Two Bahamian storytellers have been selected to participate in the gala closing of Ananse Sound Splash – an eight-legged storytelling conference and festival that has gone virtual due to COVID-19.
Princess Pratt and Heather L. Thompson will participate in the November 18-21 festival, which is being sponsored by Ntukuma, The Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica, in collaboration with the Jamaica Library Service under the theme “Ananse Websight”.
The closing gala of Ananse SoundSplash 2020 will focus on the importance of cultural reparation. In a performance-driven event directed by the theme “Will the Real Ananse Please Stand Up? – Ananse Demands Reparation”, the closing gala is intended to broaden the discussion on the cultural aspect of reparation and place it in the context of Caribbean storytelling with specific reference to the image of Ananse. The presentations will be adjudicated by a panel consisting of children participants, cultural practitioners and members of the legal profession.
“Ananse” is the name given to an Akan character who has become famous throughout Africa and the Caribbean because of his insight, intelligence and wisdom. He is one of the most important figures in the pantheon of cultural icons among West Africans.
Pratt and Thompson are both excited to participate in the gala closing.
They will each deliver a five-minute original story on Ananse from a Bahamian’s point of view on Sunday, November 22, at 3 p.m. It will be accessible through Facebook and YouTube on Rampoon Radio.
Pratt’s story, “Anansi and the Silk Cotton Tree”, is about being an indigenous Bahamian and exploring scenes of Obeah and serenity as it relates to a holistic being.
Pratt, a storyteller, writer, poet and spoken word artist, is participating in the festival for the first time. She wanted to be a part of the festival to inject Bahamian culture into it. She wants people to take away Bahamian indigenous cultural context that doesn’t necessarily get highlighted.
“I am very excited to represent my country in one of its most traditional and cultural art forms, which is storytelling, and put Bahamians on display,” said Pratt. “I thought it would be good to give Anansi a Bahamian home.”
She said it will be hard to tell her story in five minutes, but in the days leading up to the event, she plans to work out her timing.
“I’ve been trying to narrow it down,” she said.
Her concern right now is making her story “juicy” and getting straight to the point of the matter.
Pratt’s storytelling is always accompanied with the sounds of drumming, which she said gives rhythm and life to the story. She paints it audibly, giving the listener the ability to visualize.
Pratt said the storytelling festival is a great way for the Caribbean diaspora to come together, highlight their stories and storytellers and to see that through storytelling they have so much in common as opposed to differences.
“I am excited for the coming together of the Caribbean community to share our cultures through storytelling and see how interwoven our stories are, and how common the stories are throughout the Caribbean.”
She is proud to come together to preserve the rich history of storytelling.
Pratt, 34, was introduced to the art form of Bahamian storytelling as a student at Gerald Cash Primary, where she said the guidance counselor told stories to students during breaks about “Brer Bookie and Brer Rabbi”. She remembers falling in love with the stories. Prior to that, she had been introduced to Jamaican storytelling from her maternal lineage.
“So, [storytelling] was something I gravitated to, but I had no experience or example of it in the Bahamian context.” Pratt later learned about cultural icon Kayla Lockhart Edwards, deceased.
A descendant of Cat Island, where she said they have preserved so much of their African history, she said it is refreshing for her considering how disconnected her generation is in reclaiming their identity and culture.
“It was something I needed to do to revive it, and I do that through storytelling, [including] the poetry, fire dance and drumming aspects of Bahamian heritage that are being lost.”
If she had to choose her favorite folklore story, Pratt said it would be “The House in the Sky”, which speaks to Brer Bookie and Brer Rabbie coming across a house stocked with a lot of food – a house in which ghosts live. Brer Bookie and Brer Rabbie somehow learn the incantation of the house, which they would sing to get in and eat up all the food while the ghosts were out. One day, Brer Bookie and Brer Rabbie got greedy and fell asleep after consuming the food and were discovered by the ghosts. The moral of the story – one should not break into the homes of others, and to not have big eyes for things that ain’t yours.
Thompson penned her story “How the Flamingo Became Beautiful” a week ago, especially for the festival.
The takeaway message is you may achieve short-term goals by cheating, but at the end of the day, things catch up to you, and what goes around comes around.
While she said five minutes doesn’t give her too many words, a true storyteller, she said, is going to be dramatic.
Thompson has been putting in the practice to maintain her five-minute time fame and the high drama of her story.
She was attracted to the festival because of her interest in the African diaspora, and having so many different countries in the Caribbean with stories about Ananse, which she said shows the many similarities.
“We tend to have a stock way of starting the story and ending the story, and it will differ from country to country, but [be] quite similar in a way. I see this a challenge, because you have to tell a story in five minutes and it’s hard to come up with something that has a beginning, a middle and an end and still has meaning.”
Thompson, who is also a first-timer to the festival, said she is excited and honored to participate. She recalled being an avid reader as a child, and said she has always had an interest in writing.
This is the first time she will actually tell a story. She said she finds being able to do so “freeing”, and that she is grateful for people who have preserved Bahamian stories.
Thompson’s favorite folkore speaks to how The Bahamas became 700 islands. It’s another Brer Bookie and Brer Rabbie story.
“The Bahamas was all one piece of land. Bookie and Brer Rabbie were fighting and a dragon under the earth got annoyed with them – the dragon caused an earthquake and caused the land to split in 700 islands,” she said.
The festival will also feature a “Storytelling and Development: The Caribbean Experience” event on Wednesday, November 18. A panel discussion on International Men’s Day will explore the topic “Understanding Gender in Caribbean Folkore” on Thursday, November 19. National Storytelling Day takes place on Friday, November 20, at which time Amina Blackwood Meeks will launch her book “That’s A Good Idea”.
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source https://thenassauguardian.com/its-story-time/
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