INTERACTION IS KEY: Williams. |
What better way for different generations to connect than through storytelling? They might be teens doing spoken word performances, elders conveying life experiences through original stories, adult storytellers spinning out the wisdom of traditional folktales or schoolchildren hopping onstage to take an active part in the telling of a story. All of these forms of storytelling — and more — will be found at this weekend’s Ninth Annual Funda Fest, sponsored by the Rhode Island Black Storytellers (RIBS). (Go to www.ribsfest.com for complete details.)RIBS members Len Cabral, Rochel Garner Coleman, Abigail Ifatola Jefferson, Raffini, Melodie Thompson Thomas and Valerie Tutson will be joined by the spoken word collective In House Freestyle and four nationally-known storytellers. Brother Blue, from Boston, will perform Friday night and be honored Saturday night. Teju Ologboni, from Milwaukee, returns to Providence with his talking drums and lively tales of his boyhood. First-time Funda guests Mama Koku from Atlanta and La’Ron Williams from Detroit bring years of theater experience and teaching into their storytelling.
Although Mama Koku relies heavily on traditional African tales, she has also written stories for special occasions, including Kwanzaa celebrations and a story for the grand opening of the Georgia International Convention Center about its potential for growth in the region.
“Storytelling is a wonderful way to communicate the complex or the difficult into words that are simple and easy so that everyone can understand it,” she explained in a phone conversation from Atlanta. “If I tell them a story and put the Kwanzaa principles in there, that’s a way to learn it. Stories are one of the earliest ways children learn. Even for adults, if you tell a story, they can get it better.”
One of Mama Koku’s trademarks is the audience participation that she encourages, in which spectators of all ages join her onstage — she estimates 90 percent of her stories include that.
“People are always amazed that children raise their hands and want to come up there and act out the story,” she noted. “But in African culture, there is no spectator and performer; it’s all one kind of experience.”
La’Ron Williams is also very aware of teaching through his stories — drawn from African and African/American culture as well as his own life — and he incorporates themes of collective problem-solving, conflict resolution, building self-esteem, and overcoming adversity.
“I want to try to help my audiences understand the historical struggle that African-Americans and other disenfranchised or dispossessed groups have waged to expand the American ideal of democratic inclusion,” Williams emphasized on the phone from Michigan. “I’m very frank, very honest about what our nation has been: hierarchical from the beginning, along racial lines and also along economic lines. We’ve been a nation in which our economic development has superseded our human values.”
But Williams also believes that right in the middle of a national culture that puts so much emphasis on a person’s economic worth, the African-American culture has remained very people-oriented and very humanistic. “We’ve had a culture that has pointed out very strong lessons of cooperation,” he stressed. “A sharing, caring, and helping culture that presents an oppositional set of values to the mainstream values of the country.”
