African Storytelling at a Birthday Party

This evening I did something I have never done before--performing African folktales at a birthday party. The event took place at the Community Center in Maple Grove, Minnesota. A West African woman and children who had witnessed my storytelling during Afrifest wanted me to do something similar at the birthday party.

I drove from Northfield to Maple Grove and got there around 7pm, the time I was expected, The party was over half way through, and the room was alive with children of different ages as well as adults. The only people I knew were the woman who invited me and her daughter who had attended my Afrifest folktale performance.

I was promptly invited to take the floor and after briefly introducing myself and acknowledging the one girl I had met before, proceeded to tell two West African tales: one about Frog and Spider and one about a character called Money. After the first tale, I asked the children some questions about what they learned from it. As I have always noted when telling tales to children, they have good ideas and speak freely.

I deliberately chose tales that did not involve monsters, violence, or death. This is not because I worry about the children. I have noted over the years, and in different parts of the USA, that children take such tales in stride. It is the adults who have worries and misgivings. I have always been intrigued by this. In fact, today, I asked the girl who attended my Afrifest storytelling whether she thought the tales I told that day were scary. She said no, emphatically.

I concluded my presentation with a few remarks about my work of recording African tales and I held up a copy of Matengo Folktales. Someone asked if the book was for sale, and I said it was, adding that I had brought a few copies. Several people stepped forward to buy them, and I hope they will appreciate the tales as well as my commentaries on them.

African Folktales Without Happy Endings

On August 2, 2015, during Afrifest 2015 in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, I performed African folktales as part of the festival program.  I chose two tales--"Hawk and Crow" and "The Monster in the Rice Field"--from my book Matengo Folktales. The photo on the left shows me as I was impersonating the monster in the second tale, who was snatching away members of a family, one after the other, as they were out in the field, away from home, watching over their rice.

Neither of the tales has a happy ending. The first ends in a bloody fight between Hawk and Crow in which Crow is killed. In the second tale, the monster takes away the entire family. With the disappearance of each member of the family, the tale builds suspense, the audience wondering with increasing anticipation what is going to happen next. The last member of the family is taken away by the monster, and that is the end of the tale.

When I declared to my Afrifest 2015 audience that the tale was over, I knew what to expect. There was spontaneous laughter mixed with disbelief and puzzlement, and at least one person exclaimed, "We want a happy ending!" I had told tales from Matengo Folktales to audiences across the United States and, again and again, the endings left the audiences puzzled or incredulous.

There is a general expectation in American society that tales should have a happy ending, as is underlined by the famous sentence, "And they lived happily thereafter." This expectation is related to the idea of the pursuit of happiness which is deeply ingrained in  the minds of Americans.

African folktales tend to emphasize that life consists of ups and downs, that it is a mixture of joy and sadness, good luck and misfortune, success and failure. In life, good is not always rewarded and evil is not always punished. This is not an anomaly in African cultures. Traditionally, African youths were brought up to face challenges and be brave, through practices such as initiation rites, which were difficult, to say the least, meant to prepare boys and girls for the responsibilities of adulthood, marriage and parenthood.

I was not surprised at Afrifest 2015 that people expected happy endings. I felt they have succumbed to the American fantasy of the pursuit of happiness. But I have to honour the African storytelling tradition. There are certain changes a storyteller can make in the telling of tales, and some changes are inevitable, because performers don't usually memorize a text or read from a book. In a way, they create in performance. Nevertheless, there are core aspects of the tale that must be kept intact.

As we explore different folktale traditions and the cultures they spring from or operate in, we will encounter surprising and even shocking aspects. Researchers have noted this from the earliest days of the tradition of recording folktales, exemplified by the German brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm since the early years of the nineteenth century. With the passing of time and the rise of such influences as Disney films, there have evolved expectations about folktales such as I have described, including happy endings.