Tag Archives: transformation

Folktale: The Origins of Moko, the Maori Face Tattoo from New Zealand

by Christopher Agostino

My wife brought me a book of Maori folktales from the library: Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths, Tales and Legends by Kiri Te Kanawa; © 1989; Arcade Publishing, Inc., New York. She came across it while looking for stories for a show she will be creating at an elementary school. The author introduces each tale briefly, writing about how she might have heard such stories as a child and what she imagined about them. The bio notes also explain that Kiri Te Kanawa is a famous opera singer and made her debut at the Royal opera House, Covent Garden, in 1971.

The tale “Mataora and Niwareka in the Underworld” especially caught my attention, as it offers a folkloric explanation for the origins of moko, the traditional facial tattooing of the Maori. In brief: a warrior chief named Mataora meets some beautiful women who come up from the Underworld. They tell him that the designs he has painted on his face are not true moko because they can be wiped off. He falls in love with Niwareka, winds up following her back down to the Underworld and meets her father, who is busy tattooing a young man’s face with a fine bone chisel. Mataroa sees that the process is excruciatingly painful but the man doesn’t cry out. Ue-tonga, the father, then tattoos Matarao’s face with “the intricate patterns, twirls and swirls” that make a warrior “look both frightening and beautiful.” Mataroa understands he must bear the pain bravely to receive the true moko, and afterwards he brings the tattoo tradition (and Niwareka) back up to the Overworld.

I’m fascinated by the idea in this tale that the Maori first painted their faces with the moko patterns before they used tattoo, Continue reading →

The Bird of the Most Beautiful Song

©2012 Christopher Agostino      — re-telling a fable from the Pygmy people of the Ituri forest

A young boy was walking through the forest when he heard a song, a song so beautiful that he followed the sound to see who was singing and he discovered a bird—the Bird of the Most Beautiful Song in the Forest. He asked the bird to come home with him, and when he returned to his house he asked his father to let the bird join them at their meal. The father was annoyed to have to give food to a mere bird, but he agreed. After the meal, the bird flew away.

The next day the boy again heard the singing in the forest, and again he brought the bird home for a meal. The father was more annoyed than before, but again the bird was fed. 

Then a third day, and again the song was heard! This time when the boy returned home with the bird, the father decided it was enough, their food was too precious to share. So he sent the boy off on an errand, and when the boy was gone, the man took the bird into the forest and killed the bird, and with the bird the song died as well, and with the song the man died—for the bird was gone forever; and with the bird, the most beautiful song of the forest was gone forever; and with the song, the man was gone, gone from the forest forever.

I have been wanting to tell this tale ever since I came across it, and I performed it for the first time this past Sunday at the North Hempstead Ecofest at Clark Botanical Garden. Continue reading →

Face Painting: 14 Lion Faces — Run For the Lions at the Bronx Zoo

The Lion's Roar

Saturday morning — early — we had a team of artists at the Bronx Zoo painting the runners and supporters for this spring’s Run For The Wild event. There were 6,000 participants, running to support Wildlife Conservation Society efforts. At the event, they announced that over the past few decades the number of lions in the wind have declined by 80%, and even these most iconic of all the big cats are in danger of disappearing from the wild. Please go to Run For The Wild to see what you can do.

All we painted on people were lion faces. Even so, our goal is to be creative and make every face unique. We had a couple of trainees along on the event, and the advice I gave them to encourage freedom in their approach to their face designs was: “we are not trying to make people into lions, we are painting onto them a lion mask. So we are not trying to make the lion realistic, we are creating a work of art that captures the essence of the lion, that feels like a lion, that makes the viewer think ‘lion'”. Facepainting is an art, so nature is not meant to be imitated or reproduced—it is meant to be re-created through the vision of the artist.

The Lion gets Loose

[caption id=”attachment_2448″ align=”alignleft” width=”193″ caption=”Lion Growl  Continue reading →