Tell Me Something Good

What kind of Storyteller Do You Want to Be? by Liz Warren

"How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else." R. Buckminster Fuller

When I first became caught up by storytelling, I was deeply inspired and molded by brilliant professional storytellers like Donald Davis, Jackie Torrance, Elizabeth Ellis, Olga Loya, and many others who were working in the late 1990s and early 2000s. One of my mentors, Susan Klein, explained to me that to work at the national level, at the National Storytelling Festival for example, a storyteller had to have a minimum of 15 hours of unduplicated material. 

A repertoire of this size meant that the teller would have the depth and flexibility to tell for several days without repeating a story, to respond to the needs and energy of their audiences, and effectively take part in festival sessions featuring multiple tellers.  These sessions, called olios at the national festivals, demand that the tellers be able to choose just the right story to open, to follow a previous teller, to shift the mood or extend it, or to bring a session to an emotionally satisfying close.

I prepared myself to take my place on those stages. My interest in myth was part of what brought me to storytelling, so I prepared several hour-long myths and created a program called Myth-Informed at SMCC to tell them.  That got me to about eight of my fifteen hours.  I developed personal and family stories, crafted my own versions of folktales from around the world, and told all the time in my classes and as often as I could in the community.

I got my repertoire to fifteen hours all the while building the Storytelling Institute with my colleagues. I became the co-producer of a national festival at the Mesa Arts Center which brought in the big-name tellers from around the country for several years, and this kept me inspired, motivated, and connected to the scene.

But my dream of regularly joining my heroes and mentors on the stages of festivals around the nation didn’t happen. It took me a long time to realize, and even more to accept, that there is more than one valid way of being a professional storyteller in the world.

I learned that in Ireland, for example, there were traditionally two kinds of storytellers – the seanachie and the scealai. The seanachie specialized in folktales, historical tales, and local history and lore.  The scealai specialized in the long heroic, mythic tales that might take several nights to tell.  Both types of tellers might exist in a specific community.  In addition, there were itinerant tellers who would come through a community bringing news, stories from other places, and fresh takes on familiar stories.

In America today we have both itinerant storytellers and storytellers who are more rooted to a place. The scholar of storytelling and folklore, Jack Zipes, has warned that in America particularly this has led to a “star system” where the itinerant storyteller working nationally can become influenced by market forces that disrupt the core responsibility of a storyteller to serve a community.

This isn’t true for the national level storytellers I’ve been most influenced by, and who I wanted to emulate.  Tellers like Donald Davis, Olga Loya, Jim May, Elizabeth Ellis, and Lyn Ford (to name a few) are deeply connected to their families, histories, and communities.  I would argue it is a big part of their effectiveness with the diverse audiences they serve around the country.

But the fact is, there are many more storytellers in America now, and many more people who are interested in storytelling, than can make a living at the national level.  Most storytellers today find ways to serve either a physical community – a place – or a community of interest.  At the Storytelling Institute we meet people who want to tell stories in the community at performance venues, who want to tell stories in their families, and who want to learn how storytelling can make them better at their jobs.  And, of course, these things aren’t mutually exclusive. In all cases it comes down to developing a repertoire and learning how to use it to meet a variety of needs.

I have no regrets about the investment of time and energy I made in my repertoire.  By doing that, I learned how to be a storyteller.  I learned what stories were right for me.  I scored story pathways in my brain that exist to this day, and that allow me to access old stories readily and learn new ones efficiently.

It turns out that, like Buckminster Fuller, as I prepared myself to become a platform storyteller, I was becoming a community storyteller and a storytelling educator, who can tell on stage when needed. And at the same time, my colleagues and I were building a storytelling program to help people become whatever kind of storytellers they need to be to best serve their families and communities.

The photo at the top of the post shows Lorraine Calbow, LynnAnn Wojciechowicz, and me (right to left) at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN, in October 2000. Lorraine was the founding director of the Storytelling Institute, followed by LynnAnn.  I’ve been the director since 2010.

Friend Zone or Life Partner? by Vanessa Thomas-Wilson

 

 

 

 

 

 

My story telling began with personal stories. I’d been unknowingly around storytellers all my life. I was officially introduced to South Mountain Community College’s Storytelling Institute several years before I joined in. Liz Warren’s Personal Storytelling class came into my life during a very stressful period and was instrumental in the processing of my father’s death, which demonstrated for me the healing power of storytelling. I enjoyed hearing other tellers share folktales but finding an appreciation for telling folktales myself took some time. Until I realized that for the teller, storytelling is a lot like dating.

First you meet the story. Perhaps you like it right from the start. Maybe something seems familiar in that initial encounter. Some qualities capture your attention and you appreciate each other. You may be familiar with their background already or you may have the desire to delve more into their origins and past. Sometimes the initial encounter is less than pleasant and thus endeth the relationship. Other times you may encounter each other sporadically and realize you have more in common than you initially thought. You decide to spend more time together and develop your relationship to a deeper level. Once a congenial relationship is developed you may come to realize a love for each other. You might discover a story is your soulmate and goes with you everywhere. Or perhaps you have many story lovers, each one holding a special place in your heart and coming out with you when the occasion arises.

Just like dating not all stories stay with you forever. Some are only for a one-night stand but may still provide fond memories. Other stories might never appeal to you even if they look good on paper they may never fit comfortably in your repertoire. You may have to kiss a few frog tales while building your story collection. It’s never advisable to poach someone else’s story without their permission, although there may be no harm in looking around at other stories.  It is important to be honest with your stories if you want a lasting relationship. Connect with your stories every so often to keep the relationship fresh. It is vital to keep the stories you love close to your heart or one day you may find out you have grown too far apart.

(The image at the top of the post can be found here.)

Time and Story by Kaden Sheffield

           I have almost completed the Storytelling certificate program here at SMCC. I came to it indirectly, through a dear friend, never intending to stay and become a storyteller. But here I am, two years later—a storyteller. It has been a journey far deeper and richer than merely learning the skills necessary to craft a story and tell it to an audience. It has been a journey through time.

           I read recently that our current concepts around time only date from about 1500. That’s when the people formerly known as serfs began moving into cities in large numbers. Before that time, they lived an agricultural existence, in which time moved in seasonal cycles, with times of intense labor balanced by times of relative leisure; a time in which every person performed many different jobs, which although tedious, at least varied throughout the year. This was the time of traditional storytelling too, when families and communities told tales from their past and their present, building strength for the future.

           Time back then wasn’t “spent,” it was “passed.” You passed the time, as though it were a feature of the landscape which you could hurry by or linger and appreciate. Or, in another idiom, time itself passed, like a river flowing by you, whether fast or slow. You stood on time’s bank and contemplated. This was “once upon a time.”

           Then came urbanization. People traded their seasonal cycles and passing time for wages. Now time had to be measured—the first clocks came into being, placed on towers so they could rule over urban lives and work. Time was carved up into hours.

           This has changed everything. The metaphor governing our language about time now is “Time is Money.” We can spend, waste, or save time. Spending time is good. Wasting it, meaning not using it to make money, is bad. And saving it means either doing things faster or doing many things at once. All to save time for…what?

           Ideally, for passing it in liberating and restorative ways. In allowing ourselves to contemplate time as it passes, our lives as we pass through them. In meeting, truly meeting, the others with whom we are sharing this time, and finding out about their journeys. In short, for sharing our stories.

           And so, I discovered in storytelling a different way to relate to time, to others, to myself. To be a storyteller is to be both teller and listener—a fellow traveler from the now into the past or future. It is to escape our mechanized and materialistic approach to our lives and reenchant them.  It is to return to the “once upon a time.”

(The image at the top can be found here.)

Africa Hunters' Tales, Social Ecology, and Post-African U.S. Archetypes by Súle Greg Wilson

We’ve all been brainwashed to accept that efficient agriculture allowed social specialization and hierarchy to occur, which led to “civilization;” the best there is.  “Civilization” has also led to overpopulation, a horribly MAN-ipulated ecosystem, and a hurting Mother Earth.  Maybe we should have stayed hunter/gatherers, small groups of co-responsible, eco-sustainable folks, where everybody knew your name.

For some idea of what that pre-sedentary, pre-agriculture world was like, we can look within traditional tales of West and Central Africa, to a genre of stories called Hunter’s Narratives, stories—often with songs, too—about people with skills passed down since before we had farms; stories of people who could brave the chaotic, untamed, Spirit-filled Natural world, kill something, and return home, uncursed.  The Hunter, who moves between the world of the Wild, and the Civilized, must manage, mediate and mitigate huge amounts of spiritual power, set loose when any living thing is killed.

The Mongo Cycle of Lianja of central Zaire, and the Buffalo of Do episode of the Sundiata Epic of the Mande of West Africa, are examples of these “throwbacks” to pre-agricultural society: Hunter’s tales.

Steven Belcher (2009) finds three key features of the genre of Hunters’ Narratives: the “magicality” of the hunter; their ability to transcend normal reality/society; and the story’s portrayal of where the hunter stands in relationship to normal society—which is always a bit outside it, for the hunter has special, abnormal powers.

In these stories, the hunter, pitted against a fantastic beast, already in the midst of a killing spree, does not always win.  In these stories, “conjugal relations” often enter, as does the appearance of “animal women,” changelings who come to seduce the hunter.  Wow; what’s more Life-and-Death than that?

Belcher’s “Three Key Points” of the Hunter’s Story ring true for the African American hero ballads I have been collecting and studying!  These tale-songs: Stagger Lee, Lost John, Railroad Bill, Shine, Betty and Dupree, Frankie and Albert, Duncan and Brady, Casey Jones, the Traveling Coon, Mysterious Coon—created by the first generation of Blacks born outside Slavery, all match Belcher’s criteria.  There’s “something special” about the characters; they act beyond the bounds of normal culture; the story shows the outcomes of living “outside the lines”.

As Hunter’s Narratives teach the balance the Hunter must keep between the Civilized and Wild World, these AfrAm tales document Post-Bellum Black culture creating its own definition of man—and woman-hood—outside the Wildness of the institution of slavery, in the new, free civilization they were carving for themselves, through the time of Reconstruction and beyond.

Too soon, these songs passed into EurAm and consumerist culture, and were warped—stories of magical pride and power degraded into buffoonery.  Concurrently, Coon Songs appeared, “counter measures” against assertions of positive AfrAm culture.

The same backlash occurred a century later, in the 1990s, when the first generation of children raised in a “de-segregated” U.S. created a new art form: Hip Hop.  Early Hip Hop had a huge Afrocentric, positive component, until it, too, was co-opted by mass media/EurAm culture.  Stories of “Rise Up” turned into East Coast/West Coast rivalry, and images designed to fit the old “thieving,” gangsta,” misogynist stereotypes flooded the market.

Within these ancient African tales, within these 19th century ballads, within KRS-One and Tribe Called Quest, are clues, keys to a different way of seeing the world, where Black Lives Empower, mediate the wilderness, and secure society—from partially outside it—and change the world.

(The image at the top of rock art from Namibia can be found here.)