THE recent award of a gold medal to Omani storyteller Thamana Al Jandal at the Morocco storytelling festival is an encouraging sign of the survival of an ancient tradition. As the festival organisers said, the storytellers “all gather here to share a single language, the language of noble human values which are peace, love and security”.
Oral storytelling is perhaps the most ancient of arts. It could have started with just a small community, eager to capture everyday life in imaginative detail. As the art progressed, it faced various historical challenges like the printed book and, now, the digital screen.
What could account for the continuing popularity of oral storytelling today? An important reason is that humans still value personal contact – there is joy in sharing stories in real time, of catching the teller’s emotions, of seeing how the story changes with each teller.
Stories told by humans to each other also help to bond and form relationships, and with it, communities. There is nothing like a child snuggling next to a grandparent to hear stories of magic, treasures, action and emotions. These are the best memories of childhood.
Oral stories exist in every part of the world. Known by different names, they perform the same function of distilling the community’s desires and fears in an imaginative way.
But the world of technology is never far behind. Just as other inventions like the printing press heralded the doom of oral stories, our digital world offers further challenges. The same child who cuddled next to his grandparent is now more frequently seen with a digital device which can be controlled on demand.
As we all know and accept, technology is what we make of it.
In this sense, there are many ways in which digital devices can actually be used today to archive the stories of disappearing communities, even protect the original voices of the storytellers for posterity.
There are two main purposes to storytelling – entertainment and education. It is a powerful way of conveying morals, manners and information. So there is a certain immediacy to a story when told by a human being, especially when accompanied by music, chanting, rhythm or a background chorus.
Digital storytelling can add to traditional elements by making stories more colourful and, of course, accessible at all times. But it cannot reproduce the human factor – the soothing voice of a narrator or the animated voice conveying action.
Nor can it recreate interaction between the teller, the tale and the audience.
Oral stories are sources of history, shared beliefs and challenges overcome. They tell the story of resilience, for how else has the story stood the test of time? They bind communities together and remind us of what is important in our world – not the homogeneity that social media feeds us but the traditions and cultures that change at every geographical mile.
But they also point to what we share as human beings – a curiosity to know more and the hope that the world will be a better place. Oral stories reinforce that belief.
Dr. Sandhya Rao Mehta is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Translation, Sultan Qaboos University.
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