}
Bristol's Vaisakhi Festival by AJ [OH835]
[Music playing]
AJ: My name’s AJ, I did this project thing with Asian Arts Agency where I filmed the Vaisakhi Festival, May 18th, 2014, and my little brother thinks he’s the sound guy now.
AJ’s brother, Gurdas?: Look at someone, but don’t look at straight directly into the camera.
AJ: No, I don’t need to look at the camera, it makes you more nervous. Just taking a timelapse of the day that I went through in the Vaisakhi Festival.
A?: That’s doing it, that’s it.
A?: So what are you writing now?
AJ: Just about how – just like yeah the start, how we all walk together, the main reason of this festival is to celebrate the birth of Sikhism. We start like at the [inaudible 00:01:10] Gurdwara where we meet and then there’s like a loop so we go all the way around to all the Gurdwara’s around Bristol. The Guru Granth Sahib which is like the holy book for Sikh people and it was on a truck which was decorated as if we was inside a Gurdwara. For that there was a truck, 4x4 which had a drum and a young lad who could go at that for a long time [laughs], and they had like the Gyani which like the holy guy, the temple, and he was like singing the prayer.
[Singing].
AJ: People in front of the truck were sweeping to take the dirt away and stuff, so it could be a clean path for the holy book because it’s obviously holy. For Sikh people it’s the only main festival or thing we have, because like Diwali, Sikh people celebrate it, but it’s traditionally a Hindu – it just goes with the tradition of Indian people. It’s not even about faith, it is about the culture and the society now, because it’s all changed so everyone’s just together and like there’s no partitional stuff.
A?: Jesus Christ.
AJ: Yeah, and we celebrate Christmas as well, so it’s kind of like weird. Yeah, some of this timelapse you probably see most of the same people in it, because I was walking with like my little brother and my brother’s friend and his little son and we were just walking, it’s very social as well, because you see lots of your friends and like your cousins and stuff, take pictures of the day. ‘Cos obviously it’s quite special, like everyone dressed up and stuff, and you do stuff like make a documentary of it [laughs], like I reckon –
AJ’s brother: Expensive stuff.
AJ: 20,000 people must have ate in that one day. My experience of the day was like it’s very spiritual, and you get in touch with like god, it’s very social as well because you see lots of your friends and like your cousins and stuff, and you have a joke and a laugh on the way walking, like it’s not like boring or anything, you don’t like need to put your headphones in and start walking, but I had camera all day on. It died at the home stretch, so it was okay, saw most of it on the timelapse, and the martial art guys, which have learnt Gatka most of their lives, they was all doing a little thing, they was like fighting and stuff, and showing us like their moves and stuff or whatever, and one of the guys which is like the teacher, like he’s like the sensei or whatever you want to call it. He did a little show thing where he got volunteers, he had fruit and he put fruit on the like, one would kneel [inaudible 00:03:55] and he put a fruit, piece a fruit on their knee, one would like be sat and a piece of fruit would just be on their leg, like a banana. One would just like have their hand out like that, and a piece of fruit would be there. And one was on – one guy was lying down and a melon was on his stomach kind of thing. My brother had like a melon in his hand [laughs] and he – with salt in his eyes, he couldn’t see, disorientated and stuff. But he still like, he’d been practising for so long where he knows where everything – his surroundings are when he just chopped it. And I didn’t realise at the start of the day some random guy just came up to me, he said, “Can I take a picture of you?” and then the next day I went to school and my parents were like texting me and stuff saying, “You’re on the front page of the newspaper,” and I was just like, I feel a bit famous but I’m not really [laughs].
AJ: My name’s AJ, I did this project thing with Asian Arts Agency where I filmed the Vaisakhi Festival, May 18th, 2014, and my little brother thinks he’s the sound guy now.
AJ’s brother, Gurdas?: Look at someone, but don’t look at straight directly into the camera.
AJ: No, I don’t need to look at the camera, it makes you more nervous. Just taking a timelapse of the day that I went through in the Vaisakhi Festival.
A?: That’s doing it, that’s it.
A?: So what are you writing now?
AJ: Just about how – just like yeah the start, how we all walk together, the main reason of this festival is to celebrate the birth of Sikhism. We start like at the [inaudible 00:01:10] Gurdwara where we meet and then there’s like a loop so we go all the way around to all the Gurdwara’s around Bristol. The Guru Granth Sahib which is like the holy book for Sikh people and it was on a truck which was decorated as if we was inside a Gurdwara. For that there was a truck, 4x4 which had a drum and a young lad who could go at that for a long time [laughs], and they had like the Gyani which like the holy guy, the temple, and he was like singing the prayer.
[Singing].
AJ: People in front of the truck were sweeping to take the dirt away and stuff, so it could be a clean path for the holy book because it’s obviously holy. For Sikh people it’s the only main festival or thing we have, because like Diwali, Sikh people celebrate it, but it’s traditionally a Hindu – it just goes with the tradition of Indian people. It’s not even about faith, it is about the culture and the society now, because it’s all changed so everyone’s just together and like there’s no partitional stuff.
A?: Jesus Christ.
AJ: Yeah, and we celebrate Christmas as well, so it’s kind of like weird. Yeah, some of this timelapse you probably see most of the same people in it, because I was walking with like my little brother and my brother’s friend and his little son and we were just walking, it’s very social as well, because you see lots of your friends and like your cousins and stuff, take pictures of the day. ‘Cos obviously it’s quite special, like everyone dressed up and stuff, and you do stuff like make a documentary of it [laughs], like I reckon –
AJ’s brother: Expensive stuff.
AJ: 20,000 people must have ate in that one day. My experience of the day was like it’s very spiritual, and you get in touch with like god, it’s very social as well because you see lots of your friends and like your cousins and stuff, and you have a joke and a laugh on the way walking, like it’s not like boring or anything, you don’t like need to put your headphones in and start walking, but I had camera all day on. It died at the home stretch, so it was okay, saw most of it on the timelapse, and the martial art guys, which have learnt Gatka most of their lives, they was all doing a little thing, they was like fighting and stuff, and showing us like their moves and stuff or whatever, and one of the guys which is like the teacher, like he’s like the sensei or whatever you want to call it. He did a little show thing where he got volunteers, he had fruit and he put fruit on the like, one would kneel [inaudible 00:03:55] and he put a fruit, piece a fruit on their knee, one would like be sat and a piece of fruit would just be on their leg, like a banana. One would just like have their hand out like that, and a piece of fruit would be there. And one was on – one guy was lying down and a melon was on his stomach kind of thing. My brother had like a melon in his hand [laughs] and he – with salt in his eyes, he couldn’t see, disorientated and stuff. But he still like, he’d been practising for so long where he knows where everything – his surroundings are when he just chopped it. And I didn’t realise at the start of the day some random guy just came up to me, he said, “Can I take a picture of you?” and then the next day I went to school and my parents were like texting me and stuff saying, “You’re on the front page of the newspaper,” and I was just like, I feel a bit famous but I’m not really [laughs].