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Cultural Connections Event: "Telling Tales to Teach"
Music and dance augment oral story-telling to convey values fostered by elders and nurtured in the laps of grandmothers around the world. During the Narratives: Doorways to Our Communities program year, the Indo-American Center partnered with the Swahili Institute of Chicago to explore how drummers and dancers vividly dramatize “tales that teach.” Presentations included an African tale of disaster befallen to a hero who lacks respect and loyalty for his brothers, and an Asian Indian tale of egalitarianism in a hierarchical society in a story of an encounter between a philosopher-saint and a scavenger to whom he did not show respect.
The first voice presentations offered a fresh examination of the meaning and significance of respect for others in narratives which revealed “doorways to our communities.” Through Swahili and Asian Indian story and proverb telling, pantomime, dance, and Swahili drumming coupled with children telling aphorisms, attendees were offered appealing access to Indo-American and Swahili* cultural heritage.
* [The Swahili-speaking people inhabit the Swahili Coast of East Africa – extending from Somalia through Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Comoros, and northwest Madagascar – and their adjacent islands. The group is characterized by their common language, and an economically and socially connected network arising from the practices of indigenous Coastal people.]
Kusimba, Chapurukha M. The Rise and Fall of Swahili States (Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 1999).
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