Escaping from the Well

"Brand storyteller" Michael Margolis of Thirsty-Fish on "Finding Meaning and Authenticity in the Storytelling Brand"

Margolis's content is not groundbreaking.

That you can read it here is.

Copyright and the Oral Tradition: A Guest Commentary

Over at the Professional Storyteller site, a discussion on storytelling ethics by some American storytellers-- specifically on acquiring material, asking permission, and citing sources-- led me to post an inquiry asking UK tellers for input. I had recently read a marvelous collection of selkie tales from the late Scottish storyteller Duncan Williamson. The stories had a powerful effect on me, and I am inspired to tell one or two of them. But the collection was not just stories from long ago: Williamson had personally collected the stories from persons he met as a young man as he worked the West Coast of Scotland. I wanted to get a sense from the storytelling community that knew Duncan personally, of what the etiquette was when it came to these stories. Storyteller Tim Sheppard posted an interesting response, which I am reprinting here (with Tim's permission):

Duncan was a storyteller in the oral tradition. He would have been horrified to hear that some storytellers imagine that copyright applies to the oral tradition, or that they might avoid telling stories because he had published them in an effort to spread them around more! He didn't own his stories, and nor does anyone else. Publishing the words of one particular telling doesn't give rights over any other instance of its telling anyway, and not just when someone deliberately changes it. The oral tradition is just that, and books are merely a modern convenience on top of it.

All storytellers I've met, except for in the USA, pay no attention to copyright and can't understand why Americans are so obsessed with it - it's a much misused law brought in long after the oral tradition brought all our wonderful stories into being, and aimed at preserving printing rights for original work not at stealing stories from public ownership or telling. When storytellers in the UK hear about the US hand-wringing they literally look open-mouthed at each other and shake their heads - I've seen it many times! Duncan was merely a caretaker for many stories, and not the exclusive one. He could no more have asked tellers not to tell the stories he knew than he could have insisted they not breathe any of the air he had breathed. It would be like a priest teaching the wisdom of God, but then instructing everyone listening that they would have to go and invent their own god to worship because his was taken.

Of course Duncan, like all tellers from the oral tradition, forcefully insisted that anyone hearing 'his' stories had a duty to re-tell them. I can't emphasise this enough to Americans - being a storyteller in any traditional sense means that you have a duty to pass on the stories, not to tie yourself in knots about an irrelevant modern law that, if invented earlier and wrongly interpreted as in modern US telling circles, would have ensured we didn't have a body of wonderful tales in the first place. Stanley Robertson, another wonderful Scottish Traveller like Duncan, tells his audience 'Now you've heard my tale you MUST NOT rest until you have told it to someone else'. Does that sound like he might be concerned about someone 'taking' his story?

There is also another strong value of the oral tradition, not always followed now that fewer tellers have been steeped in it, that one should never change a traditional tale in its essential form. That means no combining stories or changing the ending etc. so that it becomes your 'own' version. If the current tactic of US tellers trying unnecessarily to be 'ethical' by introducing personal alterations were to have existed a millenium or two ago, we would not have the amazing body of long-lived tales today that storytelling depends on. Storytelling is based around communal values, not individualistic territorialism trying to ring-fence versions or avoid stepping on others' territorialism. Normal polite respect and professionalism goes without saying, but bowing before egoistic protectionism is totally destructive to the essence of the storytelling tradition.

That is the generous and communal attitude of the tradition. Now please go and tell stories, for they are more important and enduring than the mere storytellers, however skilled, who briefly catch the ball of thread of ancient tradition before tossing it on to the next weaver of words.

At Tim's suggestion, I should point out that his argument is rather condensed and comes after a long and ongoing debate in the storytelling world. This is neither a comprehensive answer to my question nor a definitive one, so consider any pronouncements here part of an exchange of ideas.

Tim Sheppard is a storyteller and coach. You can learn more about him online at his web site, http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/, and on Facebook at http://profile.to/timsheppard

1000 True Fans Revisited

Kevin Kelly revisits his "1000 True Fans" hypothesis, in which he suggests that microniche artists could make a living from a limited fan base.

On his blog, he's beginning a series of interviews with artists who are using this very model, and the first one is ambient musican Robert Rich, who's been self-producing for 30 years. In his response, Rich tempers Kelly's enthusiasm with a hard dose of reality:

In reality the life of a "microcelebrity" resembles more the fate of Sisyphus, whose boulder rolls back down the mountain every time he reaches the summit. After every tour I feel exhausted but empowered by the thought that a few people really care a lot about this music. Yet, a few months later all is quiet again and CD/downoad sales slow down again. If I take the time to concentrate for a year on what I hope to be a breakthrough album, that time of silence widens out into a gaping hole and interest seems to fade. When I finally do release something that I feel to be a bold new direction, I manage only to sell it to the same 1,000 True Fans. The boulder sits back at the bottom of the mountain and it's time to start rolling it up again.

Hat tip to Sean for this one.

Why Memoir? Part 2

Copyright.

When Sean mentioned in his Roadblock #10 post that storytellers might be wary of violating the copyright of another author or storyteller, I was dubious.

Sure, I get the common sense logic. You can't be accused of violating another person's copyright if you're telling your own story.

Apparently this is an ongoing issue of concern in the storytelling movement, but it raised its head in the 1980s at national conferences.

But seriously, folks. Were storytellers accusing each other of "stealing" each other's repertoires? Were storytellers "stealing" folktales from other tellers?

From my own anecdotal evidence, I can see it might have happened. I learn stories better if I hear them, instead of find them in a book. Visualizing a story from a book is easy, but visualizing the story from book to stage is an added step, which requires more effort. Path of least resistance: tell the story you heard from someone else.

If everyone started telling the same Jack tale, or the same ghost story, sure, that's going to turn audiences off.

But in the analogous realm of traditional music, it's not at all uncommon to hear three or more different versions of "Sally Goodin," "Muleskinner Blues," and "Cripple Creek" in one weekend, both on the mainstages and around the campfires. That's the whole point of tradition. To carry it on. Sure, there are original bluegrass tunes being made all the time and post-punk old-timey revival re-imaginings of standards, but if you go a whole weekend without hearing a Bill Monroe arrangement of a tune, it's not a bluegrass festival.

So... back to storytelling. Traditional art form. Material hundreds if not thousands of years old. Material, therefore, in the public domain.

Artists are surprised that others are appropriating the same material?

Sure, you can call it unethical. Rude. Lazy. But like the story goes, "you knew it was a snake when you picked me up."

"Screw you all and the folktales you tell-- I'm switching to stories from my own life."

From what I hear, the change in material did not stop unethical performers from appropriating the personal memoirs of others for their own repertoire.

I live in a major metropolitan hub filled with theatre festivals in the summer. Several of them just do Shakespeare. Several just do musicals. Do they end up programming the same shows, opposite each other? Hey, it happens. Two, sometimes three "The Tempest"s in one summer. A handful of "South Pacific"s. They manage. They don't throw the classics out the window and start creating their own new scripts.

(Hmm. Bad analogy. --the perils of thinking in the blogging moment-- If these theatres ran themselves like the storytelling world, they would punt the classics, start creating their own new scripts, audiences would eat it up, and we'd never see "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Hamlet" again.)


Copyright isn't the whole answer.

Stay tuned for more, on audience preferences, and on an academic's look at the movement.