Storytelling
My definition of a story is an abstract thought revealed in prose or verse poetry and music expressing what is real, mythological or imaginary personified by a character about people, place, things/objects, expressed orally, or visually or utilizing media such as paper, video or film, streaming or by any instrumentalist through diverse musical forms.
(See reference below for an online definition.)
Telling stories is as ancient as the seas, the stars, and the moon. Gathering under the moonlight, a tree, in a backyard bonfire or a party, telling stories by some of the neighborhood tail tellers was an entertaining event. In this blog, the emphasis will be on storytelling utilizing the oral and written words combined with its musicality and sonic experiences.
Some of the great minds in musicology, such as Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and others such as Lenard Bernstein, one of the great American composers and conductor in modern history, have influenced the way in which I view the relationship with words and music. Searching to find meaning is not always visually understood unless its abstraction once revealed for the general audience to experience.
An author of prosaic compositions sees the structure of sentences containing the following, subject, verb, object and other modifiers that describe their parts individually and ends with a period. On the other hand, in music, a sentence could have various movements or parts to a song in the form of AAB as an example and has its period only at the conclusion of the song. Thus, a sentence in prose is much shorter than in music.
Telling stories in either words or music is a universal concept that is culturally as diverse as there are people around the world. How people communicate with words or with music is relational to the language we speak and the source of our ancestral origins. Whatever the spoken language, throughout the known history of humanity on earth, one can find people telling stories utilizing expressions indigenous to whatever is unique about particular people, cultures, and traditions.
I can remember as a young child, and very impressionable loved to go out and listen to the elders telling stories. They were the same once repeated over and over, but they were told each time differently. If the same person were retelling the exact tail, he/she would’ve made it seems fresh as if it was the first time telling it with enthusiasm and freshness. One other thing I began to notice was the manner in which the storyteller expresses it and how deliberate he interweaves in and out to make it more attractive with colorful languages understood by not only us kids but all the adults listening on the periphery. They’ve probably heard these tales repeatedly all their lives retold to their children similarly.
The stories told were extremely done in a balanced and performance manner. You could clap and tap your feet to the flow and tempo of the teller. His emotional expressiveness becomes yours. Every child was either afraid to leave alone or was captured by the stories.
The storyteller would sometimes slow speak to invoke a singing style with the words expressing the many dynamics to keep his young audience engaged and awaken with joy or fear. Sometimes we as kids were afraid to go home alone if the story was to horrific a tail as a ghost following us home.
The other thing that these storytellers had in common was the ability to make music. The rhythm and placement of each word were as if deliberately placed for impact. His entire body would react to each word as if he was playing a percussive instrument and to infer an active verb. The was always movement in these storytellers. Also, his verbal expressions communication was like melodic notes from the same repository of one diverse instrumentalist. Each part of his body would help to convey the story in a unique cultural way.
As a child, it was meaningful to watch the masterful artist repeating stories and improvising on ones that were already told and extemporaneously coming up with new things improvising whenever they ran out of the old ones one after the other on the spots. That was the skill I gained growing up under the influences of these elders who I do still give homage to whenever I perform. I might not remember the names of most of these individuals, but I do recall some of the stories told these prolific and eloquently expressive storytellers.
After hearing about Lenard Bernstein, I grew extremely interested in learning about his genius in the American culture. I found out that he was very expressive when it comes to telling a story in words and through music. He was an exceptional storyteller. Remembering one of his lectures I watched on a video, and how he explained the relationship between words and music still fascinate me after seeing and viewing his series of conferences and lectures held at Harvard in the Seventies, “The Unanswered Question” he went on the explain his fascination relating words with music.
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What is most important in any culture is a community that preserves their truth. Stories are kept for generations orally through the repetitive telling of their stories. It must be a story that depends on who you are and not what is told by you or someone else.
Jazz played in many countries all over the world, but its birth and definition are from people out of Africa to the corridors of Congo Square, in New Orleans. It’s the story that is Jazz. Each instrumentalist knew its origin and the pain of its history. Thus, when it’s played and enjoyed by the masses, the music and its cultural roots remain for discovery. It’s an American expression. The way it’s felt from a place experienced culturally, is different from those who just want to play and perform the music for fun.
The ethnicity of a musical culture is no different from a tradition of prose and one that’s mundane and from an existence within the boundaries of a known environment. When a composer tries to come up with new compositions, he/she has to think about what story needs to retell. Instinctively, many abstract thoughts perpetually flood the brain waves daily. Each person has to make decisions as to the pompous and meaning of those decisions to write down on paper or in a word processor. Without a doubt, it’s the story that will win every time. Going against telling the truth will produce a false narrative not only verbally, but similarly in a musical production.
An author has to be very careful to know how his/her story is going to end before starting to write a book. Similarly, a songwriter, composer, instrumentalist who are improvisers and are aware of their ending before they begin. Thus, it’s imperative to consider what story one needs to hear in any form of a composition takes. Further, how a story of words or music will emotionally impact the senses and behavior of individuals. It must also make positive suggestions to motivate and influence our changing lives. Though in some unexpected event, there are those who will negate the artist meaning of the original intent of the piece of artistry authored or composed.
A word can either be active or passive. Let’s take for example that a word becomes a character in your story. We could also personify a word or a note for that matter to demonstrate movements, shape, and emotion. For example, let us also say that the word has a personality such as embedded in a question and answer phrases. At a glance, you can make a similar argument for a musical note. In other words, one could think of the passive and active nature that gives an ideal imagined life to the personification of a word or a note. Furthermore, we could also, in a similar manner, think of music as it is a concept borne from an abstract thought of one’s imagination; defined as an idea. Notwithstanding, composers will have to transcribe these ideas on paper for others to understand what complex and abstract thoughts are percolating in one’s head. Thus, the need to write with words in detail is one thing, but to notate music expressively on paper for an instrumentalist to interpret and perform, is extraordinary.
I began working on my BLUE MONDAY album released in 2015. While working on the CD, I found a strange scale. It was a Japanese musical scale, ZOKUGAKUSMPO, in one of my encyclopedias. What I heard as it was from me playing the piano was foreign to my ears. As I played the scale, this new sound gradually grew to excite my sonic interest. After trying for several hours to make sense out of it, a melodic theme began to formulate. Even though I had no knowledge of the scale’s cultural origins, the textural thread of its beauty started to weave not only melodically, but rhythmical and harmonically through my creative processes.
To tell the musical story percolating in the faculty of my imagination, I needed more information about the scale. Once again, my buddy and musical generous, Michiro Negishi, a brilliant pianist and Ph.D. in medical research was called on to explain the cultural meaning of the scale. First, I asked him to account for the significance of the word, which he explained. He was born in Japan, so he understood more about the Japanese cultural forms especially, it’s traditions and scale used in Folk music. It was then that I began to realize the nature and characteristic of the melody I had composed.
The story was now taking shape as soon as it was clear to me once the character of the story was defined, that is, the melodic definition of the scale began to direct the composition.
Finally, it’s impossible to depart from the symbols shaped by letters we expressed as words in sentences. Similarly, we cannot have excluded musical notation from it key signature nor the lines and spaces that give it its meaning for weaving a tapestry with its melodic thread through the expression of sonic proportion.
I do hope you’ve enjoyed reading these blogs and wish that you comment as you pleased.
L. G Neddy Smith ©2017
Reference:
Story Defined:
NOUN
- an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment:
“An adventure story” ·
[more]
synonyms: tale · narrative · account · anecdote · yarn · spiel
- an account of past events in someone’s life or the evolution of something:
“the story of modern farming” ·
[more]
Retrieved July 17th from, http://www.bing.com/search?q=define%20story&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=define%20story&sc=8-12&sk=&cvid=833E4CC8E6C448859CA62505D9C83BDB
Words and Music 