Cultural uses
[edit]
Africa[edit]
Hollowed-out and dried calabashes are a very typical utensil in households across West Africa. They are used to clean rice, carry water, and as food containers. Smaller sizes are used as bowls to drink palm wine. Calabashes are used in making the West African instruments like the Ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀, a Yoruba instrument similar to a maraca, kora (a harp-lute), xalam/ngoni (a lute), the goje (a traditional fiddle), and the sacred Gamba of the Serer ethnoreligious group of the Senegambia – which is beaten in the event of the death of a Serer elder, followed by the usual funeral regalia to send them to the next life. They also serve as resonators underneath the balafon (West African marimba). The calabash is also used in making the shegureh (a Sierra Leonean women's rattle) and balangi (a Sierra Leonean type of balafon) musical instruments. Sometimes large calabashes are simply hollowed, dried and used as percussion instruments by striking them, especially by Fulani, Songhai, Gur-speaking and Hausa peoples. In Nigeria the calabash has been used by some motorcyclists as an imitation helmet in an attempt to circumvent motorcycle helmet laws. In South Africa it is commonly used as a drinking vessel and a vessel for carrying food by communities, such as the Bapedi and AmaZulu. Erbore children of Ethiopia wear hats made from the calabash to protect them from the sun. South Africa's FNB Stadium, which hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is known as The Calabash as its shape takes inspiration from the calabash. The calabash is also used in the manufacture of puppets.
Calabash also has a large cultural significance. In many African legends, Calabash (commonly referred to as gourds) are presented as a vessel for knowledge and wisdom.
Calabashes (nkalu in Kikongo) are used to collect and store palm wine in Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo (c. 1990)
The Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté with his instrument (2007)
Calabash puppet (Marionette) (2020)
The African percussion calabash (2017)
China[edit]
The húlu (葫芦/葫蘆), as the calabash is called in Mandarin Chinese, is an ancient symbol for health. Hulu had fabled healing properties due to doctors in former times carrying medicine inside it. The hulu was believed to absorb negative, earth-based qi (energy) that would otherwise affect health, and is a traditional Chinese medicine cure. The bottle gourd is a symbol of the Eight Immortals, and particularly Li Tieguai, who is associated with medicine. Li Tieguai's gourd was said to carry medicine that could cure any illness and never emptied, which he dispensed to the poor and needy. Some folk myths say the "gourd had spirals of smoke ascend from it, denoting his power of setting his spirit free from his body," and that it "served as a bedroom for the night..." The gourd is also an attribute of the deity Shouxing and a symbol of longevity.
Dried calabash were also used as containers for liquids, often liquors or medicines. Calabash gourds were also grown in earthen molds to form different shapes with imprinted floral or arabesque designs. Molded gourds were also dried to house pet crickets. The texture of the gourd lends itself nicely to the sound of the insect, much like a musical instrument. The musical instrument, hulusi, is a kind of flute made from the gourd.[clarification needed]
A Qing dynasty cricket cage
A bottle gourd
A hulusi, the calabash gourd flute or bottle gourd flute
Jewish culture[edit]
In the Safaradi Jewish culture, the gourd is eaten during Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year's Eve). According to the texts the gourd is eaten as a symbol of tearing apart the enemies who may come and attack. It is called Qaraa, which in Hebrew means "torn" קרע.
"שיקרעו אויבנו מעלינו" meaning "may our enemies be torn apart over from us".[citation needed]
Polynesia[edit]
The plant is spread throughout Polynesia known by hue in many related languages.
In Hawaii the word "calabash" refers to a large serving bowl, usually made from hardwood rather than from the calabash gourd, which is used on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. The use of the calabash in Hawaii has led to terms like "calabash family" or "calabash cousins", indicating an extended family grown up around shared meals and close friendships. This gourd is often dried when ripe and used as a percussion instrument called an ipu heke (double gourd drum) or just Ipu in contemporary and ancient hula.
The Māori people of New Zealand grew several cultivars of calabash for particular uses like ipu kai cultivars as food containers and tahā wai cultivars as water gourds. They believed the gourd as a representation of Pū-tē-hue, one of Tāne (their god of forests)'s offspring. Several types of taonga pūoro (musical instruments) are made from gourds, including types of flute (ororuarangi, kōauau ponga ihu) and shakers (hue rarā, hue puruwai).
India[edit]
The calabash is used as a resonator in many string instruments in India. Instruments that look like guitars are made of wood, but can have a calabash resonator at the end of the strings table, called toomba. The sitar, the surbahar, the tanpura (north of India, tambura south of India), may have a toomba. In some cases, the toomba may not be functional, but if the instrument is large, it is retained because of its balance function, which is the case of the Saraswati veena. Other instruments like rudra veena and vichitra veena have two large calabash resonators at both ends of the strings table. The instrument, Gopichand used by the Baul singers of Bengal is made out of calabash. The practice is also common among Buddhist and Jain sages.
These toombas are made of dried calabash gourds, using special cultivars that were originally imported from Africa and Madagascar. They are mostly grown in Bengal and near Miraj, Maharashtra. These gourds are valuable items and they are carefully tended; for example, they are sometimes given injections to stop worms and insects from making holes in them while they are drying.
Sitars and one rudra veena (bottom right)
Sitar with resonator made from a bottle gourd. Surbahar is similar but larger and with lower sounds (something like a bass sitar)
Saraswati veena, the calabash resonator is not always functional but it is kept in place because of the balancing effect.
Rudra veena is a large plucked string instrument used in Hindustani classical music. One of the major types of veena played in Indian classical music, it has two calabash gourd resonators. The vichitra veena, also with two large resonators, is a similar instrument.
Ektara (one string) resonator made from a calabash gourd
The tambura or tanpura may have a toomba (although not in this picture), a resonator made of calabash at the end of the strings table.
Hindu ascetics (sadhu) traditionally use a dried gourd vessel called the kamandalu. The juice of a bottle gourd is considered to have medicinal properties and be very healthy (see juice toxicity above).
In parts of India a dried, unpunctured gourd is used as a float (called surai-kuduvai in Tamil) to help people learn to swim in rural areas.
Philippines[edit]
In the Philippines, dried calabash gourds are one common material for making a traditional salakot hat.
In 2012, Teófilo García of Abra in Luzon, an expert artisan who makes the Ilocano tamburaw variant using calabash, was awarded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts with the "Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan" (National Living Treasures Award). He was cited for his dedication to practising and teaching the craft as an intangible cultural heritage of the Philippines under the Traditional Craftsmanship category.
Salakot in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Money Museum, with the bottom one made from calabash
Salakot from the Philippines (c.1900), the top one is made from calabash
New Guinea[edit]
Among some New Guinea highland tribes, the calabash is used by men as a penis sheath.
South America[edit]
In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and southern Brazil, calabash gourds are dried and carved into mates (from the Quichua word mathi, adopted into the Spanish language), the traditional container for mate, the caffeinated, tea-like drink brewed from the yerba mate plant. In the region the beverage itself is called mate as well as the calabash from which the drinking vessels are made. In Peru it is used in a popular practice for the making of mate burilado; "burilado" is the technique adopted for decorating the mate calabashes.
L. siceraria "mate" type
Calabash used as a container for drinking mate with a metal bombilla
Mate carved and decorated as a drinking container (also called mate, and the infusion also called mate)
Mate burilado in Peru
In Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador calabash gourds are used for medicinal purposes. The Inca culture applied symbols from folklore to gourds, this practice is still familiar and valued.
North America[edit]
Calabash's watertight features allowed it to be often used as a container to ship seeds across the translantic slave trade. They were also used by enslaved people to carry seeds for planting on plantation fields. On plantations that held enslaved African Americans, the calabash symbolized freedom—as alluded to in the song "Follow the Drinking Gourd" that referenced the Big Dipper constellation that was used to guide the Underground Railroad.
