Storytelling & Authenticity VI - Dick Leith

Dick Leith - 'Authenticity' and 'Ownership: How to Shut People Up'

Dick sees storytelling as enjoyment (as a teller) and connects authenticity with struggle and suffering. That is, experience with folk tales illustrates own life. Famous singers like Jeanie Robertson & Harry Cox epitomise struggle and, consequently, authenticity. And so, Dick didn't feel entitled to sing songs by people like Jeanie and Harry.

Scottish travellers embody continuity in folkmusic and storytelling. How much/to what extent is authenticity imposed on by outside world/forces? Can we talk about authenticity as the relationship between the performer and their material?

I think this comes back to making the story or song your own, and only choosing material that

1. speaks to you, and
2. suits your style of performance

As Jess Smith told me, it's all about believability, if you don't believe in your characters then no-one else will.

Storytelling & Authenticity V - Richard Bauman

The Remediation of Storytelling: Narrative Performance on Early Commercial Sound Recording
Ok, so here's where it started to get a bit less relevant to me. (Well, it was at the end of the day).
I like the terminology 'remediation' - the 'transformation of oral storytelling into other media'.
But the general gist of the talk was around 3 recordings (with transcriptions provided) of early gramophone recordings in American (which to my tired ears were virtually unintelligible). Richard then spoke in great depth about the nuances of the performances.
As I said, it's not really my research interest so I found it hard to understand.

• For pre-presentation intro you can find more info here.

Storytelling & Authenticity IV - Joseph Sobol

Joseph Sobol - The Razor's Edge: The American Storytelling Movement in 2008
(reading from article published in Storytelling, Self, Society journal.)

Joseph's reference to the razor in the title was multi-layered, talking about the edge as that between amateur and professional, and storytelling both as an artform and as a social agent - in a utilitarian form.

It always seems a bit strange to me that (from what I've heard) traditional tales aren't really told by storytellers but have been sidelined in favour of autobiographical stories. Everything that Joseph said seemed to corroborate this, ie personal tales have superseded traditional folktales in USA. One of the issues upholding this is the idea of ownership - who owns the traditional tale? Can anyone tell it? I don't think that we have this kind of problem in Scotland, at least not on anything like that scale. All the storytellers I've met are keen to share stories and are all linked by their common love of stories.

From what Joseph was saying it seemed like the audience drove this trend from traditional to anecdotal, and he cited Donald Davis as an example, moving from traditional Appalachian folk tales, began telling autobiographical instead. I think my question here is - how important is the audience's request? Is it still storytelling or does it cross the line into stand-up? And, how important are the stories themselves? I think that one of the key roles of storytellers' is the ability to maintain and preserve a culture and heritage, whether that be Celtic myths or folk tales from around the world. I think that folk tales embody nuggets of culture, and even if they are taken out of context they provide a means for opening minds about alternative life values.