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FOLKLORE AND MUSIC Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Legends, Myths, History, Nursery Rhymes, Fantasy & Facts Scroll down or click on your choice below • SOS: Searching Out Stories/Info-Folklore/Music Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians |
SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION - FOLKLORE AND MUSIC
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them to get more stories and information.
Story titles are in quotation marks.
To retell any stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) There's an easy answer for this one!
Troubadour's Story Bag: Musical Folktales of the World
2) http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/
The Journal of Folklore Research has repeatedly addressed several significant areas of study. This website contains a sample of articles from past issues; these titles demonstrate the kind of scholarship that will continue to be available in JFR.
3) http://www.maria-brazil.org/brazilian_musicandfolklore.htm
http://www.exploritas.org/programs/programdetail.asp?rowid=1-3O7GX7
Music and Folklore from Brazil.
4) http://www.seafolklore.org/doorway.html
Seattle Folklore Society Presents A Musical Doorway.
5) http://www.storycrafters.com/
Family performances by: The Storycrafters, Vanaver Caravan Kids, Beth and Scott Bierko, Terri Roben, Mark Rust and more.
6) http://www.folktale.net/stories.html
Tim Jennings and Leanne Pounder, World Tales and Celtic Music.
7) Patrick Ball tells a wonderful but tragic story about an Irish woman who plays the harp beautifully but other obligations keep her from her great love of playing until she is too old and arthritic to play anymore. Contact Patrick for the name of the story and permission to retell.
http://www.patrickball.com/
8) I have been exploring Finnish rune singing & storytelling in the past few months (alas, I don't know Finnish) and am learning how to play a 5-stringed Kantele as accompaniment to the storytelling. I have recently discovered some early Turkish stories (Dede Korkut) and they have a similar tradition of storytelling using an early lute-like instrument called the 'kopuz'. The kantele was easy to track down, but finding a kopuz is a little more difficult.
9) Most ancient traditions of storytelling involve a simple lute of some kind, or a lyre. Both are related in some ways. They are sacred instruments, full of symbolism. Those I can think of immediately apart from the ones you've mentioned are Celtic, Scandinavian, Persian, Greek, Indian, African, Balkan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan etc. They are initiatory bardic traditions, where one must receive the tradition and the teaching from one already initiated (sometimes only one's father, in hereditary traditions), and there are strict requirements about the making of the lute/lyre as well as the playing, and of course of the intense spiritual disciplines of the bard.
10) It's KAH-leh-vah-lah, nothing else. Every syllable pronounced short, stress on first. And no double consonants (no kall or vall).
The creation myth in the epic Kalevala has no singing in it. The world comes to be from pieces of crushed eggs. Another Finnish creation myth, that did not fit into the epic, is the diver myth: God rubbs mud between his hands, mud that he has the Devil to dive up from the bottom of the sea. The old Finnish runo-songs were lyrics sung in special runo-meter. Sometimes the singers were accompanied by a kantele (a five-stringed cittre plucked or strummed, lying in your lap). But the kantele-player was not the one singing! He only played. I tell the whole epic, and I play the five-stringed kantele. I use the instrument to "set a poetic mood" before starting, or in between stories. But I don't usually sing the stories in runometer, I retell the stories.
11) Query: I read somewhere that the meter came from the rhythm of rowing oars. Is that true?
Response:
Nope. It's a wrongly spread fact that the runosingers sat in front of each other (nose to nose), kept each other's hands, waved back and forth while singing, like a rowing motion. That is how photographers and painters PUT the singers, because it looked good...! In fact, if there were two singers, they sat beside each other. Sometimes holding hands, just to be able to squeeze the hand as to say: okay, your turn. But mostly with only one singer.
12) But what I heard ten seconds ago (!) in the radio, was about Tolkien and Kalevala. When Tolkien was beginning to build up his Lord of the Ring, he travelled to Finland to study Kalevala. He even learned Finnish to get more out of it. The ring in Tolkien's books is the same as Sampo in Kalevala. And many of Tolkien's main characters are based on the main characters of Kalevala.
Created 2002; last update 12/12/09
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