By Emily Mole
Podcast edited by Tedecia Bromfield
Transcript
Note: Our transcripts are edited for clarity and may not fully reflect the exact wording of the speech.
Dr. Amina Blackwood-Meeks is a renowned Jamaican writer, artist, and master storyteller, whose contributions to the arts are widely celebrated. As the founder and artistic director of Ntukuma (pronounced N-Tu-Kuma), the storytelling foundation of Jamaica, she has devoted her life to preserving and promoting the Caribbean's vibrant oral traditions. In 2020, she released her debut book, "That’s a Good Idea", available on Amazon. Her captivating storytelling delves into themes of gender equality, environmental sustainability, children's rights, and human development.
Now, let us turn the spotlight to Dr. Amina Blackwood-Meeks, who will share more about her extraordinary journey and inspire us with her storytelling skills.
What is storytelling, and why is Anansi one of the most infamous stories?
How do you define storytelling, and what led you to pursue it?
Amina: That's a very interesting question.
We all tell stories. All our lives are about stories. And perhaps that's all our lives are about. So, we go to the market, and something happens, and we tell a story. We ask our parents how they met, and we get a story. So, there are different kinds of stories. There are also scriptural stories; why people believe what they believe about who else exists around us or where we're going to go when we depart this life. Music is a particular kind of telling stories, as is poetry, as is film. But when I describe myself as a storyteller, I'm talking about traditional stories because tradition is defined in almost all cultures as that which is worthy of being passed on from one generation to the next.
Now, in the context of Jamaica and my own work, I focus on Anansi stories. Anansi is a very misunderstood creature, sometimes I say individual. But a creature, in my view, is the first and the most outstanding global citizen. I do not know of any other culture that has a folk hero which is found in every single part of the world and that has to do with our history. The fact that we were educated with stories before our capture meant that everything we needed to survive was already packed in our minds. Carrying this information, carrying the education, is this creature from the Akan people called Anansi. I wanted to know how it is that Anansi survived, yet many other deities and folk creatures from West Africa were not as popular as Anansi.
By the way, I grew up with parents who told us Anansi stories and back in the day, you would be inclined to think, "Oh, it's just some old people thing they’re talking about.” But with time, you begin to discover the wisdom within them.
We’re in the age of climate change, and we talk about the value of clean rivers. We talk about the value of protecting the environment. When we go to the Anansi stories, we find these stories. Anansi is seen uncovering joy and treasures in the forests. But also, currently, we can talk about cultural reparation.
If we view culture as a lens through which we make sense of the world, we observe how vile and vicious human beings have become toward one another. We must then ask ourselves: what kind of consciousness led to this, and how do we begin to repair it?
For me, all of those elements synthesize and ignite my fascination with traditional stories and their value to humanity. Particularly with the value, worth, and ongoing relevance of Anansi and his stories.
Emily: I agree. When I first started searching for Jamaican stories, the first thing I would see was Anansi. That was the main one. And another one was, is it Red Bull? It's a type of bull. Half, calf, something with a calf.
Amina: Ah, rolling calf.
Emily: Yes, and I remember growing up, my mom used to have a book of the White Witch of Rosehall. So, when I tried to research, I couldn't find very much, but you have to go out and speak to people to try and kind of get those stories out of family members. You must ask, to receive them.
What are proverbs, riddles and the settings of storytelling?
Storytelling is a vital part of Jamaican history. It's deeply woven into our culture and our communities. So, from Proverbs to Riddles, what are your thoughts about how storytelling works in our community?
Amina: One of the earliest collectors of Anansi Stories is an American anthropologist whose name is Martha Beckwith. There are others, Pamela Colman Smith also collected Anansi stories in 1901 and then Zora Neale Hurston, another American anthropologist, in the 1930s and 40s, perhaps the 1920s.
So then, what are proverbs? A proverb is the distilled wisdom of humanity on a particular issue, so don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. It's distilled over many, many years, and sometimes those proverbs are the morals of stories.
When we tell stories in Jamaica, we follow a pattern that comes directly from Ghana, and that pattern in Ghana is called a ring play. In Jamaica, we call it ring games, sometimes we call it moonshine darling and sometimes, a ringing.
The pattern is that when we're going to be telling the stories, we would identify the place where the story is to be told on a moonlight night. Back in the day, we used to have bottles made of glass, so we would collect the pieces during the day, and then we would sweep the area where the stories were to be told at night, and someone would lie down on that ground. They would have bits of glass bottles placed around their outline. So, when you're coming from a distance, you would see the moonlight shining on the glass bottle and that would signify that that is the place where the storytelling was going to be held for that night. Our stories have music, so there is hardly a story in which we're not singing. Our stories have dance, so there's hardly a story in which we're not dancing. The stories are highly interactive.
Before you start the storytelling session, you go into the riddles. In Jamaica, before you say a riddle, you say:
riddle me this, riddle me that, guess me this riddle and perhaps not.
And there would be a number of riddles. Sometimes the riddles were just for their own entertainment and educational value. Sometimes the riddles would relate to the stories that were going to be told and because there was always eating around the storytelling site, then a lot of the riddles had to do with food.
So, hell a tap, hell a battam, hallelujah in the middle,
This is a way of preserving how we used to bake before we had ovens. So, we would have a Kerosene tin, which is a tin in which oil came, and that would maybe be two feet long a foot high, and a foot wide. So that became the oven, but the bottom of it was the fire. If you had enough money to have a coal stove, then it would be put on the top of the coal stove. The batter would go inside of this tin, and then there would also be fire on top of it. So, you're really making the heat that the modern-day ovens make.
You know, boy, our grandparents were wonderful.
So, “riddle me this, riddle me that, guess me this riddle, perhaps not, hella tap, and hella battam” that's the two fires.
“Hallelujah in the middle”, that is perhaps what you say when you taste the pudding and then there was “riddle me this, riddle me that, guess me this riddle, perhaps not, ship sale.”
So, we also used to roast corn before we would tell the stories, and you would have a number of grains of corn in your hand. So, this is the ship that's sailing, and you would say:
“Ship Sale”
The response would be:
“Sail Fast”
Then you would ask:
“How much manpower on board?”
This means how many grains of corn do I have in my hand. Someone would have to guess, and get a prize, and the prize would be food!
So, we have a lot of riddles around food. Today, we call those things brain-teasers, but our fore-parents know how to sharpen our thinking.
Storytelling now becomes a point of preservation. If we learn to weave these things into the stories, to weave the folk songs, to weave the proverbs, to weave the riddles, then the stories themselves become carriers of this distilled wisdom of humanity.
I'm intrigued by how your mom would tell the stories, Emily. Once upon a not-so-long time ago, an elderly Jamaican would not tell you any kind of story, because a story was a euphemism for a lie. So, if you're telling a lie, your mother would say that's a story, or she might get more disparaging and say that's an Anansi story.
So, I learned in my research not to say to elderly Jamaicans, tell me a story, because they will say I don't know any, and they might be offended that to their faces I'm calling them a liar!
I've learned to say:
“What a beautiful ackee tree?”
Then I will hear,
“You see that ackee tree? That is not butter ackee, that is cheese ackee. Now mek mi tell you the difference between butter ackee and cheese ackee…”
And I get a whole more:
“Let me tell you how you can use the ackee skin and the seed…”
Followed by
“Oh yes, and it was the storm in the night when Mars J. Abbey's did plant that ackee tree…”
Three…four hours later, I'm hearing stories about this one ackee tree. Then stories about everybody in the village, all this from somebody who said, I don't know any stories!
Emily: I've noticed that as well, that’s a great way of putting it. I didn’t fully realize that it’s when you don’t ask directly that you begin to understand more about our culture and find ways to help people open up in their own way. You can't impose your own way of doing things.
Amina: No. You know what I found, too, Emily? When I travel to places where many Jamaicans are to tell stories, at the end of a storytelling session, young Jamaicans who were raised abroad by their parents and grandparents, would come to me to say, have you heard this one?
Now because there is nostalgia, there is a battle which they carry around, of this Jamaica that they have left behind, which they hope or dream or think still exists, and it's in a magical place for them, and they want to share this with you.
So, it stimulates something in them, a connection. You tell a story, and someone recalls something and asks, 'Have you heard this one?'
Even if I've heard it a million times, I never say yes, I've heard it. I say, tell me the way you know it. For a number of reasons. One, they know it differently, but also, if you say to them, yes, I've heard it, you've just shut off a connection. You've just shut off information that you need to access, but you have just dissuaded that person from ever again wanting to open up to say, I know these stories. So, listening in order to hear more stories is critical to the process of preserving the stories which are out there.
Emily: Definitely. I think that's a really important note to take.
What is the importance of placemaking in storytelling?
Do you consider placemaking to be a significant factor in the storytelling process, but also like the preservation of Jamaican heritage as well?
Amina: Placemaking is critical.
I'm thinking of my cousin who told me about her grandmother, whom I never met. Her grandmother's name was Miss Agatha, but she came to be called Magat. For you know, little children say Ma Agatha and then somehow it can fit into Magat. The way my cousin would tell me, there would always be an old woman or an old man in the village who made it their business to look after other people's children. Nobody asked them, nobody paid them. It's just a classic case of how the whole village would raise a child. She said Magat would bake, and make Jamaican sweets like coconut drops or gizzada, those kinds of Jamaican sweets.
She would make them every day, and she would watch as children were going home from school, and she would invite them into her yard, not into her house, into her yard by the steps in the kitchen. Somehow the kitchen seemed to always be in the back of the house and so my cousin has found memories of children sitting on Magat's back kitchen step, listening to stories and eating Jamaican pastries.
To me, that is such a wonderful, wonderful memory.
So, the places that we make to tell stories become important. My mother, who didn't finish primary school, was a great place maker and I thought about her this week because my mother would take us to places. And how on God's earth did someone, who was an orphan at eleven and had come to live in Kingston, know when she grew up that her children should be taken to Port Royal? That's a place making for stories. How did she know that? How did she know to take us to the Arawak Museum, as it was called then?
There are places that we make for telling stories, but there are places that are made for us to discover stories.
So, Victoria Park, downtown Kingston, Jamaica, which is now called St William Grant Park. St William Grant was one of those very educated but unschooled Jamaicans, who didn't go to school, but he knew everything. He would sit on the bridge in Brandon Hill and tell stories about Marcus Garvey.
Later, he became part of the labour movement and was a mentor of our first Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante. That's a place made to discover stories when I was little, and both my parents loved military music. The police band would play in the park on a Sunday, and we would dress up and go down to the park to listen to the police band playing music. At ages nine and ten, I had no idea what the history of the park was. Much later at one end of the park is a statue of Bustamante and at another end of the park is a statue of Norman Manley. And they begin to go, "Hmm, what's going on here?" Until, of course, you begin to research or to hear stories.
I do recall sitting on my father's shoulders in the 1950s, 1959 I think it was, when Jamaica had a referendum as to whether we would go to Federation, and all the protests were down by the park, and I was too young to stand. So, my father, who was a great political activist, had me on his shoulders and I can see now, I can see the signs all around me saying, "Federation No, Independence Yes," and I can hear the chants. We make places to tell stories, but places are also made for us to discover stories. Of course, one of the most formal places which are made is the theatre, where we go and tell stories in the theatre. As we do now in Jamaica in my own storytelling festival, we have a couple of the activities that happen in a theatre space. So, the making of space is critical. Of course, we make space wherever we are, we’re sitting on the bus and somebody said, "Did you hear?" And for the entire bus ride, that place is about telling stories.
Emily: I think you touched on some really great points there about some places that are made for stories but some places we... What was it? We discover stories. Here in England, there are plenty of stories about the Windrush generation. People that moved here, stories of how my grandma moved here, and I like to go and seek those out, but there is so much history there that is not written up. If you go and ask somebody, they're willing to just tell you everything you want to know about that.
I believe that's one of the reasons it's important to have spaces where we can connect with others and ask questions to those who are open and willing to listen and respond. I loved learning about other cultures and when I was a teenager, I would go to a Korean school to learn the language. I noticed how all the kids would learn together and learn about their culture and language together. I thought it was really lovely, and I always wanted that for my culture, but I struggled to find a place like that. Just a place where we could all go and just learn. Like a Sunday school even where stories can be shared with each other.
I think that's something that we really need in the future. A place where we can get together, feel safe to talk and connect. I think you touched on that with the park. I definitely would love to go and see that place when I go to Jamaica next and explore some more.
Amina: So, there are the stories that are left behind. You talk about the Windrush generation, and what we know about them is that they arrived in England. And this was their experience, and some of them have had pleasant outcomes. But a number of them have had unpleasant outcomes where they were being made to return to a place that is no longer home. So, there are those stories on that side, but there are the stories that are forgotten.
A friend of mine once shared that when she was around ten or eleven in primary school, she didn't like going to the General Assembly. She said that, usually held once a week, it became a time when the whole school would be in tears because the teacher would call up and say, "This person's parents are leaving, and let’s show them some support."
The child would be breaking down in tears as well as the parents that have now settled and here is a friend of mine who is at General Assembly on the platform saying goodbye to everybody in the school because now, they are going to join their parents. Those stories have not been told.
There are a lot of tears on this side which have not been told.
Some children never heard from their parents again. They went to live with an aunt or a grandparent and lived forever anticipating this reunion that never came. Some of them were lucky enough to become barrel children, so the barrels would come home loaded with goodies, but the parents never came and some of them got no barrels at all. Those stories need to be told.
You see, when we talk about how sad a society is, some tears have not dried. And they need to dry for that healing to happen.
Emily: Yeah, I think, definitely right. There are many stories that haven't had the opportunity or platform to be heard. I think especially when I was researching the Windrush generation because I didn't have my grandma who was a part of it. She passed away a couple of years ago, so there wasn’t someone in my family I could talk to about it. When I researched it, I found that it wasn’t people speaking from experience. It was mostly the BBC or others who weren’t Jamaican discussing the experiences of the Windrush generation. I thought to myself, you're overlooking a lot of important details that happened. There are a lot of stories there that haven't been told.
Building a Community Through Storytelling
So, how do storytellers like yourself try to unite these communities with initiatives that inspire belonging and encourage active engagement?
Amina: Storytelling is one of those art forms that is non-competitive or is not as competitive as other art forms. So, if you take a reggae show for example, every performer on that show goes up as an individual and has to win over the crowd. They have to be a star in a certain way.
That's not my experience in almost 40 years of traveling around the world and telling stories, that's not my experience. My experience is one where storytellers will tell other storytellers to do their best. Go up there and kill it, and we root for one another, because we come from a place of traditional stories. Storytellers often say before the show, “I'm telling this story.” So, you know ahead of time that if two or three of you have planned the same story, you have enough time to adjust it.
I think it's wonderful. There is no competition from that point of view. Storytellers also learn from other storytellers. I haven't been to a storytelling encounter locally or internationally where the teller arrives just to perform and leave. We're watching one another and learning again.
If I go to a stage show and the star arrives, they’ll often ask, 'When am I performing?' and then just leave. It's disrespectful not to acknowledge that someone deserves your attention, or to miss the opportunity to learn from someone else's performance.
So, what did you ask me, Emily? Sometimes I go off…
Emily: I guess it's how you, as a storyteller, how do you try to inspire belonging?
Amina: To build community. Wonderful. Storytelling is a great community bonding exercise in my storytelling festival. For example, in Jamaica, I have an Eight-Legged Road Show Festival (because Anansi has eight legs). It takes the form of an eight-legged roadshow, where we travel to different places, and Anansi engages in various activities. So, Anansi goes to school. When Anansi goes to school, we encourage the schools to tell us stories about their school. What is the location of your school? What is the name of your school? What is the story? Who was the first principal? What did that person like to eat? What was the first uniform?
The stories allow us to uncover what is unique about our particular location and therefore add to the national repertoire, not just of lore but of knowledge and information. That's critical as a community bonding tool.
One of the principles of our festival is that every activity must include a senior citizen. So sometimes we only have one senior citizen. Sometimes we have a whole senior citizen's organization that has come out. When they come out, sometimes they tell us Anansi stories the way they know them. But more often than not, they are sharing their lived experience. So, can they tell us what existed in this particular location before it became a site for a housing scheme, for a road, for whatever it is? In that way, not only do they build community and share community, but they preserve stories of communities.
In Kingston, we have a lady who turned ninety this year and for the last eleven years, that's since she was 80, right? She has come to every single storytelling encounter at the Tom Redcam Library. And it just so happens that during that week it's her birthday. She's not telling her stories, you know, she just comes to be serenaded. But what a story that is!
She just puts on her nice pretty clothes and the youngsters serenade her and sing a happy birthday and her face just lights up.
What a memory for that woman! What a memory for those children!
One day we'll be telling their children, I used to go to the library for Anansi's splash. And there would be this lady whose voice I'd never heard, but she was always there, all dressed up. Sometimes we underestimate those ways of building community.
How the crab lost its head
Drawing by Emily Mole
Do you have any personal anecdotes or favourite stories that have left a lasting impression on you?
Amina: I say that my favourite story is always the story I'm telling now. That story has been crafted for the particular audience that's listening and so it becomes my favourite story, but there are stories that I tell over and over again.
This is a story about the time when Father Crab was the best headmaker in the whole village. Whatever kind of head you want, Father Crab would make that head and then one day he said to his son, I want you to go into the head-making business.
His son was a globalized, modernized kind of child, and he said, “No, Papa, this is the age of specialization. We don't need to have two head makers in one family. You should make head, and I will sell it”.
You see, this generation loves to sell, and his father was not altogether disagreeable. So, he agreed, that on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, he would make heads and on Saturday, the boy went to the market to sell heads.
Well, one Saturday, the market was good, as we say in Jamaica, which means that he had sold all the heads that he carried to the market. Then here comes this man saying, “Crab pickney, hold on, I need a head. I have a very special occasion, and I have all of these fancy clothes that I buy, I have a 10-gallon top hat and I need a head to go with it”.
Crab Pickney said, “No, you have to come back next week!” and the man insisted, “No, dis today I want it.” So they had a bargain, the man said: “If you sell me your head, I will double the amount of money that you made today”. Well, the globalized generation loves money, so he couldn't resist the temptation of going home with this easy way to double his earnings. So, he took off his head and collected the money, but before he handed over the head, something said to him, how will you see to get home? So, he took out the eyes and put them here. But without the head, he was unbalanced, so he started to walk sideways.
He's gone, and the man went with the head. Well, when crab pickney reached the crossroads, Jamaica always had a crossroads. Something always happened at the crossroads. He saw that there was a dinky mini ceremony going on and so, the dinky mini dance, you dance sideways and because he was walking sideways, he was the best dinky mini dancer. So, he joined the dancing and the singing (I'll teach you the songs another time). And he joined the dancing and the singing until midnight.
At midnight, every Dinky Mini served some special food, but when it was time for the food to be served, he could not eat. He had no head. He had a mouth, but he remembered that his father, this headmaker in the village, rushed home for his father to make him a new head so, he could come back to the crossroads to enjoy the dinky mini food.
When he got home, he saw all the signs of death. The father's bed was outside in the yard. The father's there was a piece of black cloth on the mirror on the dressing table. There were seven white candles in a circle, the number of completions. A dinky mini is something you have the first night when somebody has died, and that was his father's dinky mini going on at the crossroads. His father had died taking with him the head-making recipe, and all Crab Pickney could do was sell heads. He could not even make for himself a brand-new head and from that day, Crab pickney is looking for his head.
That’s one of my favourite stories.
My father told me that story in bits and pieces, and I embroidered it. Because in this age of globalization, we have lost our heads. And we have not gotten the wisdom from the older people who are going to die with it unless we access it. [Laughter]
Emily: Lovely story, I was not expecting that ending, so it shocked me. Well, thank you, Dr. Amina Blackwood-Meek, that was amazing. I'm happy to hear your storytelling, but also the knowledge that you have shared with us.
Amina: I'm happy to have done it.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Don’t forget to check out Dr Blackwood-Meeks’ debut book, 'That’s a Good Idea,' and continue to explore the incredible work she’s doing through Ntukuma, the storytelling foundation of Jamaica.
Break New Ground:
Explore Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks’ page Amina Blackwood Meeks
Read Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks’ Book That's A Good Idea
Dive into Jamaica Anansi Stories by Martha Warren Beckwith Jamaica Anansi Stories: Beckwith, Martha Warren
Check out Annancy Stories by Pamela Colman Smith Annancy Stories by Pamela Colman Smith
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica: Hurston, Zora Neale
Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks’ Yearly Ananse Festival AN EIGHT-LEGGED ROAD SHOW – Ananse Sound Splash
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