Ahuna Festival 2012, Zunheboto (II)

So the turn-out at the Ahuna celebration in Zunheboto was small in comparison to the one in Dimapur, but here were some of the highlights of the cultural performances. I was a little disappointed that the organisers decided to make all 4 cultural troupes perform at the same time, so you'd have to rush from performance to performance, with no clear sense of what you were seeing if you didn't already know what the troupes were doing (and also only if you were lucky enough to be able to enter the performance area - most of the spectators from the town had to sit at a distance).

Thankfully, I was allowed into the performance area, and was already familiar with most of the performances because of the cultural documentation project.

The villagers from Chishilimi perform the rain invocation ceremony called Tala Dala (or Dala Dala). According to them, they are the only Sumi village to perform this ceremony, which involves two rows of men taking turns to hit a raised mound of earth with long sticks. The action of hitting the mound is quite similar to the action of hitting the creeper called ayichi during community fishing (called ayichi küvvü).

In addition to the men hitting the raised mound with the sticks, others stand to the side pulling strips of bamboo (I think), while others swing bits of bamboo attached to a piece of string, all of which make a sort of buzzing noise, that I believe is supposed to 'call the thunder'.

They also performend hango leh, which is a song sung while sowing.

The men from the village of Khükiye-Lukhai did aphila kuwo, which is often mistranslated as a 'war dance', since it was never performed by warriors before they went off to battle, or by victorious warriors. It was simply a dance performed during festivals.

The women from Khükiye-Lukhai performed thigha leh, a song sung while breaking up the soil with sticks, usually performed after hoeing (phushe) has been done.

Some men from Zunheboto performed winnowing of the paddy. According to H.S. Rotokha, the proper way was to have one man waving the paddy sifter up and down (along the vertical axis), while another waved his from left to right (along the horizontal axis).

And the women from Lazami village performed a thread spinning song called aye küzü, while 'spinning' thread from balls of harvested cotton.

They also demonstrated how fabric used to be dyed black and red (the most important Sumi colours). Here we have a pot of black dye.

Here's the red dye.

The GB (at least I think he was the GB - someone can correct me on this) of Lazami village showed me the plant used to make the red dye, called aghüsa in Sumi.

And here we have a close-up of the aghüsa plant.

Alright, just one more post about Ahuna!