Peruvian Christmas

Hi there!

I have been absent for some weeks, but today I retake my blog with new force! I want to tell you about Peruvian Christmas. For some minutes I hesitated if I should write about it because I have never passed Christmas there. The only thing I can do is to present what I read about Peruvian Christmas' traditions. It's a good lesson for me too, because if I didn't need to write a post here, I wouldn't read nothing about this subject, I would still remain ignorant! (Recently, I became quite... lazy. I hope it's only the Christmas time, food and a lot of free time...)

So here we go. First of all, we have to remember that in December in Peru there is between spring and summer. The temperatures in Lima oscillate around 18-24 grades, so the wheather is warm. For this reason, we will never see snow in this part of the Earth. That's the first and the basic feature of the Peruvian Christmas that I used like an introduction.

Plaza de Armas, the very central place in Lima

The Peruvians go to a mass celebrated around midnight, or to a mass of December 25. For them the second day of Christmas, December 26 when we remember saint Stephen, Christian martyr, is not holy day of obligation.

Plazas and parks are not only places to decorate with Christmas Tree of lights, but also to perform carols. Children or adult choirs sing there to share with the pedestrians a little of happiness. It's also very common that children and adolescents go with their school groups to visit hospitals, retirement homes or orphanages.

In many companies the employees receive something like Christmas basket that contains the basic products they eat in the Christmas dinner: champagne, panettone (sweet bread with raisins), rice, tables of chocolate, walnuts, raisins, etc. Their employers can give them also peacock, to prepare in home the most important dish of the dinner.

At midnight they are all hug one another wishing "Feliz Navidad", Merry Christmas! The head of the family give a speech and after they drink a toast. They distribute the presents and watch fireworks.

In some houses people have Christmas tree, in others the Nativity scene that is more common than in Poland. It reamins without the figure of Baby Jesus. At midnight the smallest child put it in the manger. It can very small, symbolic, but in a lot of cases it has very local, traditional character.

 

Of course, there can't miss typical music in form of Christmas carols! In this one, the children sing that they will bring to Mary and the small Jesus typical products of Peruvian handicrafts: chullo (a type of hat), coloured poncho, charango (a Bolivian and Peruvian instrument)... And, obviously, they ask where he was born? The answer is that in Peru! Because they call him traditionally: cholito (a person with indigenous heritage, indian and Spanish blood).

I don't know you, but I learnt a lot writing this post! :)

Brisas del Titicaca

In Lima I went with some friends of my boyfriend, Fernando and Rosa María to a show of folk dances of Peru. The association that make it possible is Brisas del Titicaca (Breezes of Titicaca lake). It was a pleasure be there! Apart from see the show we ordered delicious pachamanca with pisco, the national alcohol that tastes like vodka but is made from grapes. The drink we exaclty orderes called pisco sour is pisco with lemon juice and white of eggs.

With my boyfriend, Rosa María and Fernando in the dancing floor

Drinking pisco

I only introduce this place because in base of what I saw there now I can share it with you and say you about other dances that Polish people have never seen. I will start with festejo that is the unique one with African roots. Nowadays some modern artists use it like a base of mixes, for example with electronic music.

 

The primitive version

Mix of festejo and electronic music, very trendy nowadays

Other dance I want to present you is saya. I had known it after I went to Brisas del Titicaca. In the family I was living with, Sarahit, the daughter, told me about her experience in primary school where she performed with her group exactly this dance. I found interesting a detail that she commented me. And it's that the skirts of the girls are very very heavy, although they seem short and light. They have a few parts made of metal! And the dancers should move them all the time! Sarahit recommend me a song she likes a los "Soy caporal".

Sarahit and me in Plaza de Armas, the principal plaza of Lima

 Rosa María and me with saya dancers

The last dance I would like to show you is danza de las tijeras (dance of the scissors). The dancers don't have real scissors in their hands. What they hold is two pieces of the scissors, bigger that the normal size, and not so sharp. They use them like an instrument. The choreography is complicated, unrepeatable, in my opinion (and I haven't a lot in common with the dance, almost no practice :P ).

Rosa María and me with the dancers of danza de las tijeras

I know what you will say: that I love put videos in my posts! :D That's true, in my opinion the videos are the best samples of cultures faraway that we can't see, touch or experiment by ourselves, directly. So, relish them! :)

Cumbia: not only Colombian music

Some posts before I talked about a Colombian folk music called cumbia. That's right, it rose in Colombia, like a fusion of Spanish, African and Indian characteristics that, mixed, gave what we know like the folk version of this genre. What is typical for it are the dress and the primitive instruments used, for exemple, during the most famous Colombian carnival, Carnival of Barranquilla.

So, why I want to write about cumbia from other countries? How it passed to be part of popular music of Argentina, Mexico or Peru? Well, between 1940 and 1960 famous musicians like Lucho Bermúdez or Luis Carlos Meyer with their orchestras went to give concerts in all Latin America. For this aim they needed to make from these "wild", folk songs something more accesible for stranger public. Thanks for this operation, in the countries I've already mentioned, the interest for cumbia appeared and new, local artists started to record. They put local instruments like charango, panpipes, etc. to the rhytm and in this way changed a little its basic form. In general, the genre turned to be more modern, popular, danced in discos.

In Peru, because right now is the country thar most interests me, there are two more listened groups. One of them is Los Hijos del Sol (The Children of the Sun) that interpets a well-known song "Cariñito". It has two version: one is cumbia version, and the other, that hasn't any official author, can be played and sang by anybody, is with zampoña (panpipes) and charango, the typical Andean instruments that made so popular Peruvian music.

Cumbia version

folk interpretation

The other group I need to talk is Corazón Serrano. Their songs are everywhere! They are always trendy! Any radio, any bus you go up, they are there with their songs! I decided to compare them with our Polish disco polo, because they can be considered quite... kitschy. It's so ingrained in the society. There are Peruvians that protests that it's very low culture, and in part they are in the right. Just listen yourself and judge.

"Como pude enamorarme" is one of the current hits. How can you observe, it's an easy rhytm... Maybe too easy for some people :D

If you have a few minutes, you can take a look at one of my articles in a student page about Latin America, Iberoameryka.com. This one is exactly about cumbia. The link: https://iberoameryka.wordpress.com/kultura/muzyka/cumbia-kolumbijski-dar-dla-ameryki-lacinskiej/ .