Unlike most more passive forms of relating story, storytelling is dynamic. Its true meaning comes alive in the actual telling which is a
reciprocal, almost magical event, where the sum of its parts is far more than any individual element. 

How story means can not be analyzed except to point toward possibilities. These essays attempt to give entrance into the way in which story works within the listener-teller relationship.

Notes from the Field:
A Storyteller's Journal

Telling Stories at PS 19
Oct. 24, 2001. Kids at Ground Zero want scary stories! It's "practice" for containing the larger emotions.

The Living Context
Oral narrative spoken in reciprocal relationship to living audience are different from other forms of theatrical uses of story, or more passive mediums (film, video, books, or recorded voice and image of any form.)

"Misfortune's Fortune"
"One can only know whether a story is true from the voice of the storyteller."

"Written or Told?"
Stories written differ from  stories "told." When can a story be just entertainment, or deliver more: knowledge, or revelation? 

Crossing into the Invisible

REAL LISTENING
In memory of Ephat Mujuru

There are some aspects of being a storyteller that can not be taught through explanation, but taken in through experience over a long time. Perhaps these aspects can be evoked through a story about them. But still, the story only penetrates if one has had the experience itself. However, leading someone through a narrative experience can beckon longing for the reality of that experience. Can prepare the spirit through this imagined journey. Then someone begins to look beneath the surface of the storytelling event with the inner ear of the eye. For instance, one then asks: how does one become authentically oneself in performance, unobstructed by language, personality, or attachment to text? And, how does one cultivate a sense of what the audience needs in order to listen deeply? 

One of the great influences in  my life was Ephat Mujuru, a traditional Shona musician and storyteller from Zimbabwe. He was playing mbira (a multileveled wooden thumb piano played in a resonating gourd adorned with pieces of metal and popcan tops). My exhusband and I invited him to stay in our home. He stayed for weeks and visited with us often after that. I think it was early 1980s. His concerts included spoken and sung text in his language. It was beautiful. He explained that when Zimbabwe was liberated, he walked across what was no longer called Rhodesia to play the mbira and tell stories. It had been forbidden under colonial rule. At each concert I was struck by the way in which he began. Sometimes he talked ramblingly to the audience for a long time. Othertimes he just sat down and began to play, sometimes intensely humming. Other times he half danced like a creature moving toward you and away that was both uncomfortable and endearing. What was he doing? Then, at some point -- and it was never the same point -- he began to tell his stories. His relationship to the audience was impeccably fertile. New Yorkers never exposed to Shona music would find themselves participating like African villagers. Everyone became happy in a guileless undiluted display of openness and spontaneity. 

I met Ephat during his first tour to the states with ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner, performing at the World Music Institute. We began a conversation about storytelling and music that lasted for ten years. Two incidents are imprinted in my mind. An afternoon in El Coyote Restaurant on Broadway in NYC: Ephat talking about his grandparents’ lessons about playing the mbira. Mbira is considered to be the fingers of the Gods. Playing is not entertainment alone. His grandparents were diviners and Ephat's childhood was a training in the tradional art of healing through music and knowledge of his culture. He was initiated, but never spoke to me about that. 

He explained how he was taught about the five levels of attention created as a musician draws his listeners under its spell into total presence. As he spoke, he played the mbira quietly beneath the crunch of tortilla chips and glasses.  Suddenly, I found myself  literally sliding under the table, entranced and penetrated to the depths of my heart. He said smiling, “At this point you can tell someone a story.” I understood that it was not to be questioned, but to be known. 

That summer in California, I invited Ephat  to perform for my students at the Storytelling Residency in Philo. He chose his stage: beside the Navarro River, in a canyon, near the redwood forests. Students gathered as he played. As the sun went down we began to see hawks circling above us. Then someone gasped. There were four deer by the water. Then the ducks began to move toward us, and we saw fish, and a fox family, rabbits and more. Finally, Ephat began to tell a story, “In the middle of the middle of the middle of my dream.” He looked up to me and smiled his irrisistible smile. 

Another time he was invited to tell stories on the radio. I was asked to make the introduction. I was relieved that I did not have to perform since I had stayed up all night working on something. Ephat was a kind of a trickster in these situations. I complained to him as the mikes were set that I was beyond exhausted. Ephat said, “That is a very good time to tell a story.” I thought to myself, “perhaps for you.”

As I made my introduction, which was a pleasure to do, he began to play mbira beneath my words, that made it even more pleasurable. Then he spoke, “I am so happy to be here with my friend Laura. She is going to tell a story about tradition.” I was dumbstruck. Radio time is strange time and before I could even think about what to do and what to say, a story came to mind. I began to tell an on-the-spot adaptation of a Pygmy tale I had read in Colin Turnbull’s beautiful book THE FOREST PEOPLE.  It is about the loss of belief in the magic of the world. 

I told it. He played mbira holding up my words, never looking at me. I closed my eyes and spoke, and then brought the story to a close as it was in the book, “And then everyone in the village died.” Ephat changed the rythym of his song. He said into the microphone, “Laura, you can not end the story that way for your audience. For the Pygmy people death is different. They know it is only moving from this world to another. Do not end the story that way. here, you must end it this way.”

He played and hummed. I listened now wide awake as he retold the end of the story, “And all the villagers died. Then the boy returned to his house. His grandfathers's mbira was hanging on the wall. 

“He took down his musical instrument and went into the middle of the village. He sat on the earth and began to play what he had learned. He played and played until the words of his grandmother returned to his fingers and his heart and his lips.  And he told the story of the most beautiful bird in the whole world. The bird whose song brought the rain. And as he told that story and sang the words, over and over and over again, the bird came back to life. The trees of the forest came back to life. His father came back to life and all the people of the village came back to life. And that is how you should end the story.” And that is how I have always ended the story since. 

On September 5, this fall, six days before the 11th, Ephat died returning home from London. I heard about it on September 12th. I share this story to honor my friendship with Ephat and what I learned from him about the inner secrets of storytelling that can not be learned from repeating a text, but from the work on oneself that uncovers one's heart, and wakes up one’s insight and awareness.

My best way to remember Ephat is to continue to begin and end the story just as he taught me to do: for the earth, for the beautiful bird that is still in the forest if someone is willing to remember. -- Laura Simms