Traditional Rocket Festival in Laos 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bounbangfai/

This Festival is one of the twelve traditional festivals celebrated in
Laos. It is usually held during the 6th lunar month, at the beginning
of the rainy season (usually in May or early June) to coincide with
the planting season. The annual Rocket Festival is held to beseech the
God of Rain, called ‘Phraya Thaen,’ to have the rains arrive in a
timely fashion for cultivation. The Rocket Festival is considered by
the Lao people to be a joyful and fun-filled celebration.

The Festival includes a procession of groups of villagers carrying
rockets while singing in a ‘call and response’ style. Their songs are
poetic in nature and use sexual themes that symbolize fertility. The
humor used in the songs brings laughter to the spectators. The songs
symbolize the relationships between heaven and earth as well as
between men and women. The songs celebrate the forces of procreation
and the abundance of life. They all relate to the need for the annual
rains to fall at the proper times to support the growth of the yearly
crops.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bounbangfai/2592418040/

Ohh, how-oh, how-oh, how-ohh,

Please give us a glass of Lao alcohol

And then give us a bowl of Lao Tho Wine

It’s oh so sweet in your nephew’s mouth

Scoop some up for each of us

If you don’t give us any, we are not leaving

If we die here and become ghosts, we’ll haunt you, throwing dirt so
the sound scares you as you leave your house*

If we die here and become birds, we’ll perch on your betel nut leaf
plants so they die

If we die and become rats, we’ll chew up the weaving strings on your
loom

If we die, we’ll become your babies, and we will hang on your breasts
for suckling

Ohh, how-oh, how-oh, how-ohh, (chant continues in this way until the
procession ends)

dkj