Picture a half-dozen cowboys huddled around a campfire. The sun is setting in a blaze of purple and magenta, casting a warm hue on the bleak landscape around them.
One of the men breaks the silence, warms his hands in front of the fire, tucks chaw into his right cheek and clears his throat.
“And out she ran from that building, wearing nothin’ more than some silky thing you could see right through,” he says, pausing to be sure all eyes are on him.
Mission accomplished. He pulls his cowboy hat lower over his brow, shuffles his feet in the dust and continues.
“She screams, ‘My baby’s in that building that’s on fire. You gotta help me, Mister.’ And darn if I didn’t run into that burning building. Yup, three years later, after I walked away from that scene, I saw her again. Let me tell you ’bout that.”
Spinning tales like this one — a device employed here simply to get you to read this story — is at the heart of the oral storytelling tradition.
Whether it’s fact or fiction doesn’t much matter to the 50 or so professionals who will converge at the Swallow Hill Music Association for the 34th Annual Rocky Mountain Storytellers’ Conference, an event that will include three evenings of concerts and performances and two days of workshops. Bottom line? You want to know what happens next.
It might have happened, but whether it did or didn’t, it places you in a particular point in the past. It’s a morsel of history, and an important one, at that.
Rosalyn Kirkel says her signature stories, which she tells to everyone from schoolchildren to adults, are about the Holocaust. And they are based, as most good stories are, she says, in some fact.
“I’m a survivor,” says Kirkel, who will perform from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Friday. “My mother, sister and brother were all murdered in the Holocaust. But I don’t remember much of that time, because I was so young. My father and my aunt told me stories, so what I tell is based in fact, but I’ve embellished.”
She saw a picture of a young Holocaust survivor standing near a wheelbarrow once, says Kirkel, 68. “I decided, ‘That was me.’ Now, I knew I never had a wheelbarrow, and it couldn’t have really been me because of the timing, but it touched me. And I decided to tell her story. Which was my story, really. And the kids I talk to in schools, the groups I speak to, they understand. They’re touched, and they want to learn more.”
Oral storytelling crosses all lines of age, race, gender and nations, she says. And this year, with the theme of “New Horizons,” it’s also bridging various art forms, from dance to music.
The conference was founded in 1978 by college professor Norma Livo. This year, it’s in the perfect place, organizers say. It’s been at Red Rocks Community College and at other small auditoriums in the Front Range over the years, but Swallow Hill is a great fit.
“It’s a perfect partnership,” says Julie Davis, a musician and storyteller who will perform at a free concert Friday. “Swallow Hill is all about people creating their own music and telling their own stories.”
Most of the participants at this year’s event will tell you this: The very word “story” connotes fairy tales told to young children.
“We must reach out to children,” says Dr. Vincent Gordon Harding, a retired professor of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology. On Saturday afternoon, he’ll be showing some of the videos from his project “Veterans of Hope,” which highlights people — from civil rights workers to volunteers — who have worked to create harmony in the world.
“Children are our main responsibility. They depend on us, and they need our stories,” Harding says. “I am deeply convinced that for us to have the kind of society that would do us all good, we need to know each other’s stories and tell each other’s stories.”
Sherry Norfolk, who will perform at Friday night’s concert and offer a workshop Friday afternoon, has made it her life’s work to continue the tradition of storytelling by spending most of her time in classrooms.
“I weave music and dance into my programs,” says Norfolk, 57, who lives in Atlanta and St. Louis. “Storytelling must be used to reach educational standards in literacy. And the great thing about my job? Working with kids keeps me young.”
But adults are the people who truly pass on the stories that teach us about our ancestors, storytellers agree.
So while you may not hear the story of Snow White at the conference, you will hear honest, heartfelt storiesfrom people of all ages and all cultures.
The 34th Annual Rocky Mountain Storytellers’ Conference
Three evenings of concerts, two days of performances and workshops, a bookstore, and opportunities for participants to make studio recordings.
When: Thursday-April 25
Where: Swallow Hill Music Hall, 71 E. Yale Ave., Denver
Cost: Conference fees are $60 per day (Friday or Saturday), or $110 for both days
Complete schedule of events:
a few highlights:
You can catch a poetry slam from 7-9 Thursday, where you’ll hear from teens and adults. Through workshops and presentations, you’ll learn that storytelling connects us to nature, to religion, to our history and how it intersects with other art forms, from poetry to dance, music to podcasting. At the free concert on Friday, where organizers expect up to 200 people, you’ll hear Sherry Norfolk, an internationally acclaimed performer, and local storytellers and musicians Julie Davis and Harry Tuft. If you’re interested in learning to weave a tale, workshops like “Guiding Seniors in Personal Telling,” and “Taking Storytelling to Radio” will help you out. But if you’re considering launching a career as a professional storyteller to make the big bucks, think again, the pros say. “It’s a tough way to make a living, but it’s what I love to do,” Davis says. “I love the music, the teaching. And I love to create an environment in which people learn.”
