Zozobra

The BURNING OF ZOZOBRA, or OLD MAN GLOOM, has taken place for 83 years as a kick-off to the FIESTAS DE SANTA FE.

Any chance this was the pre-cursor to BURNING MAN??????

www.zozobra.org

"Zozobra is a hideous, but harmless FIFTY FOOT MARIONETTE. He is a toothless, empty-headed facade. He has no guts and doesn't have a leg to stand on. He is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. He never wins. He moans and groans, rolls his eyes and twists his head. His mouth gapes and chomps. His arms flail about in frustration.

Every year we do him in. We string him up and burn him down in ablaze of fireworks. At last, he is gone, taking with him all our troubles for another whole year. Santa Fe celebrates another victory. Viva la Fiesta!" - A.W. Denninger (from the website - www.zozobra.org/history)

This tradition of kicking off Fiestas has ENDURED SINCE 1924! It is the city's way of releasing all the BAD SPIRITS THAT LURK ABOUT and the GLOOM WE CARRY INSIDE US for another year.

The celebration begins slowly as nightfall sets in.

The FIRE SPIRIT DANCER appears! Zozobra begins to slowly move his arms and head with a very slow moaning & groaning beginning. The Fire Spirit Dancer, dressed in red, with increasing intensity drives alway the SPIRITS OF GLOOM, dancers dressed in white, from the steps at the base of Zozobra .

As they begin to dance FASTER AND FASTER to the music, they light the bottom of Zozobra's LONG DRAPED ROBE, it slowly burns up & up, he begins to thrash violently and with increasingly LOUDER AND LOUDER FURY! FIREWORKS begin to light up the sky shot from the base of the figure and the music INCREASES IN INTENSITY and his GROANS BECOME LOUDER . . . . until . . . . . . finally he is caught up in a FURY OF FLAMES and GROANS and . . . . then . . . then . . . he is GONE. . . along with ALL OUR GLOOM so we can CELEBRATE FIESTAS for yet another year!

A renouned tradition, the OLDEST CIVIC CELEBRATION IN NORTH AMERICA, Zozobra was created by one of the original Santa Fe artists, Will Schuster, and is carried on by the local Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe as a community fundraiser.

"The fire dance was created by Jacques Cartier, a former New York ballet dancer and local dance teacher, who performed the role for 37 years. His dance student, James Lilienthal took over the fire spirit role in 1970 and has continued it for 32 years."

FIESTAS DE SANTA FE is a time of music, dancing, fun & celebration, good food & friendships. When my parents were still in Santa Fe, they lived right next door to this park, so I always had front row seats - of course I was looking at Z's backside, but, hey, the food was free and the wine bottle was bottomless!

A TIME OF JOY each September!

A TIME YOU WON'T EVER FORGET, if you are lucky enough to be at the BURNING OF OLD MAN GLOOM!

ZOZOBRA!

www.zozobra.org

It's interesting that Zozobra isn't better known. Or known at all for that matter.
before going I asked friends around the country about it, and no one knew about it. Once we were in Santa Fe I asked people about it and of course they had heard of it, but many hadn't been to it. I was surprised.

I had been as a kid a couple times when I lived in Santa Fe. I had great memories, but I questioned that it could be as good as I remembered.

We decided not to take on the parking challenge, so we took a ride share. It was an easy walk from there.
There was strict metal detectors and security and there was no alcohol, so I was not surprised at how family friendly it felt once inside.
We were only slightly early, but we got to enjoy some of the live music before there show. Pretty good stuff.
The show itself started slow. I realized 20 minutes in it was on purpose, as to build the suspense. the fire dancer built things up,, small fireworks going off one by one.
I don't want to spoil things and tell you all that happens, but it stay till the very end, things get bigger and bigger.

It was easy to leave, and we all had a good time. And honestly, I was fine they didn't have beer, it was a nice trade off that it was a friendly non-drunk crowd. I'm sure if we are in town again at the right time, it would be nice to go back.

This is a tradition in Santa Fe, and it was my first time going with someone that had experienced it as kid. The idea of the festival is to mark the start of the fiestas, and to do so, they burn this giant marionette. The marionette is called "old man gloom" and inside of him are all the worries and troubles people want to leave behind, forget, and symbolically see them burn when the marionette burns at the end of the festival.

The burning of old man gloom is the finale, followed by a show of fireworks that will keep everyone in awe. While the festival gets to this point, there's music, food trucks, and vendors keeping the people entertained.

It is a first come event, so if you get there early the better chance you get to be closer to the stage but honestly it doesn't matte much. The main event, as mentioned, is the burning of mad who stands 50 feet tall, so everyone in attendance can see it and celebrate the start of a "new year".

I was very impressed with how organized and safe the whole thing was, especially when there was (reported) about 60K people there.

Nice to have started my trip to Santa Fe with a local tradition.

This was the worst event I've ever been to in any of the places I've ever lived to be honest. The event didn't start until like 90 minutes after it was supposed to due to there being too many people trying to get in and they were waiting for everyone to make it inside before starting. The musical selections sucked, the live band they had was honestly awful, and it took them forever to burn the damn thing. Once they actually started the burn it was like 5 minutes and that was it. Completely underwhelming and embarrassing to be honest. There was also no coordination or organization with getting guests onto the shuttles back to the train station where they had parking. We had to wait in a huge throng of people for about 2 hours for the shuttles and people were constantly cutting in line and shoving us in the main line to the side. Do not waste time or money on this event I'm begging you.

Very fun experience must recommend we got front row seats and got some free merch along with a free pass to look at him up close.

The event sounded cool and we waited and prepared for months to go. We scoured the website and thought we were ALL good to go... we bought a plastic see-through backpack but read on their website NO BACKPACKS... so we returned it and got teeny around the waist packs which the website said they allowed... but when we got their the security said our packs were "too big" and made us put all of our tiny bags into see-though plastic bags, which I have no clue to how that made us safer.

When we asked why--we were told for security reasons--and that actually the event was less safe then ever because of recent shootings. We brought a blanket and were wanded and patted down, but the security never checked the blanket--which hey hey hey--would have been a really great place to hide a gun.

We were so disgusted at the "security theater," we decided to bail. Unless you are from Santa Fe, don't bother going: It really seems like a locals (only/mostly) event. And if I was from Santa Fe, I'd worry about defenselessly getting corralled into that large crowd. At least from were I'm from, security at local events actually tries to keep families safe.

Amazing
57,000 people
If you don't like big crowds or a lot of people.. This is not your event

This was my first time attending and it's crazy but definitely worth experiencing...
I have lived in Albuquerque for 22 years.

The meaning is to leave behind your negative energy and let the old person go.

Firework show was impressive.. They do have fire dancers but was too far to see anything...
Be prepared to walk quite a bit..

Soooo much fun. It was great to see old and young screaming "burn!" Love the symbolism of the festival and met some really great people. Everyone was very friendly, and the festival is a great time. Lots of fireworks, performers, and buildup to the big burning. The Marionette is well done, moves, moans and groans, lots of fun!

Incredibly crowded and incredibly boring. Giant waste of time. Long lines for shitty food and no booze. Fireworks seemed like a couple dudes threw it together in an afternoon. Show was drawn out and stupid

One of the worst organized public events I've ever attended. We had premium tickets, but there was no expedited check in. Then we couldn't find anyplace to fill our water bottle. We were hoping to have a glass of wine or two, but we couldn't find any vendors. We were "east of the beast", so we were pretty close, but still had to peer over the many folks in front of us to see. They started and finished early due to rain, so everyone headed for the exits before 10pm. We had ridden the Rail Runner up from Bernalillo, which worked fine on the way up, but there were thousands of people lined up to catch the shuttles back to the train station, and the shuttles couldn't move due to gridlock. Since we had plenty of time, we decided to have a drink and then catch an Uber to the train. However, all the bars on Washington Street had unexplainably closed at 10pm on a Friday night. And Uber was charging about 5 times their normal rate for rides. So we ended up walking a mile and a half in the rain to the train station. If you have a room in downtown Santa Fe, go to Zozobra and enjoy it. But if you're commuting from somewhere else, DON'T GO! Stay home and do something more enjoyable.