2009 Storytelling Concerts

Harmony Hunter: Hi, welcome to the podcast. I’m Harmony Hunter, and today my guest is Dylan Pritchett, who is part of this September’s Storytelling Concerts. Dylan, I’m so happy to have you here with us today.

Dylan Pritchett: Pleasure to be here.

Harmony: I wondered if you would just tell me a little bit about what you feel is important about storytelling. Why are you a storyteller?

Dylan: Why am I a storyteller? Storytelling is the link between the past and the future. Storytelling is how we teach our children. Storytelling is how we pass on what Grandma used to say, and make sure that it’s still relevant.

Storytelling is what a movie is, storytelling is a documentary, storytelling is how we’ve gotten to the point where we are. Storytelling is an adult art form that happens to also be done for children. Which is the other reason storytelling should be told to teach all kinds of moral lessons, and to teach children how to problem-solve, how to use their mind.

But more importantly, whether it be for adults or children, storytelling is the art of listening – not necessarily just the art of telling. Because it creates listeners. Because whenever you read a book, for example, authors take a lot of time to develop sentence structure and to develop theme and to put all of that together to create a book.

But storytelling is the same, because the storyteller takes time to figure out what words to use, and how to construct it, and how to paint that picture through words and voice, and if you’re in an audience, with body movement. So there’s a lot of time that goes into constructing a story.

If you’re not listening, or haven’t learned to listen, you’re fidgeting, you haven’t learned how to concentrate, or you haven’t processed, learned how to process information, then you don’t get the story. When it comes to children and storytelling, that’s what’s important.

Because it’s not just important to teach facts and figures and historical figures and historical events, but it is how do you use that? How do you then process that? If you haven’t listened correctly, you may have missed something that’s very important.

Harmony: You mentioned the way that a storyteller constructs a story is analogous to the way that a writer constructs a passage. Tell me about that process for you. What’s your process?

Dylan: There’s got to be a purpose for the story. So then the question is, how do you reveal that purpose? Do you pose it as a question at the beginning of the story, or do you find something that’s comparable to what the average listener would understand? Then you just go about the process.

I have a children’s book called “The First Music.” It was a story that evolved, because the original story was written from sounds that I heard when I first went to Ghana, which was in ’99. It was my second visit to the continent of Africa, but my first time to Ghana.

We were at a hotel, and in the morning I heard these birds singing outside, and these birds were totally different. It wasn’t a cardinal sound, it wasn’t a bluejay sound, it was a different sound. I didn’t know what kind of bird it was, but it was beautiful. I was just listening, I said, “wow.” Another bird started singing, and I said, “Wow, this music is kind of cool. It’s different.”

And you know they say that the Garden of Eden was in Africa, so I can imagine what the sound of a lot of different birds would have sounded like. Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, and they were the first ones that would have heard this music. So they heard the first music. No instruments, just birds. When I said that, I said, “the first music.” So I wrote down “the first music.” So the name of my children’s book is “The First Music.”

It’s about an elephant that walked through the woods and he had some clay on his toe and so he shook it off, then he started hitting on it, and it made a sound. It was going ba-da-dup-boom, ba-da-boom, ba-dup-dup-boom.

I said, then you know, if you have people playing music, then you got to have what: you got to have a shaker there, you got to have another sound. So what happens is, the monkey hears it and follows him and says, “What are you doing?” Then the monkey starts moving up and down on the limb, and it starts making a sound, going, shake-shake, shake-shake.

Then the crane landed on crocodile’s back and crocodile was moving back and forth to the music and the crane was losing his balance and scraping the back of the crocodile’s back. Crocodiles have little bumps on their backs, and so it started sounding like an African instrument called the balaphone, like a xylophone, going tinky-tinky-tink. What happened is, everybody was doing something.

So I said, “that’s the first music.” So just had to figure out how to get to that point. So I put a frog in there. And whenever the frog was asked “Why are you not joining in?” the frog would say, ‘frogs have short arms and cannot play, short legs and cannot dance. There is nothing we can do but watch and listen.’”

Well, I didn’t like that but I put it in because the editor liked it and then right before the final edit, I said I don’t like this, But right before we were going to do the final edit, I said, you know I don’t like this. We can print this, but I really don’t like this. because when it comes to music, everyone has something special to add. So I wrote that down, “Everyone has something special to add when it comes to making music.”

I went back and put that on the 6th day, frog went to the pond to ponder. Which is the best line in the whole book, “frog went to the pond to ponder.” So then on the next morning, do you know the guiro, have you ever heard a guiro? It’s a round instrument with ridges on it, and you take the stick and it goes skat-skat-scow. Mainly played in South America. I said, “Hey, that sounds like a frog.”

So they heard that on the seventh day. The elephant says “keep up that beat,” and he starts playing. And all these animals say, “We thought there was nothing you can do.” And then that’s when the line comes in, Everyone has something special to add when it comes to making music.” And then the story ends that frog loves to sing, every evening at dawn he can be heard practicing, and all of the animals love to play, and oh, how sweet the sound when they play together.

The deal is that it evolves. You sit down and figure out what is it that you want to say, and what you want to say may change, but then you figure out how to get there. But when it comes to storytelling and people who put stories together, there are a lot of people who construct stories differently. Some never tell you why they told the story.

My style is to always discuss the story so that people understand what elements are in the story. But then there are some that just leave it open-ended. They’ll say, you know, “My mother always used to say, ‘If you do things slow, you’ll get it done faster and better.’ It wasn’t until I got married that I understood all that she was saying.”

Some people are just narrative tellers, they just start talking. “I grew up on Richmond Road, way back when there was nothing there, I really did. I grew up in Lightfoot. They say that was the name of an Indian. There were Indians up the street, the Druids, but …” But you know, it’s like writing a book, but not with a pen.

Harmony: It’s been a pleasure having you here today, thanks so much for being with us.

Dylan: Well thanks, and I hope whoever can be at the Storytelling Concerts, they need to be there. We going to have some fun. Come out and listen and enjoy.

Harmony: Thanks, Dylan. For folks who are interested in coming out for the storytelling concerts, those are September 19. We’ll have two shows: one at 2:00 at one at 7:00. Tickets are available from 1-800-HISTORY. So come on out and join us for the Storytelling Concerts.

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