Oral Patterns of Performance: Story and Song
()
About this ebook
To many Native American cultures, songs and stories are dramatic enactments of reality, and words bring reality into existence. In this chapter from his award-winning book, The Anguish of Snails, Toelken thoughtfully approaches a number of stories from Native American traditions, discussing how narratives can be touchstones of shared values among closely associated traditional people and how songs and stories go far beyond an evening's entertainment or "lessons” about life. A traditional narrative can be a culturally structured way of thinking and of experiencing the patterns that make culture real.
Read more from Barre Toelken
Ghosts And The Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dynamics Of Folklore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnguish Of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Oral Patterns of Performance
Related ebooks
The Bottom, The Gift of Desperation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret of the Totem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat a Body Knows: Finding Wisdom in Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Plato: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnduring Motives: The Archaeology of Tradition and Religion in Native America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory through Trauma: History and Counter-History in the Hebrew Bible Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTranslating Worlds: The Epistemological Space of Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Gita Mehta's "A River Sutra" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Implied Spider Updated with a New Preface Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemystifying Shamans and Their World: A Multidisciplinary Study Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Coyotes Go to Heaven: A Biographical Account of F. Robert Henderson and Karen Lee Henderson 1933 – 2016 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal Mythology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology - Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mapping the World Differently: African American Travel Writing About Spain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Firekeeper Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEncountering Hermes, On the Road in Greece: Essays, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hoop and the Tree: A Compass for Finding a Deeper Relationship with All Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRise, A Novel of Contemporary Israel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSymbols and Myth-Making in Modernity: Deep Culture in Art and Action Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEvolutionary Community Ecology, Volume 58 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and Communication Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSacred Dreams & Life Limiting Illness: A Depth Psychospiritual Approach Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMyth, Ritual, and Religion: Volume One Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hunter-Gatherer Ireland: Making Connections in an Island World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Study of Imagination - Essays on Fairy Tales, Folk-Lore and Mythology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBringing Our Languages Home: Language Revitalization for Families Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae: Expanded Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Myths of Creation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Social Science For You
All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Men Explain Things to Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Close Encounters with Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women Don't Owe You Pretty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Oral Patterns of Performance
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Oral Patterns of Performance - Barre Toelken
10.7330/9780874219531.c001
Contents
Oral Patterns of Performance: Story and Song
Notes
About the Author
About the Book
Oral Patterns of Performance: Story and Song
Everything is made possible through stories.
—Hugh Yellowman, Navajo, explaining why stories are told
I’ve been poor most of my life; I’ve known only one song.
—Little Wagon, Navajo, on the importance of songs
Early in the Navajo creation story, First Man and First Woman (who are depicted as gendered holy beings made up of colored light), hear a strange noise on a nearby mountain shrouded by clouds. Apprehensive about what this unknown noise may signify, but feeling a need to investigate, First Man rejects First Woman’s advice to avoid the dangers, saying:
Do not be afraid . . .
Nothing will go wrong. For I will surround myself with song.
I will sing as I make my way to the mountain.
I will sing while I am on the mountain.
And I will sing as I return.
I will surround myself with song.
You may be sure that the words of my song will protect me.¹
What First Man finds on the mountain is a baby girl, crying; it is Changing Woman, the first real personage in Navajo mythic history, and the closest to a full deity of all the sacred people (yei) in the Navajo pantheon. He brings her back to First Woman, and the two, totally clueless about what to do with a baby, set about ritualizing her life and physical development by creating proper words and stories.
Much of the Beautyway story and ceremony focuses on the discovery and maturation of Changing Woman, and today, whenever a hogan is blessed, or a wedding is performed, or a young woman celebrates her first menstruation, songs from this extensive ceremony are sung, the words vividly dramatizing for contemporary people their identity with the sacred past. For Navajos, actually uttering words creates the reality of their world: Spoken or sung language is a creative act; hence, people avoid speaking of things they don’t want to see appear in the world around them. One of the most terrible things to say out loud (if a Navajo carpenter pounds his thumb with a hammer, for instance) is shash, bear,
for—uttered in passion—the word may really summon a bear, and bears are ritually (and factually) difficult to deal with.
Spoken words, especially when enhanced or intensified by repetition, ritual structures, and musical phrases, are the principal means Navajos use to create a sense of order and harmony in the world they inhabit. The medicines administered to a patient in any Navajo healing ceremony are a response to the symptoms being treated, but healing in any deeper sense comes through the power of the words in the ritual. Along with doing sand paintings (which are symmetrical, cyclic, oriented to the universe, and usually four sided), placing the ritual inside a hogan (which is round, oriented to the east, and represents the womb of Changing Woman), and using four-way repetition in the songs (which represents the four directions), Navajo curing ceremonies have the same patterns and assumptions we have been discussing. Most of these rituals are not secret and are not conducted by mysterious shamans but by hataaii, literally singers,
who may be either male or female (hence the uselessness of the stereotypical English term medicine man
) and spend about fifteen to twenty years learning the songs, sand paintings, stories, and medications for one ceremony or Way.
Most of these singers know several Ways, which are healing rituals envisioned as moving along a trail; obviously, even mastering one is an intellectual achievement of some