Forums > Social Discussion > Should we be calling these things Poi?

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GlåssDIAMOND Member
The Ministry of Manipulation
2,523 posts
Location: Bristol, United Kingdom


Posted:
Poi is a traditional maori dance and exercise, its part of their culture.
(for a start read : https://www.homeofpoi.com/history.htm
)

We swing things of glowing and firey-ness around on the ends of string, chains, or in some fabric.
It has NOTHING to do with that maori culture or with maori rituals or maori beliefs.

its a fundamental object, a thing on a string... so many differnt things: weapons and tools and toys from the past fit the description. (although they often were not used in pairs but some were, can anyone with knowleged of martial arts etc tell me please?)

a lot of folk call it fire chains, and some won't use the name poi- because they consider it disrespectful to maori culture.

So heres some more questions:
Should we be calling this poi? or are we just disrespectfully trampelling on maori culture?

Are all these things we use actually poi (using maori definintion)?
Is poi (maori def) the 2 objects or is it the dance - the way that they are used or both??

Where did the traveller/hippy/raver/youth culture craze for swinging things on fire or glowing come from?
I suspect that it has multiple origins and sources and i reckon it goes back more that 25 years ... what was it in the 50's 60's 70's and 80's HISTORY MAAAN?
I have a feeling that we have a lot to thank the club swingers and Indian club swinging exercises for, Schatz clubswinging book from 190x for clubswinging and even flag/poi-flags date back to at least 1933.

Soo many questions, I really would appreciate some input, thoughts, facts, history or even opinion on this one.
Smiles
A confused ubbangel ubbrollsmile

MikeGinnyGOLD Member
HOP Mad Doctor
13,925 posts
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA


Posted:
Quote:

Arashi do a search for the word poi on this forum and maybe you will get my point.




Touche! ubblol

-Mike

Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella



A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura


arashiPooh-Bah
2,364 posts
Location: austin,tx


Posted:
whoa there sporto. i did get it.
but you're missing MY point.
lots of people call these things something else, this website is not the end all be all. people have been spinning weights on chains thousands of years longer than this website has even existed. there's paleolithic dig sites with what you so adamantly call "poi" in them. so i could retort with hey buddy you better call them "juggluggapow" cause that's what Og called them. Thank god for Og -for "establishing" the word juggluggapow! people spin three beats with swords for fugs sake. search the WWW for meteors. manriki gusara. sorry but this has nothing to do with political correctness, PC rubs my fur the wrong way too.

there is no established anything, nothing to hijack. it's all just a choice you make right this second... and i'm not forcing anyone to call these things chains, or poi, or gusara, or nunchaku. just expressing my opinion. nana
and i don't "do" poi.
(don't juggle either) weavesmiley
(hugs to the jugglers, poor fellas) hug wink

-Such a price the gods exact for song: to become what we sing
-Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
-When the center of the storm does not move, you are in its path.


robotfacemember
190 posts

Posted:
All the other popular names such as fire twirling, fire chains etc.. are also established. Wheres the difficulty with this concept? It's established by the popularity of it's use.

Dragon7GOLD Member
addict
625 posts
Location: Aotearoa (NZ), New Zealand


Posted:
I wish someone would just find this chinese/japanese/russian/english/roman traditional name (for poi, not meteors, or swords or gulash) and freakin use it, cause all this bitching about a name is starting to piss me off. mad

Why dont you forget this stoopid subject and put energy into something productive.

Ok sry...hard week/day (too much work not enough sleep) but anyway...i dont dig cryptic sh@t thats been regurated 1000 times and is used to just confuse the hell outta people, and stagnate them. As far as im concerned its elitism at its worst.

I honestly dont get why u guys dont believe in teaching over the net, iv learnt heaps, and i dont care any more, ill teach who i want, however i can.

I prefer to just spit it out and be done with it. Truth hurts but at least its the truth! footinmouth yum that taste's good nana Get over it.

arashiPooh-Bah
2,364 posts
Location: austin,tx


Posted:
confused2
who doesn't teach on the net? huh?
is this another case of somebody getting mad cause glass and i don't have time to write huge threads about stuff and would rather just help people as best we can with hints?
confusedif it is, what makes you think attitudes like that would make us want to spend even more time than we already do? several people have called glass an elitist and i say that's a bratty self centered attitude. he's actually a really nice person that has "shared" with more people than a porn star

he he
wow you guys sound as stressed as i was after drinking lots of coffee and trying to figure out what everybody was talking about when they kept renaming the same airwraps different names ubblol

don't understand what the big deal is... we're just talking about what we call our thingies here, if you don't want to talk about language then just read a different thread ubbidea

-Such a price the gods exact for song: to become what we sing
-Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
-When the center of the storm does not move, you are in its path.


colemanSILVER Member
big and good and broken
7,330 posts
Location: lunn dunn, yoo kay, United Kingdom


Posted:
Quote:

It's established by the popularity of it's use.




i agree with that.

the word 'poi' may not mean the same thing to maori as it does to me but as long as we understand that, i can see no problem...

similarly i have a different idea to an american indian of what a canoe is, the important thing is that we both understand that we have different underlying meanings for a word that describes the same basic object and concept.

juggle

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood


Tao StarPooh-Bah
1,662 posts
Location: Bristol


Posted:
ditto

and anyway, misuse is often the way words enter the language and end up being proper words.

i saw a sign on a B&B that said onsuite. did this person now that that's actually a french term that should be 2 words? they probably thought it was an english term meaning 'to have a bathroom attatched', but maybe eventaully that person will be right - that's how language evolves.

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.


MrDremember
15 posts

Posted:
If I want to convey the idea of twirling two things on string/wire/chains/whatever to a friend of mine, and I use the word 'poi' (a word my friend, in this hypothetical situation, is already familiar with) and he or she starts thinking of twirling two things on string/wire/chains/whatever, then that word has acheived it's purpose.
That's what words are for, that's what they mean.
It doesn't matter what the words origin is, or what someone else on the other side of the world means by it, as long as I have succesfully communicated something.
In different countries, beer can be very different. It doesn't mean all the countries have to find their own names for it, it's all still beer.
Same goes for bread, or sausages, or dancing.
If you really want to distinguish between diffrent types of things, you can use prefixes e.g. Moari poi, Belgian beer, French bread, Russian dancing.

Words are defined by how people use them, not their origin, and definitely not what it says in the dictionary.

Now lets all forget this nonsense and go do some poi, or 'twirl two things on string/wire/chains/whatever', as I prefer to call it.

arashiPooh-Bah
2,364 posts
Location: austin,tx


Posted:
I agree with everything you guys said, that is indeed how language evolves. and getting the idea (spinny balls) across is the main point. and by calling them chains and not poi, i am making a different idea transmit. maori have one way of doing things. i have another. that is all. like i said if i meet a maori and we groove and are doing the same thing, i'll think, "okay i'm doing poi too." but the maori poi are focused on combat training, and the dance that the women do together. a maori child could whoop your butt with a pair of poi, i just sem to be able to rack my OWN balls.
that has nothing to do with what i do, and to call it poi woud just be far less correct than some other things.
but what you're all saying is, even though it _may_ be a naive or incorrect description, we should let it slide. that's fine for you and that's great. I have a different way of seeing this. this subject is a major part of my life, and i'm not going to call it something less than astute simply because other people aren't as concerned with the subtle differences.

it's like a shaolin monk being okay with labeling what he does as penjat silat just because some american doesn't know the difference and says "don't be such a tightwad." seems silly to me!

funny how everybody thinks this is a silly worthless subject, but it sure is raising some fur. kiss grouphug

-Such a price the gods exact for song: to become what we sing
-Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
-When the center of the storm does not move, you are in its path.


colemanSILVER Member
big and good and broken
7,330 posts
Location: lunn dunn, yoo kay, United Kingdom


Posted:
the main problem as i see it is that there is no one phrase that is an umbrella term for 'weights on strings'.



arashi calls them 'chains'.

this is because (and please excuse me for assuming here) his main weights on strings type prop are chains with wicks on the end.

this is a far less appropriate term for me - you might call it naive or incorrect even wink - i hardly ever use a prop that has chain anywhere in its makeup.



i mainly use shoelaces with a net at the end with a glowy ball inside.

i call these 'nets'.



i also have 'socks' (i usually refer to 'cone poi' and 'sock poi' as just 'socks').



and here's the rub:



i choose the word that best descibes the prop i use - my choice of word is independent of the type of dance i do while using them or the history of their application.

it is plainly and simply a noun for denoting the objects 'weights on strings'.



'chains', 'socks' and 'nets' are too ambiguous to enter them as replacements for the word 'poi' in my vocabulary.



the word 'poi' for me descibes all these objects and when i use it, it is wihout fail understood as i intend it to be.

it has been popularly used for at least the last five to ten years to descibe the object i am referring to.





if a person plays the spoons as a musical instrument instead of using them to eat soup, are they still spoons...?

the farmers that used naganata, kama and tonfa as weapons to protect themselves on top of their intended use as farming implements - did they demand new names for their tools?



wing chun - its not shaolin, but its still kung fu. smile

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood


LyraSILVER Member
spiny norman
314 posts
Location: Cincinnati,damn it, USA


Posted:
poi is simply a great word, so much fun to say

if you think that our kiss was all in the lips, come on you got it all wrong man, and if you think that our dance was all in the hips then, oh well, do the twist -The White Stripes


Burzarukaenthusiast
233 posts

Posted:
Is the Maori culture and people offended by what we call poi? If not, then I dont see the problem. If so, then out of respect perhaps we should call them something differnt.

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