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♪ Music ♪
♪ Music ♪
OSCAR RIOS: The celebration within the community
is a moment where death becomes life.
Laughter overcomes sorrow.
Memory overcomes oblivion.
Eternity lives and co-exists with the present.
NARRATOR: POETRY, MUSIC AND DANCING CELEBRATING
DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS - DAY OF THE DEAD.
LINDA GARCIA: They say there are three deaths.
The first one is when you die,
the second one is when your body is no longer visible -
you're either cremated or buried,
and the third is the worst is when you're forgotten.
NARRATOR: WE'RE AT THE BANCROFT GALLERY IN SOUTH OMAHA.
IT'S THE TIME OF YEAR WHEN PEOPLE DRESS UP FOR HALLOWEEN.
BUT THIS ISN'T HALLOWEEN.
INSTEAD IT'S A TIME WHEN A DOOR IS OPENED, BRIEFLY,
FOR THE DEAD TO RETURN TO THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
TO TEMPT THE SPIRITS, FAMILIES PUT FOOD AND
DRINK BY THEIR GRAVES AND THEY CREATE OFFERINGS
KNOWN AS OFRENDAS.
LINDA GARCIA: Well, it's, you put out their favorite things.
It just is not food, it's cigarettes, their favorite beer,
their favorite beverage, their favorite candy
for the spirit to let them know that they are welcome
and it's giving gratitude to their lives
and once they've absorbed the essence, the smell,
then you take those same foods and offer it to
your family and friends who are visiting.
VIRGIL ARMENDARIZ JR: I always equated Día de los Muertos
with our Memorial Day.
And, it's a day for sadness.
It's a day to remember your losses.
I've learned Día de los Muertos is a day when you
go back to the grave and you let your ancestors,
your family that are gone come and visit with you.
Sit down and exchange with you.
Be with you.
The Mexican people believe that their relatives come
and share that moment with them and because of their distance,
it is a celebration of life.
LINDA GARCIA: We're a family.
Our artists and our musicians are families to us now.
NARRATOR: CELEBRATING DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS
GOES BEYOND SOUTH OMAHA.
♪ Singing ♪
JASEL CANTU: These are all candies for the spirits.
I mean, if you wanted to, you could bring a photo of somebody
that you want to be publicly honored and remembered.
NARRATOR: IT'S DAY OF THE DEAD AT THE
SHELDON ART GALLERY IN LINCOLN.
JASEL CANTU: It's a holiday that brings the
whole family together and this is a holiday that
Sheldon can have that can bring the whole community
together as well.
It's very family friendly as you can see.
It's also cultural understanding.
They can learn something that they may not
otherwise see in your everyday life.
NARRATOR: EVERYTHING ON THE OFRENDA HAS MEANING.
THE FLOWERS, ESPECIALLY MARIGOLDS,
ARE KNOWN AS FLOR DE MUERTO, FLOWERS OF THE DEAD.
BUT ABOVE ALL, THE OFRENDA IS PERSONAL.
JASEL CANTU: I had a friend who died when she was 17
and every year her family and friends will put
Hello Kitty and goldfish crackers on her headstone
because that is what she loved.
♪ Music ♪
JASEL CANTU: The spirits will like to hear that music.
I've been in cemeteries where mariachi band will be
there the entire day playing music all day to
the headstones because they believe the spirits
are there and they would like to hear the music
that they listened to when they were alive.
DANIEL VENECIANO: I have to say that culturally
I grew up in Los Angles where Día de los Muertos
is celebrated everywhere, you know, at this time of year.
LUIS PEON-CASANOVA: The sugar skulls is something
I always remember as a kid.
We always wanted to get a sugar skull and sink our
teeth on them and, you know, give it to death!
Death has been a part of our thinking forever and again,
not in a scary way but you can see some of
the artwork here, it's playful, it's colorful,
it's joyful.
It's not necessarily a scary thing.
But I think the most important part in terms of
culture that I can think of is the Aztec and the Mayans
and the Indians in Mexico when they were
forced the Catholic religion upon them,
they really modified it.
They didn't accept it the way the Europeans thought
that we had accepted it but we modified it and
this is the result of that.
OSCAR RIOS: There's a paradise where food and drink abound.
The colors, the flavors, the sounds and the rhythms
multiply through the dances, the music, and the offerings.
NARRATOR: BACK IN SOUTH OMAHA AT THE BANCROFT GALLERY
THE BALLET FOLKLORICO XOCHITL
CONTINUES ITS PERFORMANCE SURROUNDED BY THE ART
OF DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS.
LAURIE BREKKE: We take a few weeks and we just pile
all of the paints and all of the things that we need
to get everything done and we throw on Mariachi music
and get out the tequila and just spend a whole lot
of time and completely destroy the dining room
for two weeks - create a whole bunch of pieces and then....
WAYNE BREKKE: ...and drink more tequila.
NARRATOR: MUSIC TO MY BONES, THIS YEAR'S THEME
AT THE GALLERY, INSPIRED WAYNE BREKKE TO CREATE
SOMETHING NEW OUT OF AN OLD GUITAR.
WAYNE BREKKE: This actually opens up and this
is the way he gave it to me so I made art out of it
and inside is the Cantina of the dead and this is
where they all get to come in and the spirits come in
and they get to have a great time.
NARRATOR: DEATH INSPIRES EACH ARTIST IN A UNIQUE WAY.
DOROTHY TUMA: But for the most part it just comes
from my heart because dying is a celebration of
living and it's what I create, what I feel.
BART VARGAS: I've often felt like I've had a foot
in two different worlds and not quite fitting in either.
I use a lot of house paint.
I use a lot of domestic materials everybody
already has a relationship with and it's been a lot of fun.
I've learned a lot...and this was a really good way
for me to reconnect to part of my culture.
KITTY BROUGHAM: The first painting that I did was
this one and it's Birdsong to the Dead and looking at
the theme of music really birds.
Nature is my church and when I think about my parents
who are both deceased and the people
who I've loved a lot of times walking in the woods
was sort of like our communion with the
spiritual world and so I wanted the idea of
Birdsongs for the Deceased to be sort of the thread
that wove through my work.
CAROL FETTIN: My brother, Johnny, we called him Johnny.
He died when he was 15.
Fourteen-fifteen and he was a trumpet player.
He had a form of cerebral palsy and his head would
go perpetually back and forth, back and forth,
but when he put the trumpet up to his mouth, he could calm
himself and stay perfectly still while he played.
You know, it just touches me to think that his story is
continuing even though he's been gone so long.
♪ Music ♪
DAVE MANRIQUEZ: No one dies as long as you remember them.
NARRATOR: DAVE MANRIQUEZ REMEMBERS THE NIGHT HIS
ROCK N ROLL HEROES, RICHIE VALENS AND BUDDY HOLLY
DIED IN A PLANE CRASH.
DAVE MANRIQUEZ: And it was really sad
when I walked into the house.
It was like a relative had died and, you know,
they were playing the songs that they sang.
A cold February 3rd day
- the day the music died, I titled in my painting.
And the ofrenda is really great because it's not
only an ofrenda, but it's a retablo.
It tells the story of their death because
I actually have the plane crash.
I have the cars, the automobiles at the site.
I did the best I could.
♪ Music ♪
And, what's interesting is like I saw a movie the
other day and they had an old Buddy Holly song in it
I had never heard before.
It was called Dearest, and I went out and bought the
soundtrack just for that one song, so it's really neat.
It's like he's never gone away.
♪ Music ♪
LINDA GARCIA: I think in our own way we all want to
be remembered for something.
I think that's all innate as a human being.
♪ Music ♪
OSCAR RIOS: With the first light of dawn comes time
to say goodbye to our dead.
They will go back to their world and we will return to ours.
It is the time for the last prayer,
perhaps the most devoted one.
We Latinos take our time to say goodbye.
We like togetherness.
And when somebody leaves our home, we go to the
door or even outside the house just to be together
with them a little longer.