Mostly I have questions rather than answers for the trad debate. Because I have always been interested in traditional culture traditional storytelling is the most obvious storytelling for me to do. So I would call myself a storyteller. A few of the stories that I tell I got in the traditional way - at my father's knee - and when I tell them I choose to use the same sort of language that he used. But how can I, or anyone, claim what they do is authentic traditional storytelling?
The vast majority of folk tales in print are only a literary version of what may have been a traditional folk tale. I am separated from the oral transmission of those stories. So when I tell them, how can I make any claim for it being traditional telling? Do I any more right to claim the name of storytelling than anybody else in a number of different storytelling roles and styles? If I want to be a "traditional storyteller" how can I know what it is that I should do?
Isn't storytelling like singing? There are lots of ways to sing but it is still called singing.
posted 24/7/98