Title: Carlota Hopkins Guerra

General Information:

• Pre-Performance Folklore—Spanish
• Carlota Hopkins Guerra
• Student, Spanish
• English
• Gran Canaria, Spain
• May 20, 2019

Text:

Before every race, the informant will fist bump with her skipper, the person that she is sailing in the boat with. Right after completing a number of other things specific to the sport, both the informant and her partner will stop, take a deep breath, and give each other a fist bump. In a given sailing competition, the informant could be sailing with numerous different people. However, this folklore is continuous regardless of who her partner is.

Context:

The sailing team is a varsity athletic team at Dartmouth College. Carlota has been a member of this team for approximately one year, joining when she was a freshman. This pre-performance folklore takes place on the water in the minutes leading up to the race. The conditions before a race are constantly changing, but this folklore is performed every time. This folkloric tradition was passed to Carlota from her coach in Spain. She recalls that he learned it from his old teammate, who learned it from his coach. She told me that it is a pretty common tradition to perform and that lots of people within the sailing community in Spain do this tradition.

Meaning and Interpretation (Informant):

Carlota interprets the cheer as a way to share positive energy with her partner right before a race starts. She says that sharing this moment with her partner makes her more calm and confident within herself. She likes knowing that she can rely on something consistent regardless of who she is sailing with. She says that if she is not calm and focused both her and her teammates performance is affected, so this tradition has become essential to her pre-performance routine.

Meaning and Interpretation (Collector):

I think this tradition specifically can be considered folklore because of how it was passed to Carlota. She was taught by example from her coach who also learned by example and the authorship is irrelevant because the origins can’t be traced back to a specific person. Additionally, another member of the sailing team that I interviewed described this tradition to me, although for Emma, the timing of the tradition in the sequence of her pre-start routine was different. This folklore has multiple existence and variation both within the sailing team but across different cultures of sailing. I also believe this can be interpreted as an example of homeopathic magic. The way Carlota describe the purpose of being in contact with her partner to me seemed analogous to sharing energy and being on the same page before an important race.

Collector’s Name: Audrey Giblin

Tags/Keywords:

• Sports
• Athletics
• Sailing
• Performance
• Pre-performance rituals
• Contact
• Fist-bump