Fabric of Folklore
Folktales can be strange, mystical, macabre and intriguing. Join us as we explore the stories, culture and people behind the folklore. We go beyond retelling the legends, myths and fairy tales of old. We look at the story behind the lore, behind the songs and traditions to understand more about what they mean, and their importance. These stories, many originating as oral histories, inform us of what it means to be human; what it means to be an integral part of this Earth. Stories of magic and wonder bind us. They connect us through invisible strands, like the gossamer fibers of a spiders web. Folktales have the power to demonstrate how, although we live in drastically different locals, our hearts and minds beat as one human race. We are weaving the fabrics of our past and present stories, to help us better understand ourselves and to awaken us to a more compassionate and caring world community. As we explore the meaning of existence through folklore we hope to inspire future generations to lead with love and understanding.
Fabric of Folklore
Ep 56: The Magic of Folktales: Bill Gordh's Journey Through Storytelling and Music
Bill Gordh's Links:
Author page
World Music Institute Folktales Podcast
Outline
- 🎭 The Importance of Theater and Storytelling (07:42 - 13:03)
- 3:20 Bill discusses his initial doubts about the importance of theater.
- 5:30 Explains how working with children and folktales reaffirmed the value of storytelling.
- 🌍 Multicultural Folktales (13:03 - 22:59)
- 8:01 Bill talks about his work with multicultural folktales.
- 8:30 story consultant for Scholastic's multicultural big books series.
- 9:35 Discusses the similarities between folktales from different cultures.
- 🎼 Music and Storytelling (22:59 - 32:52)
- 15:35 Bill explains how he integrates music, especially the banjo, into his storytelling.
- 17:50 Describes the benefits of using music to engage children in stories.
- 🎧 World Music Institute Podcast (32:52 - 43:54)
- 21:00 Bill discusses his podcast with the World Music Institute.
- 22:00 Integrating world musicians and their instruments into folktales.
- 24:50 Shares the improvisational nature of the podcast episodes.
- 🏛️ White House Easter Egg Roll (43:55 - 53:19)
- 41:57 Bill shares his experiences performing at the White House Easter Egg Roll.
- 45:51 Describes the types of stories he tells at the event.
- 46:49 Mentions the non-religious nature of the stories and their multicultural origins.
- 🏫 Educational Work and Storytelling (53:19 - 01:03:24)
- 49:50 Bill talks about his long-term work with an Episcopal school and a public school.
- 55:53 Describes how he uses folktales in early childhood education.
- 50:30 Mentions his book '15 Easy Folktale Finger Plays' and its impact.
- 📖 Work with Jewish Synagogue and Adult Education (01:03:25 - 01:12:06)
- 58:10 Storytelling at a Jewish synagogue and his role in their family services.
- 01:04:18 Mentions his storytelling workshops for adults and his book 'Making Room for Everyone'.
- 01:03:05 Shares his thoughts on the importance of
Follow us:
Fabric of Folklore website
Welcome, folksy folks. Welcome to fabric of folklore. I'm your hostess, Vanessa Y. Rogers, and this is the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. This is a show about digging into our stories. Folklore is an expression of something meaningful to a group, whether that group is your family, your city, or your country. When we dig deeper to understand the history of our folklore, or the folklore of others, it gives us glimpses of the peoples whose shoulders we stand upon. For instance, I found this really cute piece of history. The melody of the Star Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States, comes from an english song rather than an american song, which is ironic because it was a song written for the new America, separating from England. The tune comes from an old drinking song, which is was the official ditty of the 18th century London Men's social club called the ancreantic society. And I love learning little history such as this one, because not only is it fun, but it helps me, and hopefully you too, to find meaning. To find deeper meaning. History fills in the black and white pages with color, and the purpose of this podcast is to explore folklore in such a way that it helps to illuminate to color those fairy tales, those stories, those folk songs, those traditions that you've grown up enjoying, and hopefully they can bring new meaning to your life. We want to celebrate our shared humanity with you through learning about folklore. So if that sounds like a podcast that you want to continue to listen to, make sure you hit that subscribe button, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform like Apple or Spotify. So you get notifications every week when our podcast drops. And if you already are a subscriber, thank you. So we really appreciate it. And if you could consider writing us a review that is so helpful for indie podcasts like ourselves to be found in the algorithms. So we have a gem of a show for you today. We're going to be talking with Bill Gourd. Is that how you say your last name? Yep, I forgot to ask you. Okay, great. He is an award winning banjo playing storyteller, author, educator, early childhood and elementary literacy specialist, and consultant. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic at the Gerald Ford Amphitheater in Vail, Colorado, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum in Houston, Texas, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and for four years was a featured storyteller at the White House Easter Egg roll in Washington, DC. We'll be talking about his folktale books for children, his award winning world Music Institute Folktales podcast that features musicians, instruments, and poke tales from all over the world and his work as a storyteller and a musician. So thank you so much, Bill, for joining us today.
Bill:It's my pleasure. It's great to join you.
Vanessa:So, you have had such a wonderful career. So I started out writing these questions, and I was like, where do we even begin? So let's start at the beginning. What do you remember? What drew you to folktales at the very start?
Bill:That's a good, that's a good question, I think what? At the very first, I don't know what the very first is. I started using folktales in storytelling with little children after graduating with an MFA in theater directing. And I got interested in kind of, I was kind of discouraged about theater and whether it was important anymore. And I started thinking, well, how can I find out if theater kind of needs to exist, so to speak? And I thought, oh, you know, if I work with little kids, I'll find out if they really need this to happen. And of course, theater really is the telling of stories. And so once I started sharing stories with little kids, I went, holy cow. Stories are the basis of who we are and what we do. And folk tales in particular speak to everyone. And when you first sent me, you know, kind of outline of what we might talk about, you mentioned this question. And I got thinking about it. And then I thought, oh, because at first I was thinking what I was just telling you, but then I started thinking, oh, actually, my first encounter with folk tales was we used to go, I grew up in Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and we used to go down to Georgia to my mother's parents for Christmas, and they didn't have television. And my granddaddy would tell us stories every night. And he told rabbit stories, which are folk tales, old southern folk, black folk tales. And he told them night after night. And that continued to resonate enough that when I had a son, I started trying to tell him one of those Burr rabbit stories. And each time I told it to him, I'd remember a little bit more of what my grandfather had said. The folktales in particular really lend themselves to working with everybody, in fact, but with children, the nature of folktales, the fact that folktales already use simple language, typically use repetitive events happening, often use refrains, the very things that are central to early childhood and childhood education and learning, literacy learning are kind of central elements of folktales, which I noticed after the fact. It wasn't like I came in going these are great for this. It was more that I would notice. And as I told stories, I go, oh, you know, if I had a little banjo to that, they're going to be able to say that part with me, and if I have that happen four or five times, they're going to walk away with part of this story, and we'll stay with them. And that indeed does happen.
Vanessa:So did you, when you had that, it sounded like an existential crisis of sorts. Being an MFA major, questioning whether theater was actually something that was needed in the world today, did you come up away with answer? Do you feel that it's still needed today as it is?
Bill:Absolutely. What's ironic to me is that I've now been working with little kids for over 30 years, and so what I thought was, like, a little sidestep from my theater and performance work turned into my entire career because it never stops being interesting, and it's just more and more. You can see. I'll show you. This is my folktale collection.
Vanessa:Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. So for those who are listening, he's showing us bookshelves upon bookshelves of books that are folk tales from all over the world, I'm assuming.
Bill:Yeah, there are over a thousand volumes. And I just started when I started falling in love with these folk tales. Anytime I travel somewhere, I'd go to a used bookstore and see if they had any folktale books, and I just started accumulating them and reading more and more and about, oh, I guess, 20 years ago. It was during the period of time that an education, multiculturalism was not dissimilar, in a way, from the inclusion ideas that we've been working with the last few years, but that was multiculturalism. And scholastic was publishing a series of multicultural big books, and I got hired as the story consultant for that whole series. And so for that whole series, then I would read hundreds of stories. So they'd go, okay, the next one is a story from Mexico. So I'd, like, read all the books of mexican folk tales, and then I'd, you know, whittle it down to eight or ten that I thought they could turn into a book that would work in a big book format. And so that gave me a leg up on the. The assignment itself, set up the opportunity to read just hundreds and hundreds of folk tales, and me finding the ones that would resonate.
Vanessa:Did you ever have experiences where you would read one from another country and you would say, this sounds so similar to this one that I have just read. Do you remember coming across those?
Bill:Yeah, many times. Many, many stories show up. And just a couple of weeks ago, I did a concert with a african american storyteller, and she told a story from West Africa. And I know it as a story from Czechoslovakia.
Vanessa:Oh, how fascinating. What was the story?
Bill:It's a story about the king who has horn ears. Horn ears. And he doesn't want anybody to know, so he doesn't. He never gets it the way I tell it. He never gets a haircut, but he finally has to get a haircut. And then the person sees it, and he throws them all in jail for saying that he's got ears. Horn ears, you know, ears like a goat, is the way I tell them. This other one was horn ears. But both of them end up coming up with that. It's about us hiding secrets and deciding that people won't like us if they know a secret. And when the secret comes out, it is not so terrible. They are still. And in both cases, the king ends up almost crying when he realizes that people love him because of his kindness and because of who he is, and they don't dislike him for what he thought they would like, just discount him completely in both african and the eastern european version. But that often, you know, they're just many. And also, certain stories show up a lot that are kind of pattern. The stories that I call dyad stories, the ones that have a person doing an action, that they end up getting something really great as a result, and another person does the same action or pretty near the same action for the wrong reason, and they get something terrible happens to them. And that shows up in all over the world, that addict relationship.
Vanessa:Yes, that sounds very familiar. I listen to circle round with my kids as a folktale storytelling podcast, and it's a really great podcast that has actors that act out the different parts. And there was one story about a gentleman who was very poor, and he had only enough to buy a bag of peanuts, and he started eating them, and he shared a peanut with a squirrel, and the squirrel ended up giving him gold afterwards for being so generous. And so his neighbor saw the same thing, asked him how he got all the gold, and so he did it out of jealousy and out of greed rather than out of generosity. And so the jealous neighbor did the same thing, but he did not get gold, and instead, he got nothing in return. And so that's the type of story that you're talking about, is that right?
Bill:Yes, exactly right. Yeah. And they show up all over the place. I use those in. I've developed some stories to explore fairness and justice with fifth graders, and those are some of the stories I use in those cases. And they start predicting what's going to happen when they hear, oh, it's another, the neighbor heard about this. We go, oh, the neighbor's going to do something terrible and it's not going to work out for them. Then with a fifth grader, you can go a little further and say, what do you think? That's the way things are? You know, whether, you know, is that, in quotes, true story in the sense of, does kindness and graciousness get paid back in a good way? And meanness and selfishness does nothing.
Vanessa:What do your fifth graders say? Do they, do they think that's the case?
Bill:They vary. They vary. And some say, well, yeah, because once in a while they'll say, but, like, you know in your heart that it's that way. And so the payment is not necessarily that you're going to get gold. You know, the gold will be in the feeling that you have from taking that pathway instead of the cruel one.
Vanessa:Yeah. Okay, so you also play the banjo. Do you play other instruments as well, or is it primarily the banjo?
Bill:Well, now, primarily banjo. I started out in ukulele and then moved to guitar and then moved to banjo. And I, I found that with the, when I first got work with these little kids that I was really nervous with my guitar because kids would often reach out and want to try to play. And I had a really good guitar and I didn't like that. But at the same token, I kind of appreciated that these little kids wanted touch it, that they wanted to make music. And I discovered that with the banjo, it's much sturdier instrumenthouse. And so I wasn't, as I still don't tell people, yeah, wham, my banjo. But I wasn't so, like, you know, get away from that kind of deal. And then it turned out a bonus because the banjo has an open tuning, which means that if a little kid ends up reaching out and moving their hand across it, they'll play a chord. And a guitar, they don't do that unless you're chording it with your left hand. And where the banjo, you reach out and it's a g chord, so they hear a chord, a musical chord just from having reached out. And I ended up feeling that was really a neat thing. And then now I've played banjo. I just play it all the time. I absolutely love the banjo and it sets up I'll show you. It sets up a great cause. You can just play a little rhythm going on, and then you can talk at the same time. And that takes a long time to do that, but, and then you just keep doing it, though, and you play more, and after a while, you can play a different rate than you're talking to, but that just takes, you know, and you just tell the stories and tell the stories, but it gives the kids something so you can, like, oh, we just walked downtown and were feeling really great. Oh, how good this is. It's a beautiful day. What do you think? I think. Okay, what do you. So the banjo sets up a really nice circumstance for listening to a background music. Yeah, yeah. And then you can then use it for, you know, oh, what happened? Oh, no. So you can use it for sound effects and, you know, all kinds of things as well. And not just the bed of music. I usually set up some kind of bed of music that I tell on top of, and then I'll stop at certain points, or I might add a song that I can sing along the way, all that.
Vanessa:Do you primarily use it in for, like, the background and setting up the song, or do you sing songs as well? Do you sing folk songs?
Bill:I sometimes sing folk songs, yeah. And I write songs. And so a lot of times. But what I found, at least in terms of sharing folk songs in folk tales, I found that a lot of kids entertainment uses these big, full blown pop songs in the middle of the movies, you know, the movies our kids watch, and they have these full blown songs in them. And I found that usually in a story, that's too much song. And so I tend to, like, have maybe, like, I'm going to tell a story this week about a little hummingbird that all the animals run from the fire, and a little hummingbird keeps flying, dips its beak into a spring and then flies and tries to dump it out of its beak onto a flame. And all the animals saY, what are you doing? What are you doing? And it just keeps going back and forth, back and forth, just dripping a little water. And then they say, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? And finally the hummingbird stops. And I say, well, you know how hummingbirds can stay in one spot? And they said, hummingbird, what are you doing? And the hummingbird said, I'm just doing what I can. And then they say, what? And the hummingbird sings, doing what I can. That's all that I can do to make this world a better PLACe for me and you. And they say, what? And the hummingbird sings it again. I'm doing what I can. That's all that I can do to make this world a better place for me and you. And so it's not a whole song. It's just a little brain, but it captures what. What I want to say, and then it gives them a little something to take. Take home with them.
Vanessa:Yeah. That they can continuously sing at home. And it also has a moral as well.
Bill:Yeah. Yeah. So it's in the form of a song and all. And with that kind of thing, if you sang a whole song, it would take it away from the story in my mind. So that's kind of how I more use songs. And I might do a song between stories, like a full song. If I'm doing a whole program, I might do a full folk song or a song I wrote between stories, but within stories, I usually don't have. I just have, like, a refrain like that.
Vanessa:Mm. Yeah. And. Okay, so you were also the host of the world Music Institute podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Bill:Sure, I'd love to. It's a really exciting project. I believe so. That idea kind of came from when I approached the people at World Music Institute. I've loved the work they've done for years and years, and they bring, they present all these world musicians in New York City, and every year after year, just extraordinary musicians. And I've, I don't think I've ever seen anything but a great show. I've gone to their shows for many years. Anyway, I got thinking about, because I'm always thinking about families and kids, and I got thinking, like, you know, most, a lot of times, kids don't hear these kind of instruments, and, like, they do. If they, if it's the wrong context, they think it's weird. And, and I started thinking, oh, but, you know, if we told the story and had that instrument accompany the story, then people could, would get to listen to the instrument in terms of the story, and they had get attached to the instrument partly because of the story. And then the thought went further as we talked about it, saying, like, oh, what if? And if we tell a story, a folk tale from the culture of the guest musician, and they accompany the story, then they're bringing their music to this story. And part of it, you might say, oh, well, you know, isn't it too bad, Bill, that your series doesn't have, like, all different storytellers instead of you every time with all these musicians. And of course, I wouldn't like that idea very much because I love doing it. But what I've discovered is that what makes them different. Of course there are different stories every time, but people get used to hearing my voice, but then what's with my voice is different every time. And so the difference is this guest musician. And so they have a deeper effect on the story than if we had different tellers all the time. And that wasn't our plan. But I think that's what's in, because I've now done eleven of them. And so each time we find a story that. That resonates with the musician, and. And then we. And we're improvisers, which is part of both storytelling and folk, traditional folk music, at least instrumental folk music. Of course, there's songs in folk songs that are certain ways, but even if you listen well, you live in Texas, you listen, you know, some of the Texas string band music, and every band will play the same song differently.
Vanessa:Yeah.
Bill:All over the state, you know, and they'll say, oh, that's not the way I know. Cindy. Cindy. I changed chords right there. Or they do it as a, you know, and that's kind of the nature, like the oral tradition. You hear the same story, same songs sneak around, but they're played in all different kinds of ways. And this gives a chance to, you know, put a story and some music. And because they're improvised, it makes it very present. We are right there. Right then.
Vanessa:What do you mean? It's improvised? Like, the music is improvised?
Bill:Yeah, yeah. And the story is. And the story is effectively. Cause I tell all these stories differently. Every time I tell them, wow, they change dramatically. The producer of this series goes, we always, often we do the first one. She goes, Bill, do a second one. And she turns to the musician, says, wait till you hear the second one. It's gonna be completely different, you know? And it is in the sense that we're still telling the same story, but the rhythms change, ways of thinking happen, and the musicians playing are improvising. With me telling the story, we're just both present to the same thing at the same time. And these are master musicians. These are all Grammy nominated and these major players. And so they just work with their instrument. They listen to what I'm doing. And, you know, a typical. I think you've listened to a few of them. They, you know, they clock in around 20 minutes or so. And most of those, if I told with just my banjo would be about not half less, but they say a 22 minutes story would be twelve or 13 minutes. So that's how much it changed with the addition of the instrumentalists bringing their magic to the work.
Vanessa:That's so interesting. So you're just kind of having a jam session as you're doing the story and is the telling of the story. I know you said that the rhythm changes, but just sometimes the ending change or like the individuals change. What do you mean? What changes?
Bill:Yeah, that's a good question. It doesn't change in that the same sequence of events happens. It still ends up the same ending. It's the ending of the story that I first discovered. How it might change is. I'll give you an example. This was really interesting. I did a story with Marinam Rastagari, who plays the camancha, which is kind of, it's from Iran and it's kind of like, I would say she wouldn't call. It's like the violin. It's a four stringed instrument and you play it with a bow, but she, the bottom of it sits on her thigh and so she moves it, but it's four strings and you bow it and so you can play things on it that you might play on a violin. So she was playing. And in the story, there's a woman in the story whose name is Paranas. She decides her father wants her to marry a rich man and she doesn't want to marry him. And so she ends up putting her shoes next to the well. So her father thinks she killed herself and she had gotten him to build her a lamp, a big, great big lamp. And when the goldsmith came, she said, put a room in the body of the lamp so she could hide in there. So she hides in the lamp. And then later, of course, because this is a romance story, the father, when he thinks that his daughter has died, he doesn't want the lamp around. It reminds him of the, you know, of her. And. And the thing about a folk tale is that emotionally it allows you as the teller to explore the feelings of these people that and what's going on. And so it doesn't say it in the traditional tale, but suddenly I'm sitting there and the father's looking down the well of where he thinks his daughter. And it's a chance to say to other people, I made a huge mistake. I didn't listen to my daughter. Now that isn't in the text that I learned, but it's an important idea of sharing like people need and people listening, need to hear people realizing that they've done something wrong and they wish they had done something different. And so the story itself lends to me, and that's what I mean, that kind of idea might occur as I'm telling it. It's not one I necessarily planned, I'd notice along the way. And so what happened with this one along the way was that at the end of the story, so at any rate, she gets a prince, sees the lamp, gets it moved into his private quarters, and always has his dinner and breakfast served in his room. She sneaks out of the lamp and starts eating his food while he's asleep. So he doesn't know what's going on. And eventually he peeks and he discovers her. And there she is. And he says, oh, are you a fairy or a woman? And she, they get talking and they fall in love. So the first thing that was kind of magical in that one was I thought she should have a name, because a lot of those stories, any male, all the males get named, and the females don't get named. I I said, she's the main person. This story's about her, and she's not like name. And I remembered my daughter had a good friend named Paranas who was iranian, and so I thought, I'll use her name. And so I looked up its meaning, and it means both fairy and beautiful woman.
Vanessa:Wow, how perfect.
Bill:Where the prince goes, are you a fairy or a woman? And it was completely like the magic of folklore. You know, it's just like storytelling. It's that. And so then at the end of the story, she ends up, he gets very sick because she gets almost killed, but he thinks she's dead, but she's not. And she discovers he's gotten very sick. And so she puts the ring he gave her in some soup, and he's eating it, and he sees the ring, and he realized she's not dead. And they get back together and is happy ever after.
Vanessa:But, oh, good.
Bill:Started thinking back on the story, and I went, oh, he never gives her the ring in the story. You know, it just shows up at the end of the story. I go, I can give him a ring. Marinam mentioned that as a woman in Tehran, she couldn't sing publicly because the musicians couldn't sing. And since she's moved to New York, she's loved singing. So I said, oh, I've got to let her sing in this story. So then I go, oh, I know, we can put a scene in the middle of having him give her the ring. And her go, I don't have a ring to give you, but here's a song. And so she sings a song to him and that gives Maranham a chance to sing a folk song in the middle of the story. And then as were doing it the first time we had rehearsed, she knew kind of the outline of the story. And she started singing it before the prince had given her the ring. I'm like, going, oh, yeah. She just started singing the song before. And so I went like, oh. And then at the end of the song, I said, and so the prince, after hearing the song, said, that is so beautiful. I don't have anything as beautiful as a song, but I have a ring. And I wonder if you'll take the ring. In my mind, being a better story that the song is valued higher than the ring and is a fluke of improvisation, but being able to take advantage of it, that may be more long winded that you wanted to hear, but I think it's.
Vanessa:No, that's a beautiful answer and I love it. And it shows how much skill both that the musician has and that you have, because that requires a lot of confidence in your abilities to be able to just improvise on the fly. Because if you don't have that, you know, background, it's a little bit harder to, I find it's really hard to talk off the cuff if I am not super familiar with what I'm doing or with what I'm talking about. So that's really cool that's how that works.
Bill:Yeah. Well, it's, to me, it's magical. But I think what gives me the, I'm so overwhelmed at the brilliance of these musicians that I feel like that I don't really have to do anything. It's like, it's so easy to, you know, when I did the nighttime comes to the rainforest with Cyril Baptista, who many considered the primo brazilian percussionist. He played with Herbie Hancock and Yo Ma, and he played in the Paul Simon concert in Central park years ago. He's just this brilliant. And he grew up near the rainforest. And so the opening scene is the rainforest and you think you're in the rainforest and it's him playing percussion. And I thought, well, I don't. This is nothing. I just tell the story. It is so amazing to listen to him. It's just, it's just remarkable.
Vanessa:Well, I've only listened to two episodes. The instrument in the one that's the sun and the moon story. What is that instrument?
Bill:It's a cora. A cora.
Vanessa:Can you describe it? It is so interesting looking.
Bill:It's an amazing instrument. It has a gourd body. You know, the base of, it's a giant gourd.
Vanessa:Yeah. Like, larger than the width of my body. Like, it's very large.
Bill:Really big. Bigger than most pumpkins you would ever see at Halloween. I mean, it's not a size of gourd we see in the States.
Vanessa:No.
Bill:I mean, I've never seen one that big, but it's a gourd. And then it has a shaft above it. And then I think it has 27 strings, if I remember. And it's on either side of the neck. And so he's plucking with both hands, a little similar to a harp, but the harp goes all the way out, whereas this is, there's kind of strings on both sides of this neck. So he's playing them against each other.
Vanessa:Wow.
Bill:He's just a brilliant, you know, a brilliant musician. And again, when he started playing, I was going like, maybe I won't even start this story. It's just so, it is so beautiful. I just want to listen and play. And then when we discovered Marinam was part of it, of the persian song, and that was the chance of adding songs within these stories so that people would hear a song in the language, from the culture, the stories from. And then if it's somebody from that culture listening, they get to hear a song in their language. And if they're not the rest of us, like me, I don't understand that. But I hear a beautiful song, which, again, kind of opens us all up to the amazing thing of vocals. So we've started trying to, so in that one, you've listened to the sun and the moon. He sang a song in Bambara, which is one of the languages in Mali, about sun and moon and water. And in the story from Tibet, he's an ex, he can't go into Tibet, but he's. Taechung has worked hard at preserving tibetan music and stories and singing. And so it's really important for his story that we included singing, and he's known as a singer and an instrumentalist. So I said, oh, could your guy, when he's first walking into the forest in the story, could you just sing? Could he be singing a song? And he said, yeah, I can. I'll sing one of the familiar song that we sing, kind of like when we're walking around. And so you hear an authentic tibetan song that's a familiar tune. When the parents of paranas heard the story, the dad started singing along because he knew the song that Maranon sang. So it meant so much more to him than it would have if we just said, and they sang a beautiful song.
Vanessa:Yeah, absolutely. And so I really recommend anyone who listens because I originally just listened to a couple episodes, and then I went back onto the YouTube channel and I was watching, and I was really amazed at watching the musicians playing. So if you get an opportunity even just to look at the video for a little bit, I recommend listeners to try and view each of his episodes as well so you can see the instruments because they're all so interesting and unique. So I'm really glad that you're doing that and I haven't showed it. My three year old did listen to one of the episodes. He did like it, but I am going to have my other children listen to it. But I am curious who your typical audience is. Is it primarily adults or is it children? Who do you think is listening or watching for the.
Bill:Well, for those podcasts, those, you know, you say you have a three year old. Those, you know, if I were doing a program, I would not do those stories for a three year old. They're too long, you know, and so I think those more are family stories for families to listen to. And so then a young one would hear what they heard of year old or four year old, and they will still like parts of it, I think most of. And I've been working at telling stories to that age group for many years. And so what I've tried to do is honor the intelligence of all children and try to give everybody something they can hook into. So if they don't understand all the concepts, there's still some humor that they get, or there's still a banjo rhythm that they like. There's still a joke that they like, you know, so that you can kind of place different things within the storytelling so that it works for four year old and for an eight year old. And they all like it because kind of everybody, including adults, you know, everybody likes, you know, hearing a banjo, you know, and they say walk and they walk and they walk. Nobody doesn't like. Probably some people hate hearing that, but most people, hopefully most people like having a little rhythmical thing going on. And it's not a matter of age, but it does help the really young ones keep a handle on what's going on.
Vanessa:Absolutely. So let's talk a bit about your Easter egg hunt or Easter egg role at the White House. I don't know very much about that tradition. So give us a little bit about your experience there and what it was like to be at the White House.
Bill:Well, the Easter egg roll that's been going on for many, many, I think it's 100 years old or, you know, old tradition and you come and you roll an Easter egg. That's part of the thing. But it's the only time the south lawn is open to the public.
Vanessa:Wow.
Bill:And that has been every year for many, many years. And they, and it's really for the public and people can get tickets ahead of time. So it's nothing. People with, who give the biggest donations. It's not, it's not that at all. It's, you know, but you have to have patience, you know, and so you sign up and you get an entrance time at ten or eleven or twelve or whatever and you stand in line outside of the gates and make your way in and then there's things for kids to do this time. So my funny story around it is that I told stories for the last three years of the Clinton administration. So that was in 1990, 819, 99 and 2000. And for those times they had a number of stages and I'm not even quite sure my attorney at the time had some, knew somebody who was helping organize and I ended up going. And once I guess they liked what I did. Okay. So I got invited back. So I got to go three times in a row. And that was wonderful because then my daughter was in kindergarten and my son was in 6th or 7th grade and so they all got to go and my wife went to go and my sister brought my mother up from Virginia up to there and Julie Andrews and, you know, it was all, and then, so that was then, and then this year on my daughter was working and she was on a tour and she was in DC and they, her group got a, a tour of the White House and the director of the White House visitors stuff was giving them the tour and he mentioned that he was, part of his duties was to do the Easter egg roll. And my daughter just lit up and said, she's 30, by the way, said, oh, I got to go to the Easter egg roll when I was a little kid because my dad told stories there and he said, well, let's bring your dad back.
Vanessa:That's amazing.
Bill:That's how this happened. So that was quite remarkable. So it was, and he had been.
Vanessa:There then, so he'd been there a long time.
Bill:Yeah, he'd done it a long time. And so he had been there then. And he was kind of thrilled that when he came backstage at some point he said to the woman who's in charge of production, he goes, yeah, this is full circle. Bill was here, you know, back in the Clinton days, and here he is again now. And so that was a thrilling, is really thrilling to feel, you know, to have that occur.
Vanessa:So what kind of stories do you tell? Are they all centered around the Christian Easter, the christian story, or is it.
Bill:Pretty nonreligious, non, totally non religious? And they were just folks folk tales. And, and I mentioned that up front because early on in my, you know, when I first started working with folk tales, you know, still in terms of publishing, in terms of everything, you know, there are like 3000 copies, you know, versions of the three Billy goats, you know, and of all those books, and yet you couldn't find one book of south american folk tales 30 years ago. You know, eventually I'd find one. But, you know, there are tons of the european. And so I really focused on the non european folk tales. And, and so again, and I mentioned that at the Easter Egg roll, I said, I tell stories from around the world because everywhere around the world people tell stories and we can learn a lot from all the people in the world. So here's a story from West Africa and I told story from West Africa. I told a story from Turkey, I told a story from Mexico. And those were all very rhythmical because people aren't going to sit down to pay attention that long. I mean, they'll stay for five, six minutes story. But, you know, it's not like I'm going to tell like a real serious, you know, it was more kind of once the cumulative tales, the ones where you keep saying, you keep adding more and you repeat what's already happened. Those work very well in that kind of circumstance. So that it's going to hear that. And I try to add stuff that would, I tell one where the, where a turtle is out in the field with some birds and they keep looking up. And he said, why are you looking up? And they said, because if the farmer comes, we're in trouble. And so it's like, what are you going to do? And they say, we're going to fly away. And the Charles said, well, I can't fly and oh, so what am I going to do? And the bird said, here, we'll give you some feathers. And so the turtle has these feathers. Here comes the farmer. The birds fly away, and, of course, the turtle's just standing there flapping feathers, but not going anywhere. And so the farmer gets angry and says, okay, well, I know what I'm gonna have for supper. Turtle soup.
Vanessa:Oh, no.
Bill:And the turtle's still like. But it realizes it's kind of like. It's dancing. So it starts singing. Why? Why have soup when you can dance? Why have soup when you. You can dance? Why soup wind. You can dance. You can dance with me. And so I have a little song, and all the kids that are out there at the Easter egg roll, they all start dancing. That was that kind of. And so then I added stuff. Why make soup when you can jump? Why make soup when you can strut? Why make soup when you can leap? And, you know, I kind of watch the kids and figure out what they like to do, you know? So those kind of. That setting kind of sets up for that kind of story.
Vanessa:Well, how neat. Well, I hope you get asked back again next year.
Bill:Thank you.
Vanessa:So you do a lot of work teaching and storytelling. You work with an episcopal. Not an episcopal church. You said it was an Episcopal organization school, and that is where you've developed a lot of the curriculum that you have today. Is that correct?
Bill:Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I started there in 87 or 88, so that's. And I'm still there. So I'm there since then. That is a long time. And I'm there three days a week, and I do storytelling with all the kids, and it's all early childhood, but that means the two and a half year olds have storytelling once a week, and when they're three, they have storytelling once a week. When they're four, they have story. So by that time, they have storytelling for three years, and they're not even in kindergarten. And so I use folktales as the basis to build these stories, as these interactive things. I think, in fact, the reason you first became aware of my work was a 15 easy folktale. Finger plays.
Vanessa:Yes, that's correct.
Bill:That idea was to use the kind of early childhood notion of finger play and apply it to folk tales. And so. And, in fact, that idea was given to me by the woman who was in charge of the multicultural book at scholastic professional books. And she said, I've been thinking it'd be great to have finger plays or folktales, and I bet you could make it work. It's the only time I've ever heard this happening. I went back and my pitch to scholastic on that book that you have was telling the story to the editorial staff, a finger play. I got the deal. I got the deal. I didn't turn in a script. I didn't turn in a text. I told the story of crooked leg spider to the editorial staff, and the head of it said, who wants to work on this? And a couple of people raised their hand. But I found the same thing in terms of the kids is, again, just like finger, traditional finger play, non folk tale. You know, when you have these gestures that get repeated with phrases that get repeated, the kids can do themselves. And so kids get into the structure of stories physically. They start understanding story structure not by pedagogy, but by experience. And so I then started building. So at episcopal last year, I told 125 different folk tales by the end of the.
Vanessa:Wow. So tell us about how this works, because I. So I'm imagining the itsy bitsy spider, and I can think of a few other stories that use fingers, but they're primarily songs. The ones I can imagine in preschool are all songs, but these are stories rather than songs. Is that right?
Bill:Right. They sometimes have little songs within them, like a kind of demonstrated before, but basically, they're stories, but all of them, you know, they repeat. Most of them have episodes kind of that repeat. And so the kids, once they join, what I've found is that once they join the finger play, and then you have that finger play repeated in the story, say that this, the rabbit going over the fence and singing to the tree and getting a blossom floating down to it. And so if you're doing it with a kid, you have to have that repeat enough that they can then do that. And then when spider goes and does it and yells at the tree, it drops a blossom that smushes him. So that's why he has crooked legs. But you have to set it up so that they can. So that they can join in.
Vanessa:Mm. And there has to be repetition.
Bill:Yeah, yeah.
Vanessa:And do you find that they are more attentive to the story with their. Something to do with their hands?
Bill:Totally. Totally. Yeah. Interactive. And I. You also set up, you start setting up things so that you can set them up to do a prediction. That is correct. And with early childhood, you like your three year old. I would set up. So if the, you know, we'll say, like, and what happened? And what did rabbit do the next day? They'll say, go back to the tree, but you set it up. So that's what it does. And then you ask the question at the point that you've given them enough information that they're going to say, go back to the tree, but you get to say to them, you're right. And every kid, when you say you're right like that, they beam, they grow bigger and they start thinking, I love story, and I understand story. And, and I believe that. Then you set up with having this early childhood storytelling experiences. You set kids up to understand that later. Say when you're in fifth grade and you predict something, a kid who has grown up with never getting things right gets scared about making predictions and they guess it wrong. They go, of course, I always guess it wrong. And instead, if you're more confident, you go, oh, I didn't think the story was going to go that way. And you're interested, but it wasn't because anything wrong with you. And if you work with kids enough, you can kind of set them up. So their experience with story is one that they grow in confidence about their own relationship to the structure of stories and how they work and how they're part of it. And so what I do at the episcopal school, so I tell these stories and then the kids act them out and they play the characters in the story and I tell them again. And of course, since I can tell stories in a lot of different ways, it doesn't matter to me if there are five rabbits. I don't tell a story and have most of the kids sitting out. They're all are in the story. And if there are three characters, you know, eight kids are one character and they're all doing it together. And I tell that story. And at this part of the year, these four year olds are getting to sit on the storytelling stool next to mine and they make up a story and the kids act out their story in front of them.
Vanessa:Wow.
Bill:And it's totally amazing. It's totally. And it's all them having heard folk tales for three years and acted them out.
Vanessa:Yeah.
Bill:And now they're telling their own adventures.
Vanessa:I would love to see a longitudinal study of the students that you have taught and have told stories to over and over again and see if there's any difference in their confidence or their ability to public speak or I would think that it would have some long term positive effects on their educational outlook.
Bill:I hope so. I mean, I haven't done the studies, but I hope so. And I have had people, I got a text or something from a 22 year old student who remembered the story I told in kindergarten.
Vanessa:Wow.
Bill:She just said, oh, a bunch of our friends were talking about how we remember when you used to come to our school when were little, and it's still there after that amount of time. So part of that isn't, I won't claim that it's me. I think it's to do with these stories. They just exist between you and the kids listening, and they hang on to them more. If you're reading them a book, they know it's in the book. If it's just there in the air between you, there's something that they know that's a different kind of animal.
Vanessa:Yeah, absolutely. I lost my training flow. Oh, you also do work with the jewish synagogue. Can you tell us a little bit that's slightly different? Right?
Bill:Yeah, well, I do the chapel program. I'm the director of the chapel program at the Episcopal school, and there we tell old and New Testament stories and folk tales, and I retold all of them to work for children, just in terms of value oriented. And there are quite a few jewish kids at our school, and I wanted to tell stories that they would be comfortable with us telling bible stories. And so we got working on that. And a grandparent was not certain she wanted her jewish grandchild to come to chapel, and she attended one. And then she called me and said, could I bring my rabbi? And she brought her rabbi and the head of childhood at a synagogue. And they then hired me to come as a consultant to work with them on their family services.
Vanessa:Oh, wow.
Bill:I've been working with them now for ten years. So I've been at the Episcopal school for 30 years, and I've now, and my dad was a college chaplain, so it all kind of swirls around itself in some unique kind of way.
Vanessa:So do you ever do work with adults or speeches or public speaking for adults or performances?
Bill:Mostly. Mostly my work with adults is like, I teach a story at Queen's college library, graduate program in storytelling for librarians, so they can do children's programs in their libraries and can include storytelling. And so I've done a lot, and I taught, which I've stopped now, but for 15 years, I taught courses in literacy, grad courses in literacy for education. Education courses.
Vanessa:But your heart is really in what?
Bill:And a couple of seminaries, but that's mostly the adult. That's most of my work with adults is doing storytelling workshops, not public speaking or like that.
Vanessa:And so this has become your long term career. This has been a storyteller, musician. This has been what you've primarily done as your bread and butter?
Bill:Yeah, yeah. Pretty wacky and.
Vanessa:But wonderful. I mean, it's, you know, a dream of lots of people to be able to, you know, work with their creative side. And so many people feel like there's not, they. They won't be paid if they go into the creative arts, but. So it's always wonderful to hear that someone has made it work as an actual career.
Bill:Yeah, it's not typical. I've been very lucky.
Vanessa:Do you have any advice for someone who might be a storyteller listening or musicians listening to this podcast? If they have the dream to do something similar to what you're doing, find.
Bill:A school that loves you. I mean, likewise, I have a residency at a public school. The Episcopal school is clearly not a public school, but I have a residency at a public school that I'd worked with the principal. She's starting a new school, and she said, bill, let's have storytelling at my new school. And we developed it so they're only kindergarten and pre k when I started, announced pre k up to fifth grade, and they all had storytelling. Yeah. And that was. Cause the principal went to the PTA and said, this is what I, you know, if you're gonna invest in something, let's have Bill come and do storytelling with our kids. And I've done that with them for ten years. Do your work and put it out there.
Vanessa:Yeah. Well, what do you feel like is the heart of your messages in your writing?
Bill:Kindness. Kindness.
Vanessa:I feel like that is kindness. And generosity seems to be a running theme throughout most folk tales.
Bill:Yeah. And that it. That it. That it's worth it to be kind. You know, it's. I know when I. When I tell the story of Joe by this, like, and go to Nineveh, you know, let people know it's just as easy to be nice as it is to be mean and, you know, and those stories aren't told usually that well way, but why not let people hear, like, it's not that hard, you know, it's like, you know, it can. So that's. That's my hope. Work can engender and listening. Listening to each other.
Vanessa:And in that token, you also wrote another book called Making Room for everyone. And it's specifically for churches to use in their storytime lessons. Is that right?
Bill:Yeah. Or chapels like the chapel. I do. And the idea of that was that, you know, many of these schools will do. Will do Bible stories. And so I wrote a book called building a children's chapel that was. Is all Bible stories. The publisher of that came to me and said, do you have another book? And I said, what if we do the same themes that are in the children's chapel book but have it filled with folktales instead of Bible stories? And so then if you're doing a Bible story for a chapel, you could look in this book and say, oh, here's a story from South Africa that also explores the idea of generosity. Or here's a story, here's a native american story that talks about not giving up, or here's a story from Mexico about the kind, how kindness can turn things around. And so then all of it hopefully adds to each, you know, each reinforce the others. And it suggests that we, as a world, that there's some thought that, you know, you find all these stories. There is something uniting us and bringing us together. And it's not, it's not always bad stuff. You know, that there's a lot compassion. And the stories I know, I heard of a library, I think, in queens that they used to anytime, you know, some place was having a really hard time, was in the midst of a war or something, and, you know, a culture was kind of being demonized. They would, they had bring out some of the folktale books from those places to just kind of like, say, well, wait a minute. You know, there's a lot of their differences. They're very different things. And, and when people are together, they often are trying to help each other. They're not always trying to fight each other. And it's nice to be reminded, I think, of. Remind that.
Vanessa:Absolutely. Well, what do you feel like we've missed? What have we not touched on in your illustrious career?
Bill:Well, I think this is, we've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of territory. I think it seems pretty good, the, you know, the music and stories that the fun thing with my work with the New York Philharmonic has been is kind of exploring the notion of when do you tell stories to get to music, and when do you use stories? When do you use music to support stories? And that's a really interesting area of exploration for me, and I like building stories. So the piece that I did with the New York Philharmonic, which they commissioned me to write the libretto, and John Deke to write the music. So we did a young people's concert that they've done for 80 years. Not that piece, but they've done the young people's concerts, and we got, we're only like the third one to ever get commissioned to create a new piece for the young people's concert. And this idea was called Instrument Village, where all the instruments of the orchestra live in a village together. And instead of, you know, flute being a bird, flute's just a flute. And so you tell a story about these instruments doing things. And so as a kid, you hear, oh, the flute's. Oh, the flute's painting the roof. Oh, the base is building the basement. You know, so you hear the narrative that kind of guides you to listening to how the instruments are working. And so in that way, you know, just the exploration of story and how it can lead us to music or music to story. And that weave is endlessly interesting.
Vanessa:Absolutely. And I have to admit something, that after I started listening to your podcast, you inspired me to take up the ukulele. And I have not played any instruments before, but I decided to try and play the ukulele because, you know, part of what I'm doing is I would like to do folktales in public for children as well. And so I just thought I was really taken with how much more engaged a story can be with music with the story. So.
Bill:That is. And that's absolutely fantastic. And that is. Go ahead and, you know, you can just play really simple stuff and talk on top of it, and you'll just get better. You know, that's. That's the thing. That's a wonderful. So when I first started doing banjo and talking, I would just play the same thing over and over again. And then I went walk. I couldn't, like, change the. And then I got. So I could do. And then they walked and they can. And they stopped and they said, oh, I don't know. What do you think? I don't know.
Vanessa:What do you think?
Bill:But I couldn't do that at first. But it was still okay, you know? And then you get better. You just keep doing it. You get better and you add little things. So I would encourage everybody. Some people use an auto harp, you know, which you can strum, and you just pushed. You push keys, so you don't need to know chords. You strum it, but then you push these buttons and they make a chord. And some storytellers who don't play guitar or that kind of thing play an auto harp. That's another.
Vanessa:Okay. That's a good one for me to look into. Well, thank you. Thank you for the inspiration, and thank you for coming on the show. I really enjoyed this episode.
Bill:Great. Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure.
Vanessa:And thank you, folksy folks, for joining us on this musical folk tale story. What inspired you today? What did you learn that you didn't expect to learn? We encourage our listeners and watchers to continue the conversation on our Facebook group with our community page where we ask questions and we ask people to tell us what their thoughts were about the latest episode and to tell us what they would like to hear about next. So we also on other social medias, such as we have a Facebook page, we have Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, I believe, and YouTube, we love hearing from our audience. So make sure you're following us on our social media accounts where you can tell us all of your thoughts and opinions and comments. And don't forget to give us a review if you are so inclined. That's so helpful. Like I said in the beginning, for any podcast to be found. Thank you for tuning in to fabric of folklore. Once again, I'm Vanessa y. Rogers, where we unravel the mysteries of folklore and until next time, keep the folk alive.
