with the textiles. We stood amazed at the colorful and detailed hangings--embroideries, woven cloths, paintings, all amazing works of art--of Buddha and folktales, clothes, boots, and decorations. Weavers were working their looms and creating beautiful and intricate clothes while we watched over their shoulders. Another tent had a replicated kitchen and a man talking about their meals and customs. He explained the food they were cooking--mostly rice and chilies; variations on what Allison had for lunch--and then “guests” came so the speaker could demonstrate mealtime customs. It was all very fascinating--the kind of activities I find most interesting about culture. There were tents exhibiting architecture, wood carving, and other men’s activities. In a separate area were tents extolling the monastic arts. Buddhist monks from Bhutan were creating stunning works of the most impressive detail I have ever seen. The most impressive was the sand art which will be really hard to describe. It’s a meditative art created like a painting on the floor of the temples using different colors of limestone sand. The picture they were recreating for us at the festival was a circular shape three or four feet in diameter, with many pictures inside of it. The detail was incredible and all done by hand. Lines were laid by taking a pinch of sand between two fingers and letting it fall in a steady stream onto the “canvas.” Lines were curved perfectly with even thickness. I just can’t get over the detail.
There are many place I want to see, but only a handful that I have put on my list of “Places I Must See Before I Die.” Bhutan is one such place. I want to hike the Himalayas, see the landscape and the old Buddhist architecture. I would love to be an anthropologist in this country. Although I loved studying these far flung cultures that anthropologists have spent years studying--Amazonian Indians, Masai warriors, Papua New Guineans, Bushmen of the Kalahari, Australian aborigines, Eskimo peoples--in class, I never had the desire to go and study those cultures as a professional. But I would love to go to Bhutan, conduct fieldwork, write ethnographies. Perhaps because all those other cultures have been “studied to death,” but Bhutan has remained relatively isolated and untouched by Western scholars. The problem for me now is that people are more interested in native anthropology (the anthropologist studying his/her own culture therefore eliminating the “outsider” bias inevitable in all ethnographies) and since education in Bhutan has changed in the last 20-30 years, they can conduct their own fieldwork in their own country. Anthropology is no longer the educated white Westerners trying to understand the far-flung cultures of the world as it was in its younger years, but the cultures of the world learning how to analyze and study their own cultures and sharing that with the rest of the world.
What a great weekend I had. I went to DC again so Allison and I could go the Smithsonian Folk Festival on the Washington Mall. It was important to me to go to this since one of the features of the festival was the country of Bhutan.
I first became interested in this tiny country in the Himalayas while watching the Today Show’s “Where in the World is Matt Lauer?” They showed pictures of the Temple of the Tiger’s Nest built into the cliffs of the Himalayas looking out on the edge of the world, high mountains and fertile valleys, traditionally dressed people performing thousand-year-old dances, colorful textiles, and buildings crafted with beautiful Buddhist architecture. A place few people have visited and apparently Bhutan is presenting itself to the world. It seemed a magical place, but of course, I romanticize.
So due to my budding interest in this little known country between India and Tibet, Allison and I took off to check out the festival. We got there a little early, so we started off with a good walk to the Monument and then the Lincoln Memorial. The Memorial was my favorite monument when I visited as a child. It was the first gigantic marble statue I had ever seen, and I couldn’t believe how real the waves in his clothes looked carved out of stone. He was this huge regal figure in this temple-like building and I was awed by it. It still has the power to awe even after experience David and the Pieta.
When we got back to the Mall, the festival was in full swing. We first stopped at the stage tent. There were four musicians playing traditional music--two vocalists, a flutist, and a percussion or string player. A troupe of dancers were onstage as well doing a pair dance. After they finished, six barefooted men with drums and cymbals came onstage to perform a dance for the gods that existed before Buddhism came in the 8th century. In a constant synchronizing rhythm, the five drummers and one cymbalist danced by jumping and twirling in the air while banging out a rhythm on their drums. It was very much a dance of power and masculinity.
After that was done we went in search of lunch which was some traditional Bhutanese cuisine. I had a couple of dumpling-like things--sausage inside of dough with a dip that tasted a lot like salsa. Allison went all out and tried the Jasha Tshoem--chicken in a brothy sauce with onions, chilies, and a light egg-like cheese over rice. It was pretty tasty.
After lunch, we decided to check out the rest of the tents and started with the textiles. We stood amazed at the colorful and detailed hangings--embroideries, woven cloths, paintings, all amazing works of art--of Buddha and folktales, clothes, boots, and decorations. Weavers were working their looms and creating beautiful and intricate clothes while we watched over their shoulders. Another tent had a replicated kitchen and a man talking about their meals and customs. He explained the food they were cooking--mostly rice and chilies; variations on what Allison had for lunch--and then “guests” came so the speaker could demonstrate mealtime customs. It was all very fascinating--the kind of activities I find most interesting about culture. There were tents exhibiting architecture, wood carving, and other men’s activities. In a separate area were tents extolling the monastic arts. Buddhist monks from Bhutan were creating stunning works of the most impressive detail I have ever seen. The most impressive was the sand art which will be really hard to describe. It’s a meditative art created like a painting on the floor of the temples using different colors of limestone sand. The picture they were recreating for us at the festival was a circular shape three or four feet in diameter, with many pictures inside of it. The detail was incredible and all done by hand. Lines were laid by taking a pinch of sand between two fingers and letting it fall in a steady stream onto the “canvas.” Lines were curved perfectly with even thickness. I just can’t get over the detail.
There are many place I want to see, but only a handful that I have put on my list of “Places I Must See Before I Die.” Bhutan is one such place. I want to hike the Himalayas, see the landscape and the old Buddhist architecture. I would love to be an anthropologist in this country. Although I loved studying these far flung cultures that anthropologists have spent years studying--Amazonian Indians, Masai warriors, Papua New Guineans, Bushmen of the Kalahari, Australian aborigines, Eskimo peoples--in class, I never had the desire to go and study those cultures as a professional. But I would love to go to Bhutan, conduct fieldwork, write ethnographies. Perhaps because all those other cultures have been “studied to death,” but Bhutan has remained relatively isolated and untouched by Western scholars. The problem for me now is that people are more interested in native anthropology (the anthropologist studying his/her own culture therefore eliminating the “outsider” bias inevitable in all ethnographies) and since education in Bhutan has changed in the last 20-30 years, they can conduct their own fieldwork in their own country. Anthropology is no longer the educated white Westerners trying to understand the far-flung cultures of the world as it was in its younger years, but the cultures of the world learning how to analyze and study their own cultures and sharing that with the rest of the world.