FandangObon: Amplification, counter-publics, and fugitive spaces of belonging in Los Angeles

The festive celebration known as FandangObon is made possible by workshops and satellite performances that artivistas (art activists) stage throughout the year in a variety of community venues. The event transforms the annual Japanese American Buddhist Obon ceremony honoring ancestors into an antiracist polycultural performance. Through improvisation and invention, colorfully adorned participants blend the dances, songs, and costumes of the Japanese bon odori circle with Mexican son jarocho fandango practices and West African ballet and egungun drum and dance circles. Each of the groups represented in FandangObon brings to the mix its own form of circle dancing, collective singing, and instrument playing, yet bon odori, fandango, and egungun do not fuse together seamlessly in these gatherings. Instead they coalesce as a conversation among equals in which each tradition remains faithful to itself in the process of making changes through engagement with others The concepts of amplification, counterpublics, and fugitive spaces of belonging serve in this article as central interpretive frames of a cultural critique of the historical and cultural conditions for the celebration's emergence, articulation, and implementation (Marcus and Fischer 1986).