Zozobra, making Santa Fe's fiesta celebrations more with pyrotechnics

August 19, 2015 10:20 AM

In 1924, the longest-running community festival in the United States, Las Fiestas de Santa Fe, got a bit weirder, thanks to the artist Will Shuster. That year, he found inspiration in the burning of Judas effigies, specifically the practice including firecrackers, performed by the Yaqui Indians of northwest Mexico (Google books preview) and he created Zozobra (meaning anxiety, worry in Spanish, nicknamed "Old Man Gloom" or "the gloomy one"). The burning effigy was joined by a fire spirit dancer around 1933, originally created by Jacques Cartier, formerly a ballet dancer in New York.

The local Kiwanis Club got involved in 1963, and took over in 1964, the first year that Shuster didn't constructed the figure of Zozobra. Jacques Cartier performed the role of the fire spirit for 37 years, and handed the role to his dance student, James Lilienthal, in 1970. The role stayed in the Lilenthal family when the torch was passed to James' daughter, Katy Lilienthal, in 2004.

Before Zozobra burns, people can come forward and put in their worries and concerns from the past year into the effigy. If you can't make it, you can submit your own worries and concerns online to BurnZozobra.com.

The show goes on to this day, though it has expanded from its initial private gathering to a public spectacle, with last year's ticket sales topping 10,000, and total attendance was reported at 40,000.

For a look at Zozobra's past, here are some videos of prior years:
1973 - Harold Gans and Dr. August (Gus) Denninger discuss and narrate (14:35, rough video about building the structure, how the fireworks are set up in Zozobra and around the stage)
1986 - A Windy Burn (14:55, celebrating Zozobra's 60th birthday)
1986 - Steve Stucker at the first televised Zozobra (0:44, a short clip from a news broadcast)
1991 - "The Real Burning Man" (4:13, a produced video that is clearly a product of the '90s)
1994 - Zozobro Live! Excerpts (2:02, dramatically scored short film)
2000-2013 - long playlist

Documentaries:

• NM True TV - Zozobra (7:25, a video on the history of Zozobra, with an interview with Will Shuster's great grand-daughter)
• The Making and Burning of Will Shuster's Zozobra part 1 of 2 and part 2 of 2 (18:02, another overview of Zozobra, with more history, information on the Kiwanis Club's, and actually making the effigy)
• Will Shuster's Zozobra de Santa Fe (58:02, presented by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe and Santa Fe Downtown Kiwanis Foundation and narrated by Gene Hackman, featuring interviews with folks who were involved in the formation of the Zozobra celebrations.)

For more history, here's an interview with Will Shuster, transcribed from a tape recorded in 1964.

Final tangents: Do La Zozobra, a very 80s pop song by The Marbles in 1984; a portrait of Jacques Cartier in costume in the National Portrait Gallery.

posted by filthy light thief (6 comments total)

Arg, the title should have been "Zozobra, making Santa Fe's fiesta celebrations more exciting with pyrotechnics," but I clipped the title in the wrong place. It still (sort of) works with the missing word.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:51 AM on August 19, 2015

What a fantastic series of links about a great, odd little civic event. I watched Zozobra burn a couple of times in the mid 90s. My favorite part was the odd mix of this very pagan primal ceremony taking place in a city park full of normal ordinary folks just hanging out. It's not Burning Man, much more of a Nascar crowd. But folks get pretty into it. Turns out setting an effigy on fire is something everyone can relate to.
posted by Nelson at 11:10 AM on August 19, 2015

BURN HIIIIIIIIIIIM!

I miss Zozobra. It's the best.
posted by Makwa at 12:29 PM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

ah, zozobra. yes. i went the first few years i lived in santa fe, while i was in college (yay, johnnies!). many, many drunken people. one shooting. happened a couple years in a row, actually, if i recall. but otherwise a lovely drawing together of locals. kind of a, yay, it's the end of the mainstream tourist season event, and we all went back to feeling (many of us being merely transplants or temporary residents) the town was ours again ... this was especially true in the late 1980s when "southwestern" and "santa fe style" was a huge design and art draw. spanish market (july) was over, indian market (aug) was over, the santa fe opera season was over ... fall was coming, green chiles were roasting. sigh.
posted by buffalo at 1:20 PM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

From the enjoyable documentary with narration by Gene Hackman, I learned that Zozobra also made an appearance in Ride the Pink Horse (trailer, Wikipedia article).
posted by filthy light thief at 3:00 PM on August 19, 2015

I grew up near Santa Fe and have many fond memories of going to Zozobra as a child.

To prepare for it in elementary school we would make little Zozobra figurines by taking lollipops, putting kleenex on them, and drawing big black eyes. (Basically the same way you make ghosts, now that I think of it, but they were always and only ever Zozobra in my eyes).

When you are five, there is something pretty monumental about going somewhere with all these adults and people and burning an enormous effigy. I looked forward to it all year.
posted by forza at 5:41 PM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]