DEFINING TERMS
I want to start by defining terms - simply for clarity's sake. Story telling can legitimately cover so many things from Dickens to reminiscence stories to therapeutic self-discovery tales. I'm simply not qualified to talk about anything other than traditional stories and their tellers -and I'm not sure I'm qualified to do this. All I can do is tell you of some of my experiences and consequent thoughts and feelings around the subject.
BACKGROUND
A little about my background to put these in context. At sixteen I began singing Skiffle i.e. American folk and jug band songs and blues. This was 1957. By the early sixties there was a strong push in the folk song clubs which had sprung up around the country to explore the songs and music of our own ancestors, culture and landscape. So we began to learn and research songs and their backgrounds from Britain and Eire. I suppose I'm still doing this nearly forty years on. The difference between then and now, in part, was that in the early sixties there were many more of the source/traditional singers alive and well and singing in the folk revival. (By Revival here I mean a self conscious movement to revive and "restore" folk material - we were the 2nd revival - the first having been in the early part of the century instigated by such figures as Cecil Sharp, Vaughan Williams and Maude Karpeles.) So here I was in my early twenties fired up by a new/old cultural aesthetic able to sit at the feet of singers such as Seamus Ennis, Joe Heaney, Belle and Sheila Stewart, Jeannie Robertson and Bert (A L) Lloyd. And what I heard were not only consummate singers but also wonderful story tellers. Indeed there was no clear distinction to be drawn - this was simply what people did to entertain themselves and each other; they sang, told stories and played instruments. (some description of people and places.)
THE RADIO BALLADS
I listened to hours of the original tapes made by Charles Parker and Ewan MacColl that were edited down for the famous Radio Ballads. I think there were six of these from the mid fifties to early sixties - three of these were "The Big Hewer" about the mining communities, "Singing the Fishing" from which "The Shoals of Herring" comes, and "The Travelling People" which featured many travellers stories" as well as "story telling". These were all forms of traditional story telling in the sense that they were from communities where language was still full of the vernacular, local dialect and were riddled through with metaphor. Some were traditional stories and songs and some were the stories of individuals or communities. Whichever, I feel I learned an enormous amount from all this listening. I learned, I was moved, I was excited, I was angered, and I was inspired. And one of the key things that inspired me were the voices. What I wish to talk about most are the voices - whether spoken or sung.
THE EMBODIMENT OF THE STORY
My main thesis is that voices are by definition embodied. And I would claim that stories and songs that come out of the oral tradition are embodied in a particular way. I am also going to claim that, in any art form, form and content grow up together and are separated at considerable risk. The vocal qualities and styles I am referring to are, therefore, an inherent part of the form. I am not wishing to prescribe one style or form, but, within the range of traditional story tellers and singers I have listened to, there are some underlying characteristics. Until the very recent past, the working people - the carriers of the songs and stories inspired as James Reeves says by "The common Muse" - led much more physical and hard lives then our own. They did not sit in cars and trains, in front of desks and tables, they were much more in touch with the earth - both literally and metaphorically. This gives the voice a sense of being much more "grounded" (illustrate the difference). So many voices I hear are not connected through to the feet, nor to the centre of the body and hence the breath and emotions. This is no more or less true in the story telling world than anywhere else, but my challenge to this gathering is to take this on board - to best honour the aesthetic out of which the story teller works and worked.
Let me illustrate out of my own experience with another form of traditional story telling. And let me back this up with some thoughts from the great voice teachers working with the texts of Shakespeare. Kristin Linklater, who wrote "Freeing The Natural Voice" and "Freeing Shakespeare's Voice" said to me last year "I hate 'well modulated' voices". This may seem very strange from one of the worlds' most influential voice teachers, but I know just what she means. Regardless of accent, gender, or pitch, voices carry the quality of integrity, aliveness, connectedness to themselves and others, and the voice that it primarily concerned to meet some notion of correctness or acceptability can never do this. (Illustrate with well modulated type singing of maybe with 'The Grey Cock".) Alto talk about Cis Berry and Kristin's sense of the physicality of the voice of the 16th century - the relish for words and the vitality of the language. The language of the best stories, ballads and of Shakespeare, all deserve this taut, verve-laden, connected, embodied quality. I think part of what I'm asking you to consider is the difference between literacy and oracy as a style.
I sometimes sense in the storytelling world an attitude which says "These are wonderful and meaningful stories, full of lessons for our time, full of Jungian imagery and archetypes - they are profound and worthwhile." This is true but it is insufficient as a starting point, as the motivation for the teller - the story needs to be engaged with, wrestled with, teased and loved from the body and the soul. The story needs to be rediscovered with each telling and lived afresh. (Arundhati Roy p 229) "The Kethakali man is the most beautiful of men because his body is his soul." The story has to move in the body and to move the body. When we say "I was moved" by this or that story, song, play, piece of music", what do we mean? How do we know we are moved? For me it is because something literally moves. My spine tingles, my lips turn up or down, I hold my breath or take it in or out, my eyes water, my foot taps, the hairs on my neck stand up, my stomach churns - how else can I know I am moved. It does not happen in the cerebral pathways alone. I move. The voices of the best traditional singer and story teller moves and is moving. It carries within it the shadow as Jung would have it. It is not nice or well modulated. It whispers of the sorrow within the happiness, the savagery within the love, the grief within the joy, the shame within the glory - it carries history, tradition, the collectivity of the ancestors (whether it is an old or new tale). It can hold these tensions, these contradictions - it is not the voice of ego, the teller is a vessel for the tale not the other way around- It is for the singer/ story teller to surrender to the material so the tale is told "through" them as it were. They put their artistry, preparation and imagination at the service of the story.
CONCLUSION
Story telling and ballad singing are great art forms of the common people. Much of what I have said is the result of thirty five years of attempting to do justice to songs I love with a passion so that I can witness to both the sung/story itself and to the artistry of the people who were the carriers of the songs. I suppose the most useful model for the way I learned my art end craft is that of an apprenticeship.
Years of listening to a variety of traditional singers sifting and selecting, finding slowly, slowly how I could make these songs both my own and yet somehow impersonal, dramatic but not over emotive, knowing that they and I would never make it to commercial success but being compelled by some inner demon to tell these strange, haunting, savage, magical and terrible tales with as much truth as I can muster. Just a small contribution in hopes of increasing my/our compassion, understanding and awe for the human predicament.
posted 24/7/98