Title: Prayer Circle

General Information about Item:

• Customary folklore: rituals, traditions

• Language: English

• Country where Item is from: USA

Informant Data:

• Trevor Davis is an ’18 that joined X.ado his freshman year and sang in his high school choir for three years. He is 21 years old. He was born in Wheaton, Illinois. He grew up and still lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is majoring in computer science, and minoring in math and anthropology.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context

All members of X.ado who are attending the rehearsal or participating in the performance participate in the prayer circle. The informant does not remember when this tradition began as it has been happening for a long time. Prayer circles occur before every rehearsal and performance.

• Cultural Context

Christians often pray before they do something significant, so that God can give them strength and luck. X.ado prays before shows for comfort and for religious solidarity.

Item:

The members of X.Ado form a prayer circle and pray for the show, and the people they’re going to perform for before every show that they perform. The members also pray before every rehearsal they have to bring themselves good luck.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

https://youtu.be/Bf7qgwJN3ts

Transcript of Associated File:

“One thing is, being in an acapella group, we have a regular rehearsal schedule and we have a certain set of warmup, different breathing exercises, different sounds we need to get prepared. Being a Christian group, we do some different things before shows and rehearsals, so before each show, we’ll do a prayer circle about the show and about the people we’re singing to. So, one thing that makes X.ado unique to compared to other groups on campus is that we pray before all of our shows and rehearsals even in our performance group we’re going in with intention to each of those and that’s something we do on a regular basis”

Informant’s Comments:

• See transcript

Collector’s Comments:

• Christians often pray before significant events, and almost everyone has some rituals they go through to comfort themselves. Many performers have some pre-show ritual that they go through in order to calm their nerves and get focused for the upcoming show.

Collector’s Name: Marcus Reid

Compiled/Analyzed by: Afnan Enayet/Sruthi Pasupuleti

Tags/Keywords:

• Prayer
• Religion
• Christianity
• Warm up
• Acapella
• Singing