Page 48 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

48among the peoples of Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East within this wide geographical area. Historically, meddahs were expected to illuminate, educate, and entertain. Performing in caravanserais, markets, co eehouses, mosques and churches, these storytellers transmitted values and ideas among a predominantly illiterate population. Their social and political criticism regularly provoked lively discussions about contemporary issues. The term meddah, borrowed from Arabic maddah “to praise”,can be translated as “storyteller”. The meddah selects songs and comic tales from a repertory of popular romances, legends and epics and adapts his material according to the speci c venue and audience. However, the quality of the performance largely depends on the atmosphere created between the storyteller and spectators, as well as the meddah’s ability to integrate imitations, jokes and improvisation often relating to contemporary events. This art, which places great value on the mastery of rhetoric, is highly regarded in Turkey. Although some meddahsstill perform at a number of religious and secular celebrations and appear on television shows, the genre has lost much of its original educational and social function due to the development of the mass media and, in particular, because of the appearance of TV sets in caf s.Taken together, these four samples are a good example of oral tradition in di erent cultural contexts. They all feature the ve characteristics that the National Storytelling Network has established as vital if an artistic form is to be de ned as storytelling: they are interactive, they use words, vocalization, movement and gestures and they relate stories and stir the imagination of the listener. And more importantly, they demonstrate how stories can be vehicles for values, history and a community’s unspoken knowledge.The historian Shannon Ryan10 notes that oral tradition plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of the necessary perspective that stops the breakdown of a society’s unityand structure. Ryan argues that in most cultures and particularly among rural ones, its history has been passed down largely orally via the recollection of personal experience. This type of storytelling is often carried out in private.It is here, in private circumstances, that we can begin to understand storytelling as a concept. From cavemen times to the current era, people have always felt the need to share their past, present and future with their loved ones in the form of stories.The ve characteristics that the National Storytelling Network has established as vital if an artistic form is to be de ned as storytelling: they are interactive, they use words and gestures, they relate stories and stir the imagination.Throughout human evolution, we have spe- cialized in di erent professions and some of us have chosen to become professional minstrels or storytellers. In that way, the art and skill of storytelling evolved and the techniques became increasingly more sophisticated. But we have never stopped coming together around a table to share our experiences and hopes and dreams. In order to understand both the use and the power of shared stories, we need to remember that the telling of them corresponds to a deep human need to understand the world around us, recognize ourselves in others and develop a feeling of belonging.The current rise of storytelling that goes beyond cultureAlthough there has been a lot of referenceto storytelling in the last ve years in the Spanish-speaking world, the renaissance of this art began 25 years ago among English speakers. Curiously, the storytelling revival as a way to convey values and knowledge has nothing to do with the art world and everything to do with the technology rm, IBM. In the 1990s, a groupSTORYTELLING AND CULTURAL DIFFUSION · EVA SNIJDERSSmart culture. Analysis of digital trends