I have just discovered your storytelling debate and wish to add some thoughts to the tradition-modernity discussion. I've just come back --or rather moved to Romania-- from anthropological fieldwork in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. I'm currently writing up a thesis at University College London on modern media among the Iban people of Sarawak.
In the field I discovered a lot of people in the more remote longhouses ('villages under one roof') were keen listeners of a radio programme in the Iban language: the adventures of Bujang Lembau, a mythical hero, half-human half-leopard. What I find interesting about radio, a 'modern' medium, is that it is helping preserve half-alive some dying traditions in Sarawak since its introduction in 1954.
I disagree, however, with an early contributor to this e-mail debate who claims that oral traditions are resilient to processes of modernisation. This does not seem to be the case in Sarawak, where the spread of modern education -- first in English, now in Malay -- and migration to urban centres has seriously undermined the Ibans' and other indigenes' competence in their own oral literature.
In nation-states with a great linguistic diversity, it is the politically weaker languages and oral traditions that suffer the most.