Charanga | Wounded Bears
For several years, Japanese photographer Keijiro Kai has recorded testosterone-filled festivals around the world.
Charanga (2017)
Shot during the Bolivian Tinku festivities (‘Tinku’ means ‘encounter’ in the local Quechua language), full of traditional, ritualistic combats. The people from the villages around Macha sing and dance to local folk music (‘charanga’ means brass band) and consequently collide with groups from other villages. The men start with bare fist fights, comparing their physical powers. They fight until the blood flows – occasionally someone gets killed – and dedicate the blood to the god Pachamama, to ask for a good harvest.
Wounded Bears (2014-2018)
The setting is the Nozawa Onsen village in Nagano, during the climax of the annual Dosojin festival, which celebrates ancestral folk deities. These gods, ‘Dosojin’, ward off evil spirits and are the guardians of roads and borders surrounding rural mountain towns. The work itself consists of images of the dramatic attempts by male residents of the village to set a huge wooden shrine ablaze with traditional torches. These valiant young defenders – the primary subjects of Kai’s lens – risk their safety in an intense interplay of offense and defence.
