page_title: Rocket Festival
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Rocket Festival / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bungfai Festival Photo in Suwannaphume , Roi ET
context_page_description: A Rocket Festival is a merit-making ceremony traditionally practiced by ethnic Lao people throughout much of Isan and Laos, in numerous villages and municipalities near the beginning of the wet season. Celebrations typically include preliminary music and dance performances, competitive processions of floats, dancers and musicians on the second day, and culminating on the third day in competitive firings of home-made rockets. Local participants and sponsors use the occasion to enhance their social prestige, as is customary in traditional Buddhist folk festivals throughout Southeast Asia.
  Festival period: April - June. The Festival is most famous and widely known and are special programs and specific local patterns like Bung Fai or Parade dance and Beautiful Bung Fai float in Thailand such as Yasothon the second weekend of May, Suwannaphum District, Roi Et the first weekend of June, Phanom Phrai District Roi Et on full moon of the seventh month in Lunar year's calendar each year.
  The Bung Fai festival is not only found in Isan or Northeasthern Thailand and North Thailand and Laos, but also in Amphoe Sukhirin, Narathiwat.
context_section_description: These Buddhist festivals are presumed to have evolved from pre-Buddhist fertility rites held to celebrate and encourage the coming of the rains, from before the 9th century invention of black powder. This festival displays some earthy elements of Lao folklore. Coming immediately prior to the planting season, the festivals offer an excellent chance to make merry before the hard work begins, as well as enhancing communal prestige, and attracting and redistributing wealth as in any gift culture.
  Scholars study the centuries-old rocket festival tradition today as it may be significant to the history of rocketry in the East, and perhaps also significant in the postcolonial socio-political development of the Southeast Asian nation states. Economically, villages and sponsors bear the costs in many locations in Laos and in northern Isan (northeast Thailand). The festivals typically begin at the beginning of the rainy season, in the sixth or seventh lunar months.
  Anthropology Professor Charles F. Keyes advises, "In recognition of the deep-seated meaning of certain traditions for the peoples of the societies of mainland Southeast Asia, the rulers of these societies have incorporated some indigenous symbols into the national cultures that they have worked to construct in the postcolonial period.  Giving the "Bun Bang Fai or fire rocket festival of Laos" as one example, he adds that it remains "…far more elaborate in the villages than in the cities…."
caption: Bungfai Festival Photo in Suwannaphume , Roi ET
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