" 'Dodole' songs are typical ritual songs used to perform during summer dry seasons. Young girls masked themselves with branches and leaves (as symbol of vegetation exuberance).They used to visit village houses and perform "dodole" ritual (singing "dodole" songs and dancing ritual dance).As respond to a ritual performance, the master of the house would come out from house and throw some water on dancers, which is ancient way of invoking the spirits of rain. "Dodole" ritual originates from pre-Christian times and represents the oldest Slavic tradition.
POKLADE (Mardi Gras)
The months of January and February are the time of carnival throughout the country. Dancers appear wearing fantastic masks, sometimes more than six feet tall, decorated at the top with bird wings and feathers, heads of animals, as well as mirrors and colored streamers. Covered with sheep skins and armed with long clubs and wooden swords, they leap and jump to the deafening sound of drums and the cattle bells on their belts. In some areas the men blacken their faces and wear womens overdresses to perform these carnival dances that drive out evil winter demons and ensure health and good crops.
In some ways the carnival custom of Serbia(Republika Srpska) is the most spectacular and colorful of all the ritual dance events. Performed mainly during the week before Lent, the festival in its entirety may last for a good part of February, beginning sometimes as early as January.
Prevelj was a ritual-dance enacted around a fire for the peace of dead souls. A large bonfire was built and each family who had had a recent death, would carry a log to this fire in dedication to their dead relative. The women were not usually allowed to be present at this event, but sometimes one woman would steal toward the fire and touch it with her spindle as a symbolic gesture. The dancing around the fire would get under way as soon as the musicians had first played a somber piece to which there was no dancing. The villagers would stand around the fire holding on to each other by their waistbands, while the mourners who did not dance, held lighted candles. The kolovodja, or leader of the kolo, held a long rod or staff in his right hand, and as soon as the fire died down, would call out to the line of dancers to jump over the fire. Those who wouldnt jump might be admonished by means of his large staff. Today the custom of jumping over the fire is largely dying out, through dancing around bonfires is still popular.
LAZAR
The week before Easter, Serbians living near Sredska celebrate Lazarus Saturday. A group of six girls, one of whom masquerades as Lazar (Lazarus), and another as Lazarka (the female equivalent), go from house to house singing and dancing. The girl who is Lazar wears a mans white shirt and a mans hat decorated with flowers. In his hands he carries a staff or sometimes an umbrella. The Lazarka wears a necklace of golden coins, and on her head, money, greens, and garlic to scare away evil spirits. The girls carry two baskets; in one they collect beans, in the other, eggs. After dancing in front of each house, they sing songs to bless the head of each household, "
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Enviado em 07/04/2012 por marcel8328
"International Orangutan Conservation Relief has now been placed in motion by the European mobilised community to save, make aware, and push for others to take action now.
We ask you to do one thing and thats sign the International petition @ http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-our-orangutans-from-extinction.html
Please read the history below of our reatives that show a 99% DNA match to us;
The Orangutans are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes that are native to Indonesia and Malaysia. Highly intelligent creatures they share almost the same characteristics as we do the human species.
Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, Orangutans are currently found only in the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, there are only two surviving species.
Both Orangutan species are considered to be Endangered with the Sumatran Orangutan being Critically Endangered. Threats to Orangutan populations include poaching, habitat destruction and the illegal pet trade.
The Orangutan has a new threat though, shoppers thirst for palm oil is now threatening to wipe the whole species of the face of the earth.
The demand for a cheap ingredient found in thousands of products, from shampoo to biscuits, is contributing to the extinction of the Orangutan.
One in 10 mass-produced foods on the worlds supermarket shelves is estimated to contain palm oil, a bulking agent and preservative, but supermarkets and food manufacturers have been accused of doing too little to ensure their supplies are not threatening forests that are vital to the survival of Asia's only great ape.
An estimated 5,000 Orangutans are killed each year in Malaysia and Indonesia by the burning of vast tracts of virgin forest to supply the world's growing demand for palm oil. Building roads to the plantations has made the situation worse, by opening up the jungle for poachers, who kill Orangutan mothers and sell their babies as pets to Asian families.
Only 3 days ago a mother and her new born child was murdered by an angry mob of palm oil workers for the crime of foraging for food that they are finding hard to obtain as of the destruction of their forest / habitat.
Conservationists say Britain, the second biggest importer of palm oil in the EU, could do more. They want the Government to make companies responsible for the environmental impact of their activities in the Company Law Reform Bill. Five major food retailers - Sainsbury, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, the Co-op and Asda - have joined a not-for-profit organisation aiming to clean up the palm oil industry. But Britain's biggest retailer Tesco and the major store chains Morrisons and Iceland, have refused to join the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.
We now ask you to not only sign the petition, but to boycott all Britains supermarkets that have refused to join the Roundtable to now make safe the Orangutan.
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Media, press, and radio we will contact should the named Hyper Markets not join the round table to secure the Orangutans future. "