/ARTS WEEKLY/FOLKLORE-COLOMBIA: An Encounter with the Word

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yadira Ferrer

BARRANQUILLA, Colombia, Aug 27 2002 (IPS) - Almost two-dozen storytellers are meeting in this northern Colombian city to take part in the fifth international festival “El Caribe cuenta” (The Caribbean Speaks), an encounter centred on story-telling, this time with sights set on young people.

The festival organised by the Luneta 50 Foundation, with 14 Colombian ‘cuenteros’ (storytellers) and six from other countries, is being held once again in the port city of Barranquilla, Colombia’s main urban centre on the Caribbean coast.

But the performances and workshops are also taking place in the neighbouring cities of Cartagena and Santa Marta, the San Andrés archipelago, and another 13 towns scattered throughout the country’s northern region.

The festival coordinator, Zoila Sotomayor, told IPS that in addition to the storytelling, there are also workshops such as “Beginning Oral Narrative”, “Education for Art and Creativity” and an interdisciplinary forum titled “Playing Slow and Learning Fast”.

Sotomayor explained that the purpose of the festival is not just a return — through the spoken word — to the shared traditions and histories of Caribbean and Latin American peoples, but also to put them into circulation “in the mouths of the guest storytellers” and anyone else who listens.

Another objective of “El Caribe cuenta” is to strengthen “the movement of young narrators that has emerged recently in Colombia and to motivate appreciation among students in all areas of this oral art as a vehicle for promoting the habit of reading.”

The non-governmental organisation Luneta 50, “which is heading a creative project for an auditorium dedicated to arts of the stage, began a process in 1998 — with the first festival — that facilitated the emergence and development of young narrators and an audience willing to listen to them,” said Sotomayor.

A guest storyteller from Barranquilla, Aníbal Tobón, sees the festival as forum for demonstrating that oral narration is on the rise, not only in Colombia but also throughout the Americas, even if it is still considered a relatively new form of artistic expression.

The so-called “oral fad”, a trend Tobón says has been building in the region for some 15 years, has its roots in Colombia in the creation myths of its indigenous cultures, with marked influences from African and European cultures.

There is the story of “El Moján”, from the oral tradition of the Magdalena River basin (Colombia’s principal water route), a water spirit that transforms into a man in order to seduce young women.

Another is the tale of “Francisco el hombre”, the story of a minstrel who announces the local news accompanied by an accordion with which he beats the devil in a dare. These are mythological stories that are disseminated by the traditional ‘cuenteros’, he said.

Others follow a more contemporary line, like Tobón, who developed his flare for storytelling in the 1970s when he lived in Spain, France and Sweden.

Tobón told IPS that his principal work for this year’s festival is a story titled “Cuando yo sea grande” (When I Grow Up), in which he plays with the idea of how young children see adults.

“Miguelito lets loose his infantile diatribe against an unfair world that is run by adults. It has a dose of dark humour and uses irony in the best style of children themselves,” he explained.

Telling tales “is to launch an interpersonal connection between speaker and listener” and is a way to encourage reading, especially among children and young people, who can be motivated by the beauty of a story’s narrative “to later read it in books or look for other works by the same author,” Tobón said.

The festival “El Caribe cuenta” is held annually, as is the Ibero-American Abrapalabra Story Festival, in the northeastern Colombian city of Bucaramanga, and the “World Travels” Children’s Festival.

Among the foreign guests participating in this fifth year of “El Caribe cuenta” is Costa Rican Moisés Mendelewicz, who now lives in Mexico and has participated in oral narrative festivals in Spain, United States and Cuba, winning Spain’s Chamán Prize in 1993.

His narratives bring together traditional and contemporary stories from Europe and Latin America.

Also in attendance at the Barranquilla festival is Cuba’s Pedro Mario López, an expert in creative development and intelligence, who will combine his work as storyteller with leading a special workshop on creativity.

Venezuela is represented here by Mau Ceballos, director of the International Oral Narrative Festival, and Flora Ovalles, founding member of “La mala maña” storytelling group and creator of a local theatre.

Spain’s Cándido Pazó and Chile’s Alfredo Becker round out the international guests.

The Colombian ‘cuenteros’ include Manuel Sánchez and Fernando Cárdenas, of Barranquilla, Carolina Rueda, of Cali, Iván Torres, of Bogotá, Robinson Posada, of Medellín, Reynaldo Ruiz and Bienvenida Anaya, of Córdoba, and “Papá Toño” of Atlántico.