Folklife Festival Storytelling

Come one, come all, and gather yourself around this fire
For I have some tales to spin
To frighten, to comfort, to excite, and to inspire...

Four solid days of Folklife ... wow, that's a lot of activity. The Folklife Festival is a Memorial Day Weekend tradition in Seattle, and each year, it seems to get better. This was where I first came across the Seattle Storytellers Guild: at the Monday story swap, I believe it was. Who would have thought that two years later, I'd be featured in the Saturday night Ghost Stories Showcase ... their most attended event!

The two stories I prepared actually were not about ghosts, per se, so I started off with the classic tune of "Ghost Riders in the Sky", which everyone sang along with...

An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way When all at once a mighty herd of red eyed cows he saw A-plowing through the ragged sky and up the cloudy draw Yippee-yi-yay! Yippee-yi-yo! Ghost riders in the sky!

Then I transitioned into "The one you don't see coming", a tale from West Africa that I learned from the very first storyteller I ever met, a guy named Ralph...

There is a village deep in the jungles of West Africa
where the old warriors gather at night around the campfire
and tell stories about The One You Don't See Coming.
A fickle and cunning prey it is,
for not only can you not see it coming,
you cannot smell it
you cannot hear it!
Indeed, you cannot catch The One You Don't See Coming,
because it always catches you first!

Finally, I closed it out with "The Uwabami", a Japanese story from Cathy Spagnoli's collection of Asian Trickster Tales. The uwabami is an evil trickster python that gets tricked, himself, by a small schoolboy on his way home to nurse his mother back to health ...

Kusaku had to think quickly.
"How do you know I am a human? I could be like you
- a trickster -
in human form.
Indeed, I am the great trickster Fox!"

It was a fabulous evening, and I enjoyed hearing the other tellers of the showcase: the Baltuck-Garrard Family Tellers, Anne Rutherford, and Robert Rubinstein. No wonder folks keep coming back to this event.

Thanks to Christen for the photos!
(I always forget to ask someone to take some)