S10 E3: Día de los Muertos / Day of the Dead

[Music] girl's worthless for me is something that is very much la that was revived by the artist community in the early 70s in Los Angeles through self-help graphics and so the Chicano Chicana artists really had a lot to do with the shaping of what did that did look like here you know in California and also throughout the southwest as people migrated to United States they brought this holiday with them in reproducing Day of the Dead here in Los Angeles sample takes I think have this responsibility because hands down without question there's the most important celebration for sabit X on both sides of the border it's a holiday created from a clashing and a combining of cultures and people taking what's important from each and making something new something vibrant something beautiful and something that has meaning for them as they are at that point now that it's practiced in very modern urban situations where diverse cultures have their own way of being and expressing there's that level of syncretism maybe we could say Modern Life has also impacted how the tradition is practicing [Music] [Music] [Music] this program was made possible in part by a grant from an r/a foundation a Margaret a Cargill philanthropy the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs the California humanities in the California Arts Council let's see which side the other side might be a little bright there were it has two faces and this paper holds up pretty well if the one that's made it make it closer yeah it's very it's much better quality this year here at Denali studio we are honoring my great-great-grandmother we call her mama Paula who raised my mother and who was born in one a meadow in 1856 and my mother tells me that she said she didn't want to die in this country she wanted to leave dyeing her homeland and so she went back to what my mother and my mother always lamented that she let her go because she didn't have any close relatives there anymore she was alone basically there's elements that will transcend and go on every alter that Ophelia does you always see the paper flowers the paper flower is important because there's a whole process in creating them and it tends to be a process that includes many people you need so many to get the wow factor that you see and yet that is that's something that she has learned for this culture unremovable love my daughter Prasanna and my son Xavier our great part of creating an altar we've been working together on altars collaborating together for a good ten years we'd get together and just figure out okay what is the theme who are we honoring and developing the concept for the altar that we're working on now we just kind of brainstorm and said wouldn't it be great to go to mama Lupe's hometown and just connect over there I wanted to find something in one numeral for Mama a soldier because it's she was from there she was born there and died there [Music] you see [Music] my love of the salon that I get Alicia and we know a simple splatter but oh yes though unless we give me my money we have a needle pero yo salvia theorem problem we will need to put a.m. our super you see a famous no some load a estamos salut gracias gracias yes the second me gusta para poner en la tarde a Super Bowl semillas holders but I love boiled [Music] we don't pass a mirin method miniatura smle of parallel totally follow me mama Pola dia de los muertos is an ancient ancient tradition a really profound tradition ancient to the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica but it's also a tradition that was fused with the Spanish Catholic beliefs of honoring their ancestors or remembering the dead it's a syncretism itza it's a holiday created from a clashing and a combining of cultures and people taking what's important from each and making something new something vibrant something beautiful and something that has meaning for them as they are at that point a lot of people assume that those skeletons connect with the Aztec culture but it's it's maybe a controversial idea I think the connection can also be made to sort of this medieval European dance McCobb you know the sort of dance of death when they had mostly in drawings and paintings skeletons doing strange wonderful and funny and odd things that inspire commentary the social commentary so it could be that this began as that and then it's of course been entirely reinterpreted to be its own things some once again a great example of syncretism changed further of course when those bad nerds were kicked out and it became Mexico and there was sort of a maybe a reappropriation of Aztec imagery into the idea of this holiday now that it's practiced in very modern you know urban situations where diverse cultures have their own way of being and expressing there's that level of syncretism so maybe we could say modern life has also impacted how the tradition is is practicing in the u.s. it really kind of sprung up from self up graphics as a public celebration so hope graphics started in the garage of sister Karen beau Calero with artists Carlos bueno and a phony Banyas and the earlier 70s and in the garage they attract other artists and with their they kind of gain momentum and sister Karen because she was part of the order of the sisters of st. Francis of Penance and Christian charity receives a grant which allows them to move into their first actual building on Brooklyn Avenue where they then move from a kind of informal group to a much more formalized group where they incorporate as self up graphics and art so sister Karen was familiar with Dia de los Muertos from her time at Immaculate Heart College wherein sister Corita Ken's classroom she would have seen a very well-known film by Charles and Ray Eames which is titled dear that us mortals from 1957 [Music] anybody who came would sit there and watch the film and she wanted them to get the feel of the community-based ultra making or celebration of iya that worthless so this film ended up becoming what sister Karen and some of the other artists would use to share about the other most myrtles to a Chicano community that had never experienced that they didn't know what that was it just wasn't part of our life here well in the Ames film I saw the people were making these wreaths this little mess with flowers for their altars and so it reminded me of my mother's that she would make for our altar so for funerals and so I incorporated that idea making them with tissue paper flowers but I put foil or tin leaves gives it a lot of light and attention I learned lots of ways to decorate and make decorations mostly out of paper and aluminum gardez bueno and Anthonia Vanya's two artists from Mexico really had a great impact also on reading days of the Dead tradition to self up graphics working with sister Karen and all of the artists at that early time in the early 70s around 1972 were really very open and excited you know to to understand this tradition better and more of course at that time there was not a whole lot of information about dsls worthless Carlos and Antonio basically bring Mexican cultural practices and their knowledge of Mexican cultural practices and aesthetics to East LA a lot of their early works are depictions of young boys young girls wearing traditional outfits with pinatas women with flowers in their hair all of these nostalgic moments with Carlos and Antonio where they're calling up all of this imagery and they're putting it in their work so you had images like the 1973 bola de Oro print which we think might have been one of the first commemorative prints for Day of the Dead where you see him reaching back into his own knowledge and memories about being younger in Mexico but then also tapping into an actual aesthetic that he saw in print we can also assume that he would have been familiar with the work of Jose Posada as well like when you look at them they don't look like Posada is necessarily one of the figures has flowers in her eyes they somewhat look like their faces are painted even it doesn't seem to follow this sort of straight white skull kind of motif that earned the aesthetic that Posada was working in they held anti-war rallies in Chicago San Francisco Austin and Houston it was a time in especially in East Los Angeles and different Chicana and Chicano communities of great political turmoil in Los Angeles we had just gone through that you got a moratorium and the death of Rubens other side and so whether consciously we realized it or not I believe that that dsls what those came at a very important time and was was embraced at a very important time in a community that felt somewhat fragmented and most definitely marginalized so when the other los Muertos began to be celebrated it came at a time in our community where we really needed something that was very healing and unifying they were using their knowledge to respond to very definite social and cultural needs so that was the need to be present to be Mexican to be Chicano in public there was also the need to teach to con people about Mexican cultural history and their approach was one about creating support about creating community about creating infrastructure in order to support other artists I do want to highlight Carlos as being very Antonio also being very important carriers of Mexican cultural practices and identity which they then bring to south help and then share and then that interaction with sister Karen with the other artists were there for forms yeah that Marta's ultimately the very first de los muertos was actually 1972 a very small sort of humble gathering and the parking lot behind self-help graphics but then over the years they continued it and it grew and grew and grew and the community embraced it they had processions from the nearby evergreen cemetery to self-help graphics the site on then Brooklyn Avenue and gage streets early on there was a Catholic Mass that was often celebrated by father wrongful metal very progressive Catholic priest there was the participation of dances techni the some of the indigenous ceremonies and rituals as well you had a doctor campesino in the late 70s joining iconic artists I closed for a school who were participants in the very early years I joined them around 1979 I saw a sign of outside their window as that would pass by and so I went in there and I and I met sister Karen and she asked me do you know something about the other Mortal a Day of the Dead and I said oh yes my learned it from my mother we practice it and she said okay you come by Saturday and you'll be uh you can work on the workshops there's lots of work for you to do she's so closely tied to our David a tradition and something that we now celebrate every year noted elf addenda which is sort of a more reflective more somber evening that we host that was her brainchild her and one of the former directors Tomas Benitez and so that is an element that is absolutely both idea contribution and I think it's important that we know that she's the person who really brought that to cell phone graphics [Music] I believe we would create a sacred space when you do an altar no matter how humble how as simple it is the intent is to celebrate and honor our loved ones and so it becomes a space that is very special calling for their spirit to join us the Athan connects the spiritual world with the physical world essential to a little smart dose to the celebration of it the four elements of water fire wind and earth all these are symbolic and the things that are there we always put in an arch they call it a Ventana or a window to call that loved one their spirit back home here's Europe Linda this is how you get here flowers preferably of marigolds because the Maragos have this very special scent as strong scent and that is one of the elements that back in the spirit to come and to see their ofrenda and so that aroma carries on to the afterlife candles to light the way for the dead petals of the marigolds strewn on the floor as a pathway guiding the spirits to the altar my mother said you always have to have a glass of water because they've come from such a little way they're gonna be thirsty another element you'd have is copal incense which is also wind but it's something that was used by the aztecs so it's another way to connect with that culture and then I would say another key element is the storytelling that happens at the all time that we continue to tell stories about who were remembering so that how they lived their lives it's not forgotten it's meaningful to have those items on the often end up because that's what we are sharing you know with her with our loved ones and our ancestors the things that they loved in life but having said that I think it's also really important to make room for newer expressions and innovations in terms of the ofrenda the tradition is rooted in art making as more creative minds approach the tradition and create a goddess there cannot look differently but I think the key elements need to remain as part of it it doesn't have to look like a traditional altar but to have elements that call the viewer that system honoring someone and that there's a reverence of the debt and I think our community here in Los Angeles are doing that and so that's the example you set for the people outside of our culture as people migrated to United States they brought this holiday with them the other was one of those encompasses so many aspects of our life there is the agricultural part which is a celebration of the harvest in that regard the mead buying everything that it produces the corn the tomatoes the squash the chilies the beans those are the ultimate trophy which the living now have a responsibility to show on the altar to show their ancestors their loved ones who have passed that they actually learned something from them so in this place that we call Oaxaca Deponia there is a pretty impressive community of people from Oaxaca who speak into genus languages and we live all over Los Angeles in every single neighborhood and certain times of the year there are certain traditions that we replicate here in Los Angeles so in reproducing Day of the Dead sample.txt have this responsibility to do it respectfully and and as close as possible to the ways in which we celebrate this back at home in Oaxaca so we could become a reference and hopefully it would for other people or for outsiders who may not know that this is what makes day of the dead so special [Music] no primeiro euro primordial que no puede fault our si chocolatey lattices a chocolate a supe muerto [Music] es la única temporada chaos NSA pan de muerto no low compromise de una panaderia familiar que NOS el pan casa si Senora no self forward si no cell phone so the bread has to be very very high quality very special bread it's basically you know family that this is what they dedicate their life to perhaps you know perfecting the recipe for the other los Muertos bread some people might say this bread symbolizes the body of those who have passed but you see that the bread has a little cornstarch figure which has a halo so it's like a saint it's like a spirit so we can also symbolize the saints that are carrying or that are helping in travels or in the transport of the spirits el dia de Muertos para me mas que una fiesta es un compromiso que de nosotros estamos literalmente publicado saseru porque es una tradición a ciggy Mo's dez de nuestros ancestress pasa es una preparation que se hace con messin see paseo por lo menos por que tenemos que tener todo de las las cosas en el turno de encontrar las cataratas no da feltre las no aces manzanas Platanos por que todo se tiene que poner en el Ulta oh yeah Mandela floor design for such a la Flor de la cresta ageyo [Music] so let's go Sasuke Katina carrying a lotta this is like a absolute necessary flower that will go on the altar but but it has this added meaning marigolds have a natural insecticide what people tended to do was put in marigolds within the milpa and so the marigolds protect the beans corn the chili is the squash the tomatoes they grow in within the meat but the marigolds become very important to protect the harvest but then you get to cut them and they are beautiful and are so vibrant so in Oaxaca when we're in our Pueblo the fruits come from all of the different regions around us so these fruits and vegetables basically show that we've continued some of the connections with our neighbors from other regions those are also important to show on the altar because they show a continuation of a unity that's one way to see the presence of the fruits that are brought from distant places and placed on the altar Bassam al-asad EOS crucem Horizonte us estamos aqui en estados unidos de seguir most como estas tradiciones it is a time to remember our loved ones as a moment of reflection a continuation of life in a different place in the place without windows or doors the underworld which is where our deceased ancestors go it's it's a place where people go to live a different kind of life [Music] okay okay and as long as the living members of their family remember to place an ofrenda as long as we remember to commemorate their life they will continue living in our memory the recognition of the places was like a going home and away finally to be in when a module has been an experience it will stay with me forever if I'm doing this altar for Mama Paula I have just try and find more information because all my life have been wanted to do that and I didn't do enough of it to look for her community here the NAD to me I see a quarter lasted another means of resistance di Piazza del pescado religious okay okay good assassin [Music] wait let's start this when I say yes I love you over the [Music] West estoy en busca de after the Nacimiento i will document oh so read me piece of whele your second or your key and run him at all I mean far away or second for me Novecento strength I go to the first show they meet at a restricted season FC okay [Music] no noise palette I got the escaped even yesterday we like a spy Oh bajo la fecha oh yes a lotta new Sesenta yo che monomer Guanajuato a las tres y ahora del viaje de junio de Nino a siento treinta y siete compare a co Manuel Rodriguez que la petite dress or rather via the idea if we the via Cinco de julio by SEO Dae anemia today Brad [Music] might the MattyB diabeties she opened her home to us and we stayed there several days and we just talked a lot you know it's just a lot of talking and storytelling and the family tree and who is who you know I used to help my mother having all kinds of flowers this was basic like this day remember she would make those big flowers for the wedding [Music] you know what it might have been because she took she would say they made all kinds of decorations [Music] but just uh this style of flowers then I just started teaching students and then for cell phone graphics we've we were doing all those all those workshops in all of you fixing even even the boys JP and of your dad a lot of these flowers [Music] lots of stories the flowering so part of the process of creating this altar was looking for her in the cemetery mama Paula died in 1937 that cemetery has probably been overcrowded for the last 60 70 years so her marker is not there Vanessa can see you soon after the defense on Atlantic ironically okay [Music] our Margarito are you though I'm Terra AM iam I wear like a busca maybe who L killed for uno de los stava muchacho yeah you you went a hard life [Music] we lost glasses underneath the poor girl you know I just assumed that wonderful you [Music] although she's watching it's always my my boiler [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] part of the reason that self-help graphics exists as a space is that there weren't spaces showing Chicano Latino arts in the 70s they didn't value that work and they didn't understand it and so self-help became the sort of de facto space of production but also the exhibition one of the things that sister Karen wanted was to support artists and so they started having the printmaking related to Day of the Dead and then the prints being exchanged or exhibited outside of Los Angeles and incorporating the images for the other mortals became also part of this expansion and this popularity I think there's something really beautiful about the way each artists interprets the celebration and how they choose to have that manifest through a print some of the pieces that come to mind and that show the diversity are John Valadez who did a print it actually has an image of Jesus and the image of a gentleman that he had picked up or copied from Mexican crime magazine and that was in the early earlier years in the 70s and so again you have this sort of imagery coming together and this understanding of what the littles Marco's is also coming together including some of the catholic iconography but also very representative of that time especially for that artist that's forward a little bit down the line and you have Gronk's piece the 10th anniversary those michael's print the portrait of this character in la falda Mendte and he's talked about her earrings and how he made them little like skeleton earrings and the shape of them and how he wasn't trying to create something sort of scary but rather playful and again a very reflective of this particular artist but not this extremely traditional aesthetic for Day of the Dead fast forward 2012 we have Patsy Valdes and her print didi starring in the shg revival print and that was actually a true commemoration for a friend of hers who had passed and so it's the artists portrait and in a way you almost have like a combination of Anna frienda with the print the prints have really varied over the years aesthetically in terms of content and theme portraiture - really graphic pieces and again all reflective of the way that de los Muertos at self-help is very much sort of Chicano celebration [Music] [Music] I grew up here in Boyle Heights with my dad and my dad was a single parent and he did not really have any interest in religion at all and he just encouraged me to acquire knowledge and read books and and think about things for myself most of my family I think they weren't too concerned about history and about where we come from their concern was more about how we survive now I didn't have any connection to day of the dead until I came to South holographics [Music] so this is the first yellow that went down and then this was the magenta that went over it so just thinking about how you build layers and how you build a fire and this was another magenta and red they went over it and then this was a blue and then a red using the same screen and this was a white to go over the stripe to cover up some of my mess ups this year I've had the honor to be asked to make the commemorative print for somehow graphics there is a lineage of print here for dildos mortals and there's a lineage of print makers and artists Hank it's kind of a big deal for me especially since I've been volunteering and working here for a long time where do these print you're looking at a statement around the resilience of our of our community or ancestors and seeing it actually I think through a remix sort of pop icon that is the Nike Cortez the image itself is definitely a syncretic products bringing forward the Cortez as a sneaker reimagining it as a protective shield and also I think helping people immediately go into a geographic place when you see the way that they're hung you know exactly what that is what it's hanging from and you can almost put yourself in your own memory of where you would have seen sneakers hanging from a power line and I think for me thinking about the shoe and and who wears them and what they mean and even the name of it Cortez and and how can we change that up how can we decolonize that the image of this hanging shoes [Music] [Music] the connection of my image with the dealer sources holidays is all about resilience and memory and kind of how we remember the past and how we take those memories with us into the future into our survival and and kind of what we learn historically when we learn ancestrally and taking that knowledge and just advancing ourselves [Music] Cortez was the wonky floor and Cuauhtemoc is one of the last Emperor's of the notes that man who actually interacted with Cortez and Cortez enslaved him and captured him and burned his feet to try to get him to tell him where the gold was that so the story of Cuauhtemoc and Cortez is kind of the story of resistance [Music] our trip to Animoto was really impacting because i found that when i went there i was home and my experience here in East LA was home also and that's because of my grandmother my mom always says Savino pero se da Xhosa da da and when I went to any meadow I recognized that I see my my children as carrying on this tradition after I can no longer do this they have been helping me first when they were younger making flowers in fact I engaged my grandchildren to make flowers but through the years that now they contribute to the composition to the foundation my son actually does most of the building and putting it together for me and he's making an arch for this this soldier al Arco is the focal point of besides the photographs right now we're in the process of creating this altar to momma Paula that we were titling it now us sabe us now us in the indigenous language is skirt it's a skirt sabias means wisdom you know why skirts so wise women that's what this offender is about we're focusing on the buddha Pecha culture the women of that culture the women they worthy their big grants us and they look like there's like fifty ribbons on each dance i was so beautiful so we added them to the arch we're actually going to create these skirts as the the altar you know that the actual adornment around the table will have this feel of the of the skirts I believe it's a art form maybe it's colorful guard but it's for me it's important that all the items at the end complete a whole composition but I like to have many vignettes within the altar because they tell stories they tell stories about the person were honoring this vignette here really encapsulates my cultural and spiritual sustenance I believe from my mother who if she was passed out from Mama Pula her nopal cactus there was a very important just honest nutritional substance that I received as a child and my mother always talked about her mom Apollo would cook for her in so many different ways and then of course our lady father look like they were deputies of the b10 she was the maid I met her I guess you would say like the main woman and then I in the background there sat that recycled or not that I learned from her everything I learned from my mother she learned from amapola here it's a composite of Mama Paula and my mother of their lifestyle and what they represented for me I would say that who had as in my East because the food they prepared basically was horn Lisa melt Orpheus and all these traditional foods that they were great artists with Sol metate L MultiJet a todo representa la cocina la comida el amor de la asistencia que no Co [Music] the other knows much is not about replicating what happens in Mexico I think it's always been its own Chicano invention here on the east side paying homage to the traditional ways but speaking to the issues that are experienced by the community here we are racially mixed that is our inherent nature and so being enriched by diverse spiritual practices is very natural for us there's no conflict there at all and so the artist really had a lot to do with the shaping of what did that did look like here you know in California and also throughout the southwest if you see many of the ways that celebrated at least in a public manner in the Chicano Chicana communities you see for example the das TECA the Aztec dancers and that I believe has its origins in the fact that in the early 70s there were several maestro's they came from Mexico with the intention of really teaching the people in the Chicano Chicana community aspects of dasu ceremony ritual that was a connection a direct connection to some of the rituals and celebrations again that we had been disconnected from here in Los Angeles it's a big celebration I guess American style in a way but it still is in our community the Chicano and Latino community it still has that Mexican s that cultural aspect of it but it's just like in a wider scale [Music] it's grown in a way where it's kind of not just that religious celebration anymore or than a celebration it's more of like a bigger celebration and that's kind of like a party [Music] today we're gonna be creating this deatils nautical inspired look there you go 99 cent store so it's like face tattoos we could go to Target and we could buy a sugar skull and we could build altar from items that we could buy a Michaels that does look like the one that Disney is going on you can't trademark Day of the Dead [Music] it's weird pop culturally people picked it up so there's films about it the book of life or cocoa it's been justified [Music] obviously there's something really beautiful about being able to share part of your culture with the rest of the world and having it be appreciated the other side of that is when that element of culture is being appropriated and used as a marketing tool to sell beer or lotto tickets dia de los Muertos at what point is it too much and is it too far when it's not actually benefiting the community it's just for corporate interests that's something that I don't think is within our control [Music] by living in Los Angeles we are outside of our Pueblo we are outside of Oaxaca and so transformations will naturally occur and I think that one of the most visible changes that I've seen in recent years is the makeup on the face for example that's not something that we do in our communities but I have seen young subjects painting their faces and participating in more public shows of Day of the Dead celebrations which seems like a natural transformation the face painting really was also an expression that came out of the artist community as I remember and money some of my early trips to me he Poe I did not really see face painting at that time now I think if you go to Mexico it's become popular and I think part of that is because of the internet and because some of the films you know that people have been exposed to but the face painting really was something that you began to see more and more in the Chicana and Chicano community and of course it was an inspiration of the Calavera imagery from a hero and from jose guadalupe posada and and some of the ancient you know sculptures of life and death and duality the young people who are making these transformations have family who are celebrating the way that we celebrate in our communities so you get to have kind of both worlds the young sample takes get to go outside and go to Hollywood Forever and paint their face or go to some of the more public events but then more than likely return to the family and the community that celebrates in the very different way that is more private I think that's why it's so important to understand what the essence of any given tradition is and that goes not only for the people that own those traditions and are practicing those traditions and sharing those traditions but there's a responsibility for other communities when they embrace or when they adopt these are the dead traditions there's a responsibility that comes along with that and understanding what it means and not just exploiting the superficial aspects of days of the dead it's more than you know it's more than painting your face like a skeleton or Calavera there's more underneath that and so there's a responsibility that comes with that I believe if you're going to appropriate or if you're going to borrow or if you're going to do that you do it within a manner where you're respectful and try to understand the tradition we've been preparing for this night for a long time especially this year honoring the body theft in uncle mama Paula my great-great grandmother just getting inside her spirit learning more about her going to her birthplace the place where she for she died and was buried and lived and it's been a wonderful journey and I have much more - sure now with my children and grandchildren the stories about mama Paula were always present I been passing on these stories about her to my children and I hope that they pass them on to their children and that's what this celebration is about of keeping the memory of our loved ones alive I think this is a the moment that the appropriate moment to ask all of you to invoke the name of someone you in your heart that you are remembering and just say their name in all of us Jose presente Eppley Totino co-presence well a Lupe Salazar a model Esparza Alberto a Venus [Music] you stare está con siente que van a venir la salle Massif esta casa es algo que no se puede speaker se siente Mona mo she owns a sente no say no no podría expla carne con palabras lo que se siente pero es es algo muy bonito Rachel dia primero que es el día que Haga Amedeo dia tenemos que ver la puerta de la casa de poner in CNC para decir la las Armas passing a science of Casa zombie many dos [Music] dangle nobody mostly I'm a dick almost almost confused [Music] [Music] [Music] yo creo que la muerte Veigar cuando una menos LS / r SI esto en Oaxaca estoy en la Cola yeah mm where oh I am mo is to Los Angeles Nemo's know whether you get lucky and also a perspective on una muerte de la muerte yo creo que I told over here he cuando vas oh my lady you crop it let me familiar isoquant in the preview a well-mannered in a tip on a doughnut are procuring a whisper of America [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] this program was made possible in part by a grant from an r/a foundation a Margaret a Cargill philanthropy the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs the California humanities and the California Arts Council

Channel: KCET

Views: 184,916

Rating: 4.7626739 out of 5

Keywords: kcet, southern california, Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, Mexico, art, Artbound, Self Help Graphics and Art, Chicano, Chicana, Chicanx, culture

Id: -1c8sXFFjws

Length: 56min 18sec (3378 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2019