shatterstripes

Boi-Bumbá

stinkygoat led me to some information on the interestingly-resonant Amazonian Ox Dance festival. The way its themes intertwine with other threads I've seen in widely diverse mythologies, new and old, struck me as interesting enough to play with. So I fired up Illustrator and whipped this out.

The white/red one is Garantido - the Secure Ox, while the black/blue one is Caprichoso - the Capricious Ox. They're two parallel implementations of the same death-and-rebirth tale. Across Brazil, there is a tradition of having multiple groups of "Ox Dancers" who do this, with many different oxen going through this story; in the town of Parintins, the myriad small Ox groups shook out to two large ones, who compete with lavish, elaborate pageants.

Find your own resonances with white/red/heart/security vs. black/blue/star/capriciousness.