Dec
22

Don’t Do It!

By

baba-koraThis is a piece of advice that I got from a friend of mine recently. He’s not a storyteller but I applied his information to my craft. He was facilitating a workshop that dealt with the arts and education. In talking with a group of educators he told them, and I’m paraphrasing here: “If you don’t love the material or tools you are using to gain access to the thought processes of your students then don’t use them! Find material that resonates with your teaching style, that you are enthusiastic about. Once you’ve discovered your proper tools and material, this will translate to successful teaching because then, and only then, will your students feel your passion for the subject matter.”

I sat in this workshop and thought, “Wow!” he’s addressing my craft as well. I have always had a rule that a story must resonate with me before I’m willing to work with it. I never force myself to tell a certain genre of tale because it may be popular or what people want to hear. I choose my stories by the way they affect me when I hear them or read.

So, my advice to any beginning tellers out there. If a story does not strike a resonate chord somewhere within you. “Don’t do it! Don’t try to “make” it work! Don’t tell it! Let it go.

There are literally billions of tales waiting to be told, why marry one that will eventually lead to a sepertation due to irreconcilable differences?

“dooni dooni kononi be nyaga da!”

Categories : Storytelling Advice & Tips
  • http://www.droomappel.nl Alberdina

    The best advice in teachin I got from my Jembéteacher:
    He told us a story; he was watching me, a long blond Frisian woman. And he loved the way I walk. So he had been practising for two whole weeks long, just to learn to walk the way I walk. The first week it was hard, he had to analyse all the movements and thought he would never make it to walk my walk. But the second week it was getting better and he even could copy my swing. The steps of my feet and the waving of my hands . He then decided to go out to town and he was happy that he managed to walk my walk. So there he was on the boulevard, with all people, looking at him, walking my walk. He enjoyed, was happy!! And then suddenly there came my husbant, distinguished from the crowd and he looked at him and said: “Hé, that’s my wife!!”

    My Djembéteacher’s continuing of the lesson (by the way, he was a short big Rasta man) was that if you want to play music, you listen to music you like. And if there is a rythme you especially like, you copy that rythme, untill you know the technique and play the rythme as like the master would play it. But after copying many rythmes, sometimes, you feel: it is not my rythme, it is the master’s rythme. So My Djembéteacher sat in his garden one day, looking for his rythme a little sad, for he could not find it. And then he thought some happy thoughts, some thoughts of the beautifull musicians he met and every time he thought of a musician he played the rythme that goes with the memory and so he played from memory to memory and a beatifull music was composed and then he mixed some memories and mixed some rythmes and then …. the music came from his heart: it flooded into his hands and in his mind the orchestra joined in

    Music of the heart

    Tale in my heart

    Thank you Baba, for sharing
    Let’s make some music!

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