Guyana’s first celebration of World Storytelling Day
AT TIMES, you could hear a pin drop.
At other times, the roar of the audience was deafening.
Sometimes the audience ensured the teller stayed true to the story, filling the breaks as the teller pauses to take in air, have a sip of water, for dramatic effect.
There was no stopping the promptings and murmurings; that is how it ought to be with storytelling. That’s how it was recently, as Guyana celebrated World Storytelling Day for the first time.
World Storytelling Day is a manifestation of the new millennium, which has its roots in several initiatives started at the end of the previous millennium. For instance, in the early 1990s, Sweden organised an event labelled, ‘All Storytellers Day’, which fell on March 20.
In the late 1990s, storytellers in Perth, Australia, coordinated a five-week-long celebration of story, commemorating March 20 as International Day of Oral Narrators.
Nearer to home (Guyana), it was discovered that Mexico and other South American countries were already celebrating March 20 as National Day of Storytellers.
World Storytelling Day 2011 was an initiative of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport. The event was held on March 16 in the conference room of the National Library.
The storytelling atmosphere was recreated with a huge samaan tree, under which the tellers delivered their chilling, poignant, rambunctious tales.
The tales were mainly stories from the past, with the ring of ‘long, long, long ago…in a far and distant land…’ Some were contemporary stories, but all the stories were universal in meaning and intent, engaging, instructive, educational and entertaining.
The mood was set by the chairman, whose welcome was in the form of poetry, as follows:

wen laas yuh sidown
an hear a good ole time story
like Nancy story,
Balgobin story,
Jumbie story, ole higue, moongazer,
wen laas yuh hear bout
Stupidy-Bill an Sensible-Bill,
Fairmaid an water-baby…
come, come…gather round

wen laas yuh hear
‘long, long, long time ago’…come, come…
wen laas yuh hear
‘de tinin ben an de story end’…come, come
gather round, come come…

The performance that flowed out of that invocation was engaging, right down to curtain-call. World Storytelling Day was a journey, an adventure and a poignant success.
The journey started right here in Guyana, with the story about the first peoples of the country: The Amerindians.
That story, ‘The Coming of Amalivaca’, written by Guyanese Jan Carew, came alive in the hands and from the mouth of master narrator, Russel Lancaster.
From out of the folklore of our African heritage came the ‘Nancy-tory’. Since the words came out the mouth of the chairman, there was excitement and great expectation in the air.
And Konya Addo did not fail the audience; she did not fail the creolese; she did not fail the storytelling tradition; and she did not fail Anancy during her rendition of ‘Nancy Pilgrimage’ by Ras Michael.
Then it was back to Guyana for another story from the Amerindian tradition; this soberly delivered by Shebana Daniels, who is attached to the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology. Ms. Daniels gave us a peek into the Arawak folklore with ‘Man versus Tiger’, written by John P. Bennett.
True to the oral tradition, the chairman mentioned two sets of words: ‘Standard English’ and ‘Creolese’. And the audience responded with a name: Margaret Lawrence! What more could you asked for at a session of storytelling! The audience was with it every inch of the way, every breath of the way, every pin-drop of the way, all the way to the end: Three hours of pulsating, emotional fluctuations.
Lawrence performed ‘The Release’, written by Guyanese, Denis Nichols. The story won the Commonwealth Prize in 2001. ‘The Release’ is the story of a boy attending the prestigious Queen’s College in the days when the Queen’s English, which was expected to come forth from every tongue at a time when creolese was considered gross and common.
The story tells how he was freed from that bondage. The story is multilayered, also paying tribute to Wordsworth McAndrew, Guyana’s foremost folklorist.
Later in the programme, we journeyed cross-borders, getting a taste of stories from Suriname and Venezuela. Ms. Riane de Haas-Bledoeg sat beneath the monstrous canopy of the samaan tree and delivered ‘How Anansi Healed the King’s Son’ (John Ferrier – Suriname) with controlled intensity and volatility. 
From Venzuela came a cautionary tale, with Ms. Edilia Bastardo telling it in Spanish, and Mr. Kawall Persaud doing the translation. ‘La Soyona’ is a legend spawned on the sprawling plains of Venezuela, a warning to all unfaithful men.
Ms. Larisa Tarasova and Ms. Svetlana Petrova of Russia brought us two lovely fairy tales, ‘The Red Ryaba’ and ‘The Snow Maiden’, rendered in their own tongue, and then in English.
From India, we were graced with a sad tale of the trials and tribulations of a rape victim, and the ominous prospect of getting a rape conviction. ‘After the Rape’, by Dibyendu Palit was delivered by Ms. Alicia Young in a soft, poignant voice.
That afternoon when Guyana celebrated World Storytelling Day for the first time, stories were also told in song. Roger Hinds performed two pieces written by his father, ‘Bill Rogers’. The audience swayed to the rhythm of ‘The Weed Song’, and burst into uncontrollable laughter at ‘Sixteen-cent Lover’.
Sterling performances also came from Evan Persaud (‘Days of Contraband’), Alim Hosein (a hilarious tale of language confusion), and Paulette Paul doing ‘Samaan’, written by Doris Harper-Wills.
This was the grand finale, a story that portrayed the whole gamut of Guyanese folklore, including ‘backoo’, ‘ole man papee (tief fowl egg)’, and ‘ole higue’. Yours truly chipped in with a few humourous anecdotes — Balgobin stories.
Just like in the old days, long before television, when storytelling was the supreme form of entertainment, World Storytelling Day 2011 filled the lacuna of communal entertainment.
World Storytelling Day was the fillip needed to recapture that time of long, long ago….

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
·    A UNESCO-sponsored one-week creative writing workshop is set for August 2011; limited places available on a ‘first-come-first-serve’ basis. Facilitators will include local and international teachers/writers. Please contact me for more information.

(To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)