by Jim Goodman
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| Ulo Akha woman |
This month in Thailand it’s
time for the Akha Swing Festival.
For the females of a traditional village, this is also the time to dress
up in their very best Akha clothing.
Even when they have adopted modern clothing for everyday work, at this
time of the year they remember their roots and express it in their
clothing. It’s also a time of
artistic competition, to show off one’s skill, to create a jacket, shoulder
bag, cap or headdress more outstanding than anyone else’s. And this is in an environment where all
the women and girls, while keeping within the traditional artistic parameters,
strive to be original enough to be noticed.
Though their language does not
have an equivalent for the term, they are artists without knowing it. They pay attention to each step of the
work. While working on their
creations they have a vision of its final appearance and spend much time carrying
out the details of the original inspiration. In what way are they different from painters, novelists or
symphony composers?
In
the traditional Akha view art is something one wears. They don’t hang their
creative work on walls. They put it on their bodies. To an Akha, art is the
adornment of everyday being and to wear it is to make a statement at once
ethnic, personal and aesthetic. Living
in relative isolation for so many centuries, they evolved their own idea of
what was beautiful. And maybe
because the women spent so much time in the laborious process of turning cotton
bolls into clothing, they imagined ways to adorn and decorate otherwise
functional clothes into something that aesthetically enhanced their lives in a
color-limited environment that was basically greens, browns and whatever color
the sky was that day.
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| spinning thread while on the move |
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| weaver at work |
The
Akha woman’s outfit comprises, from head to toe, a headdress, halter top,
long-sleeved, hip-length jacket, belt, knee-length skirt, a sash-pouch worn
over the front of the skirt and a pair of leggings below the knees. The components change according to
age. As children they wear round
caps, skirt and jacket. When they
get older, they change to a different, more decorated cap, add the sash-pouch
in front of the skirt, and wear leggings.
When fully grown up they wear the adult woman’s headdress. The Swing Festival and Akha New Year in
late December are the occasions when they can graduate from one outfit to the
next.
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| embroidering on the way to the fields |
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| indigo-dyed cloth hanging up to dry |
The
process of making clothing begins with the collection of cotton bolls grown in
the village. The women run lumps
of this through a simple gin to crush the seeds, then fluff it with a bow to
remove all foreign matter. The
next step is to roll the cotton into sausage-shaped rolls. To spin thread the
Akha woman takes a roll of cotton, hooks it onto her simple drop-spindle, gives
it a fast turn on her thigh to set it spinning, lets it drop, then draws out
the thread.
When
there’s enough thread ready, it’s time to set up the loom. This is a simple contraption, easy to
put up and take down, comprising two pairs of erect bamboo poles about six
meters apart, connected by bamboo rails.
First all the warp threads are laid out on the ground for the entire
length of the bolt of cloth, then dipped in a solution of rice water to give
them a little starch to withstand the pressures of weaving. When dry the
threads are inserted through the heddles, which separate every other thread,
and are connected to two foot pedals, or treadles. Then they insert them through a wooden reed, which keeps them
all in a straight line, and finally tie them to an end beam behind and above
the weaver and around an end stick at the front of the loom.
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| Ulo Akha child |
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| Lomi Akha child |
The
jacket requires two equal strips of indigo cloth, stitched together halfway,
for the front will be left open.
The width overlaps the shoulders and the straight sleeves, which is
accentuated by brightly colored piping around the shoulders as well as the
lapel and hem. Embroidery and
appliqué dominate the body of the jacket and bands of contrasting colors
decorate the sleeves. What kind of
embellishment the Akha woman will use depends on the sub-group. And in Thailand alone there are three,
each with its own distinctive style:
Ulo, Lomi and: Pamee.
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| Lomi Akha girl |
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| Ulo Akha girl |
The Ulo
style features up to thirty or more tiny running stitch lines in varying
colors, covering the lower half of the jacket on both sides. Some of these are
simply lines, small zigzags, loop stitches, connected x’s; others more
elaborate, wider rows of complex stitches. They have names, though many Ulo Akha women don’t know them: spider’s tail, centipede, chicken feet,
snake stripes, meeting of curves, braid, eye, ankle and flower stitches. They ornament the finished jackets with
rows of cowries or buttons across the back and chicken feather tassels or
gibbon fur on the shoulder blades.
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| Lomi Akha girl doing embroidery |
The
distinguishing characteristic of Lomi style jackets is the use of appliqué.
Women cut rows of connected diamonds, triangles or a cutout that looks like a
flower from above, onto thin strips of cloth and attach them to the jacket body
or sleeves. The common jacket
design has two or more rows of appliqué, with bands of embroidery in between.
The stitching patterns include some of the easier Ulo ones, as well as mazes,
circular stitches, connected squares, crude geometric designs and stylized
trees. Each has its special
name—flower stitch, drum, moon and sky, splashes of rain, etc.—as do the
appliqué designs. Cowry shells,
beads, Job’s tear seeds and horsehair tassels are commonly attached to the
final result.
In Pamee
women first cross-stitch patterns on strips of perforated indigo cloth and
attach from three to six rows of these on the front and rear of the jacket. Geometric designs predominate. There are mazes, spades, screens,
squares within squares, triangles and quadrilaterals in addition to borrowings
from other groups’ patterns. Classic
Pamee jackets feature probably the tiniest, most intricate needlework of all,
but nowadays the tendency is towards fuller, somewhat larger patterns and the
borrowed motifs include those culled from Hmong and Yao repertoires. Pamee women attach nothing to their
finished jackets and like to wear them open in the front to show off their
silver-laden halters underneath.
The same
kinds of stitching, appliqué and embroidery the three Akha sub-groups use on
their jackets also characterize their respective shoulder bags. They are basically smaller versions of
the jacket art. But the ornamentation
is similar to all three styles.
Two or three rows of colorful beads run vertically down each side and
another row goes horizontally along the top of the bag. The vertical rows flank rows of coins
or cowry shells and chicken feather or horsehair tassels hang from the top of
the rows.
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| making chicken feather tassels |
The Akha
are the only people who turn chicken feathers into an ornament. They use a two-string bow to do this,
twisting white tail feathers around the strings and knocking them into place
with a bobby pin. They can even do
this, like spinning and embroidering, while they’re walking to the fields. The usual size for shoulder bags and
caps is about 10 cm, with ones double that and more attached to headdresses. They are usually dyed bright red, as
are the horsehair tassels, which are about 5 cm long.
The
jungle is a source for other decorative materials. If they run out of horsehair they can use the fibrous stem
of a certain plant growing wild in the area. They collect small white Job’s tears, round or cylindrical,
seeds that are easy to string and attach along jacket hems or around
headdresses. They look for the
iridescent wings of shiny, bright green beetles. And in the past they used gibbon fur, with half the tuft
dyed red and the other half white.
Cowry
shells, a favorite decorative item, come from the faraway sea, of course, but
in past centuries people used cowries as a medium of exchange in the regional
markets. So they symbolize
wealth. To fit them flat against
the cloth an Akha has to make an incision, and it’s usually done with a full-sized
machete, under the hump on the back. Then the hump can be popped off with a
twist of the blade.
Coins are also used for embellishment
symbolizing wealth and status—for everyone around knows the value of the
particular coins. Most favor the
large silver rupees from British India days, especially for headdresses. For jackets and shoulder bags they’ll
attach the small 2-anna coins from
the same period. Poorer Akha women
use large Thai one-baht coins. The
old Thai 5- and 10-satang coins, with the hole in the middle, are common
on bags. So are the old Burmese ‘lion coins,’ the large ones turned into
buttons, the small square and scalloped ones attached to jackets, belts and
bags.
The last major decorative device is the chukhaw,
or the small half-globes of silver that come in three sizes. They are a basic
component of the headdresses and also used on men’s jackets. They are pounded out in a mold mounted
on a tree stump at the blacksmith’s. Nowadays there are cheaper ones of tin or
aluminum available in towns. The chukhaws
are perforated on each side with a tiny hole and so are sewn directly onto
the cloth.
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| Lomi Akha headdress and jewelry |
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| Lomi Akha woman |
The rest
of the woman’s outfit comprises the skirt, halter, skirt-guard, leggings and
belt. All but the skirt and belt are embroidered and designed in the same style
as the jackets and bags. The skirt is plain blue-black cloth, pleated in the
back, that hangs from mid-hip to just above the knee. In front of the skirt, to keep it from
flying up, she wears an ornamented skirt-guard, called jèjaw in Akha, a
unique clothing item. The beads of it sway with the skirt when she walks.
The
halter has a single diagonal strap and is designed in the same style as the
other items, except the Pamee style, which is covered with diamond-shaped
silver pieces. The leggings,
designed to protect them in the fields and jungles, are tied just below the
knee with beads or strings and reach down to the ankles, appliquéd with bands
of colors,
To top off the
outfit the Akha wear distinctive headgear, starting with infancy, for the first
clothing item the new mother makes for her baby is the cap. It is round, embroidered and decorated
with beads, seeds, coins and chicken feather tassels. As they get older, girls switch to a more elaborate design. Lomi girls wear a silver-laden cap that
is essentially the headdress without the back plate. Pamee girls wear a round cap covered with chukhaws and
diamond-shaped silver plates. Ulo
girls wear a beaded cap with several long feather tassels streaming out the
back, with large tufts of red and white gibbon fur over the ears and on top.
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| Pamee Akha cross-stitch patterns |
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| Pamee Akha woman |
Finally, there is jewelry to
augment the ensemble: silver neck
rings, filigreed pendants, engraved discs, earrings shaped like the Greek
letter omega, bangles, rings and beads
galore. Fully dressed and adorned
in the traditional way, Akha women stand out resplendently in their
color-challenged jungle environment.
To get that way required many hours of meticulous workmanship. But it was all worth it. It made them the most beautiful
beings in the forest.
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| Ulo Akha festival dance |
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