The Black Preacher As Storyteller

After researching the African Storyteller I stumbled across some more literature in detailing the Black Preacher and his/or her role in telling stories:

     The black preacher is the master storyteller in Afro-American culture. His verbal artistry covers Afro-American communal life like the brier patch did Brer Rabbit. And, like Brer Rabbit, their favorite trickster hero, Afro-Americans have instinctively sought protection and reassurance from a hostile world and an uncertain life in the myriad stories told by their ministers. The black preacher comforts bereaved families with a pleasant anecdote about the deceased family member;  he affirms those same families' happiness and pride at aweddings, anniversaries, baptisms, picnics, and countless other occasions of celebration with a few "remarks" that invariably include a well-told joke; and he inspires his congregation to challenge the racial prejudice that they encounter every day with a series of dramatically retold biblical stories. This verbal thicket is the first line of cultural defense against the racial and the human problems of life for many Afro-Americans.

      The black preacher continually sows three types of narrative seeds in order to keep his oral hedge robust and impenetrable. First, there are personal narratives; these are stories that the black preacher fashions out of his own life. In many ways these stories are a variant of the testimonies that members of his flock give during Wednesday night prayer meeting. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Reverend Jesse Jackson have been two skillful sowers of this narrative seed. For example, Dr. King referred on several occasions to the frustration he experienced while attempting to explain to his daughter the reasons why she could not attend Atlanta's Fun Town amusement park. By the same token, Reverend Jackson cast some of these narrative seeds his address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention. In an attempt to inspire poor Blacks to vote, Reverend Jackson returned again and again to the refrain: "I understand when..." Between each repetition he would tell his audience of his own encounters with hunger, poverty, despair, and so forth.

     Biblical stories are the second type of narrative seed sown by black preachers. Just as lawyers must learn the legal statutes of the states in which they practice and actors must memorize their scripts before stepping on stage or going before a movie or televison camera, so, too, must black preachers master the Bible "from cover to cover" or "from Genesis to Revelation,: as his church members would say. The more familiar they become with the word, the better able they are to improvise, weaving a biblical character, familiar verse, and/or story into their sermons. James Weldon Johnson captured the poetic eloquence of these stories in God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1972), a collection of seven poems based on the black preacher's dramatic retelling of such well-known biblical stories as "The Prodigal Son" and "The Creation." The Reverend C. L. Franklin, the father of soul singer Aretha Franklin, was a master teller of these tales. His recordings of these and other biblical stories are still being sold.

     Jokes are the third type of narrative sown by black preachers. Humor has always been a major cultural element in the Afro-American religious experience. Young black preachers are reminded of this fact by their elders who occasionally admonish them that "it is just as important to make the people laugh as it is to make them cry." Playwright Ossie Davis harvested some of the fruit from this verbal bush in order to write his popular Broadway musical, Purlie Victorious (1963). The Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy is a master teller of these tales. During the civil rights era he consistently demonstrated that rare narrative gift of being able to select and tell a joke that would lower the fears or raise the courage of the nonviolent demonstrators. Reverend Abernathy's humorous depictions of "Miss Ann" and "Mr. Charlie," Afro-American folk designations of white women and white men respectively, energized countless mass meetings and marches of the civil rights movement.
     The continuing fascination and enjoyment that many Afro-Amercans derive from listening to their pastors tell thee three types of stories is an irrefutable affirmatin of the fact that the masses of black people are stuck as tightly to their storytelling black preachers as Brer Rabbit was to the Tar Baby.

The Role Of The Griot

Recently I took a Theatre Appreciation course at my college and had to do a Presentation on which I picked the topic of The African Storyteller. Was so enlightened by the information that I learned that I decided to share it with you all in this blog:

      

 

     It is important that peopole understand the roles and the power that the griot (known as "jali" and refixed before the given family name) has been endowed with since the beginning. One of the roles the griot in African society had before the Europeans came was maintaining a cultural and historical past with that of the present. He informed, even to this day, man and woman of the roles they must play in traditional African society. The griot was well respected and was very close to kings-- in fact, closer to the king than the king's own wife.

     The griot served as the king's confidant and personal advisor. The griot would interpret things, such as different facts, for the king. It was also the responsibility of the griot to make sure that the people received all the information about their ancestors-- what the father, the grandparents, and their lineages had done and how they had done it. What the griot gave to African society in oral history, cultural information, and ancestral wisdom and knowledge is the key with which all people of African descent can progress and maintain a high level of understanding of their true heritage.

     All people of African descent-- the Latin, the Jamaican, the Haitian, the Brazilian, the Caribbean, and the African American-- all must realize that, although they were not born in Africa, they are still African people and all of us have been through the experience of slavery. Most of us have lost our original language and traditions because of having been born outside of the African homeland. When you are away from your ancestral land and lack the necessary cultural information, you become "lost" by concept. The color of the skin remains the same but the concept, the knowledge of Africa, is gone. The traditional names and roles in society, everything that belonged to us by birthright, was taken away from most of us.

     This is known as "the painful period." In order to get back what was ours, information and knowledge about African society and culture must be learned now. This the griot gives to all who need it. Our children need to have the facts about their ancestral homeland. This destiny will take a while, however. Everyone has a transition period. When a black person understands his or her own African past, accepts being African, he is different from one who does not know these things. Those of us who know, know our value.'

 

     The reason I begin with this kind of conversation is that I want peopleto have the right idea about Africa and the role of the griot in the past and in today's time, so that everyone can understand the "capacity" and potential power that we still have today. This power must be used in a good way so that we can help one another. We are still a proud people and know the significant role we have and the part we must play in our humanity.

     So the young man and woman, everybody who stays in the village get a chance to listen to live and learn about their culture and such things as I have been saying. In West African society there are various types of stories to communicate these principles. In the evening, after dinner, the stories that are usually told by the griot are call tahlio (tah-lee-OH), which means it is not the reality but an imagined event between humans and animals and some kind of spirit. These are the stories that are told for entertainment. A griot has special ways of telling these stories so that they are very entertaining, even though the griot's main intention is not to entertain but to teach the people to know themselves. When tahlio takes place, everybody participates. Know, too, that music is not always used and that the stringed harp like instrument, the kora, for thich griots are noted, is new in comparison to other African instruments.

     We have to be all that we can be to get our art and all true information about the griot and our rich cultural folklore "out of the closet" in modern society. Most of us know all bout the white man's education, his schools, history, and culture, but we lack the necessary information about our own.

 

     I hope that someday we will have the young generation follow you and mean and each of us who is working hard at keeping African fulture and tradion alive. Yes, we need our stories; without stories in an oral tradition, there is no history, no reference. As the song says: Sy-yah Cah-pee-sah ma loo dee. Death is natural but I won't take humiliation; which means, if you don't know, you have to learn. Knowledge is learned. When one does not learn, that is humiliation.