Responses to Whose Story Jody Hoelle, Storyteller

March 20, 2004

Hello Jody

I am so pleased to have established links to your wonderful site and that so many of our Great British Storytelling Ring have begun correspondence. 'The Invisible Web' that is storytelling and unites us all wins again!

A thought on the issue of rights to a story:

Surely each telling of a tale varies anyway! Storytelling is a two way process of communication and an audience has input to each telling. As Tellers, we read our audience and adapt the tale to suit.

Storytellers do it differently - everytime!

How can one Teller, then, claim copyright to a whole plethora of different renditions? Tales only grow by the telling.

David James

Dear Pete - Connecting with folks from the UK has been an expansive experience. I have observed that Storytelling in America is a competitive and ego-driven sport. I think that is why the National Storytelling Network has been promoting the ideas about requesting permission to tell a folktale that a storyteller has published or told. This whole idea comes from the "upper echelon" in the storytelling community. No one that I know of has overtly objected until now, and yet, everyone has been whispering about this unethical trend. - Jody Hoelle - Addendum: The emphasis needs be on the message and not the messenger.

"By their very nature stories travel, evolve and mutate. That's the wonderful thing about them. If stories didn't travel and change through telling and re-telling we wouldn't have the wonderful cultures that we have today. At Wizard we challenge all the children and young people we work with to retell each story they create with us. Encouraging them to tell each tale in their own words, and change the bits they can't remember or don't like, and add and embellish from their own imagination. Knowing their input will add more colour and depth to each image.

Intellectual property is a tricky issue, many people I can imagine enjoy their name on a book spine, in an anthology. For us there is an unexpected joy when a teenage, or now increasingly, an adult unexpectedly remembers the story you told them in school, how they retold the tale at home and reconnects with the child within them, and often, marches off ready to tell their story once again to someone new. Aren’t we are all storytellers to some degree?

"When we learn to honor each teller's unique voice, and to believe in our own uniqueness, perhaps we won't be so inclined to claim ownership of ancient tales. There are as many ways to tell a tale as there are mouths to tell it and ears to hear it." - Diane MacInness

Frank Della Volpe - "Right on ! Ancient Myths and Folktales need only a gracious acknowledgement to the culture from which they emanate and a respect for their integrity. I was surprised a couple of years ago when I saw a beautifully illustrated rendition of "Iron John" in Border's Bookstore organized as if it were written by the named female storyteller on the cover (forgot who she was). Anyway, I heard that somebody copyrighted "Happy Birthday to you" and demands royalties when it is used in any film or stage show. A pox on both of them !!! Cheers to you".....Frank Della Volpe (Author of "Timothy Timothy Thomason Tinker" or 'The Legend of the FabulousTalisman Tree"-soon the be published) - webbdukk@mindspring.com

Shamini Dias -"There are stories and then, there are stories - and we must see the
difference between the two. Some stories seem undeniably an individual's. Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar is his, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings will always be his (though he drew upon many old tales and myths in its making), Ditto Shakespeare's plays. And he too
re-told many old stories, immortalising them in his characteristic style and language. But time, and the fact of his work being published has stamped his work with his mark.

And then, there are stories that belong collectively to a culture and these defy ownership. In the beginning was the SPOKEN word - it is the oral tradition that gave us our myths, defined the consciousness and colours of cultures, and shaped our imaginations
which now ironically underpin major publishing industries. These stories we can use, tell, shape to our individual voices; we can record them and collect them as historians, literary scholars or writers. BUT WE CANNOT OWN THEM.

Maybe the publishing industry is new to this latter category. Nurtured as this field is in highly litigious history, they have a penchant for putting up fences and staking claim to their material.

But as storytellers we must know the difference. As storytellers we credit the creators of the tale, whether it is the culture it comes from, the author, other storytellers who made it accessible and kept it alive. Having done that, we tell the tale as we have shaped it, in
our voice. AND WE DO NOT PUT FENCES AROUND IT. Not even if we put them in printed form. In the end, storytelling is an art form that demands a high kind of ethic in its practitioners - not one driven by external law, but by a deep respect for your art and your fellow artists - living and dead. And if that dies, so too does the integrity of the art." -Shamini Dias - ikanbilisworks2@apexmail.com.

Bill Howard - "Great point here, Jody. It's important to make sure, when collecting a tale, to know if it is "retold". I do my best to take a story down to its bare bones and work back up from there. I do do a telling of "Soldier Jack" which is based on Ray Hicks' telling, and I always credit him, though I recently found it in Richard Chase's Jack Tales in almost the same wording. I suspect that Chase didn't properly credit Ray. But here's an anology: a jazz guitarist does a rendition of, say, "St Louis Blues"… it's in the public domain - he's welcome to it. But if he does a note-for-note playing of Django Reinhardt's version of "St Louis Blues", he'd better give credit, and he'll not only be dishonest if he doesn't, he'll look like a fool when someone who knows the truth calls him on it." -Bill Howard billhowardst@earthlink.net