Societies keep their identities through storytelling, Kamini Ramachandran tells Samantha Joseph
“STORYTELLER” is an unusual career description. Whimsical is a good word for it, the image of someone a crowd gathers around while they speak in voices, spinning tales of ghosts and dragons and demons into a tangible thing that can be heard and delivered to a circle of captivated people. But it’s not all about fairy tales, as Kamini Ramachandran, storyteller extraordinaire at the Cooler Lumpur Festival points out. And it isn’t only about children.
“People think storytelling is only something done by parents or librarians at schools, only for kids,” says Kamini, her voice smooth and precise over the phone.
But there is more to storytelling than the vision of children gathered round a librarian on a stool with Babar the Elephant in her hand. “There’s a huge misconception that storytelling is about reading from a script or a book. As a storyteller, I don’t memorise the stories I tell.”
Kamini’s repertoire is formed mainly of traditional folk tales rich in culture and the wisdom of age.
The stories that Kamini tells are an organic collection, like those told by grandparents and elders — not a simple regurgitation of words and actions, but an internal knowledge of a story and its purpose. “This idea that stories are copies is something perpetuated right now, by our youth. Traditional stories are very rustic, even vulgar,” she says.
These days, everything is clean and convenient, including the telling of old tales. Traditional tales are not too concerned with ensuring everlasting happiness for everyone. Characters die, injustice happens and unsavoury events transpire, but it is simply a reflection of life and beliefs. “We have Disneyfied life to the point that a story with an unhappy ending is unacceptable. But if we wrap these old stories up in a bow, we remove the parts that make them cautionary tales.”
Stories need listeners
Having just watched the pointless Disneyfication of the villainess Maleficient, I find it hard to disagree with her. Even Disney’s original Sleeping Beauty, itself based on an older story retold by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, bears little resemblance to the original that is rife with rape and adultery.
Telling stories isn’t just telling a story, with its requisite beginning, middle and end. It’s also sharing a culture, a set of beliefs and a side of the human race that we easily forget in these times of YouTube.
Why not watch a movie or read a book instead of listening to a story? “Books and movies are a solitary endeavour. You do it alone, your experience is alone. It’s a one-way interaction. With storytelling, there is a live person there, adapting the tale to an audience,” says Kamini.
There is no one way to remember a story. For example, if a storyteller were to describe an accident as opposed to people watching a movie of it, the reactions and memories would be different for everyone. And that story can be passed on, added to, a living, evolving thing creating a new experience for every new listener.
“I need my listeners, and listeners need storytellers,” she sums up.
THE ASIAN CONTEXT
A professional storyteller for 11 years, Kamini will be at the Cooler Lumpur festival to educate the public on the art of storytelling through workshops and panels for both children and adults. Also co-founder of Moonshadow Stories, a set-up intended to revive the lost art of the oral narrative tradition and aimed at adult audiences, Kamini is, in a way, a storytelling activist.
Why do you think that storytelling has lost its appeal, I ask her. “I don’t think it has lost its appeal,” she says carefully. “It’s more the fact that storytelling is something that needs a form of apprenticeship, and you can only learn it by listening and observing others.”
Kamini herself inherited her storytelling prowess from her grandfather, whom she considers her teacher.
The failure of storytelling to survive strong into the 21st Century can be blamed on the onward march of modernity, as children were sent off to be educated and spent less time at home, and more traditional families in villages were broken up as the younger generation looked to seek their fortune in the bigger cities. There was an abrupt cut between master and apprentice here, points out Kamini, and that made it difficult for oral narration to flourish.
SAME HEROES, SAME ARCHETYPES
Kamini has taken it upon herself to dig out traditional tales that may otherwise have been lost, and this has found her staying with Orang Asli tribes and travelling to small villages like Thanjavur in South India.
“When you go to these places, the rural areas, they can’t believe that you aren’t there to collect samples or do academic research,” says Kamini with a laugh. “I don’t go in as a sociologist, I go in as a storyteller. I ask them, Do you know Hanuman? Have you heard of Ravana with 10 heads? And they will say, We also have that! There are so many instances of the same heroes, the same archetypes occurring across cultures, across countries.”
This, she says, is an important reason why she believes that storytelling has to be kept alive. “These stories (from the tribes and villages) have not been recorded before, in a way that can be recovered,” she explains. “Some, like the Grimm’s fairytales have been successfully archived, but what about the Asian context, the indigenous context? The way we define who we are, our culture, our race, is through our stories.”
An ORAL legacy
Kamini actively participates in international storytelling festivals, including the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, the Chennai Storytelling Festival, the Sydney International Storytelling Conference, Rome International Storytelling Festival and the Festival at the Edge in UK, and notes that her identity as an oral narrator is one that is unique to her.
“I am presented as a Southeast Asian or South Asian storyteller, as my repertoire consists of stories from Malay, Borneo and Riau-Lingga cultures as well as South India. There is no one else in the storytelling world with the same repertoire,” she says.
In her MoonShadow storytelling workshops, she often stresses the importance of the link between cultural heritage and storytelling, and encourages her students to seek out these stories. “What is the point of knowing Goldilocks and other stories like that? People are ignoring their Asian cultural heritage.”
Stories, says Kamini, define us as humans.
Cooler Lumpur Festival 2014
Exclusive Festival Workshop: Storytelling For Adults by Kamini Ramachandran
Today, 11am-1.30pm
Interpr8 Art Space, Publika
#FAST Junior: Storytelling With Kamini Ramachandran
Tomorrow, 11am-noon
Whitebox, Publika
Panel: The Lost Art Of Storytelling
Tomorrow, 1.30pm-2.30pm
Blackbox, Publika
Details at www.coolerlumpur.com/fast/