Rhode Island’s “Biggest Little” designation is particularly appropriate when applied to the performance art known as storytelling. Not only has this state spawned an unusually large number of nationally and internationally recognized storytellers, but it is one of only a dozen states to have its own collective of black storytellers. The Rhode Island Black Storytellers sponsor an annual festival called Funda Fest in which tellers from across the country and around the world give performances and present workshops throughout the state.
The main concert is on January 21at the Beneficent Congregational Church in Providence, with local storytellers Len Cabral, Rochel Garner Coleman, Abigail Itafola Jefferson, Raffini, Melodie Thompson Thomas, and Valerie Tutson, and invited guests Masankho Banda, Eshu Bumpus, Queen Nur, and Teju Ologboni — taking part. Queen Nur and Ologboni are making return visits to Funda Fest, but it is the first appearance for both Banda and Bumpus.
Though thousands of miles apart as young boys, these two discovered the power of stories early on: Bumpus in the libraries of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Banda at his grandmother’s knee in Malawi. Along with a fascination for stories, Bumpus had a great gift for song and Banda for dance. They still incorporate elements of each in their own storytelling.
“I used to think of myself as a dancer who tells stories, though I realized two to three years ago that I’m a storyteller who dances,” Banda quipped, in a phone conversation from his home in Oakland, California. “Dancing is a vehicle for stories — about Malawi, about African culture, about my journeys as a child growing up in Africa at the dawn of African independence, in the ’60s.
“I was growing up through the turmoil of having a father in politics, most of the time in opposition, who spent two years under house arrest and 12 as a political prisoner,” he continued. “Through dance, I tell the story of coming to the States when I was 25 and dedicating my life to working for peace and justice.”
Indeed, in 2001, Banda was presented with a Heroes of Compassion Award by the Dalai Lama. Many of his stories are based on African folktales, but just as many are stories of the people he has encountered throughout Africa and Europe who are working for peace: those getting Christians and Muslims to talk together in wartorn Sudan, rescuing child soldiers in Sierra Leone or Liberia, helping people to heal and forgive in South Africa and Ruanda. At least half of his storytelling is done for schoolchildren and teenagers — “young people know that peace is important.”
Bumpus would agree. He also works most often with groups of schoolchildren, as he spins tales from African and African-American culture.
“The direct responsible form of telling to an audience in front of you is of dire importance in this day and age,” he explained, in a discussion from his home in Holyoke, Massachusetts. “The alienating effect of turning stories into commodities has conditioned the audience to be more interested in sensation than thought-provocation. So there seems to be no end to vampire movies, or violent stories where problems can only be solved by weapons and other anti-human ideas.
