Pulling out from Fisherman’s Wharf the other

day to go sailing for a few hours, I took off my
shirt to soak up precious sunlight and was amused

to note that one of the other

a lady,

was wearing a nylon winter jacket. She'd just pot
off the bus after travelling up from the States to
appear at the Vancouver Folk Festival.

“Y'all put me to shame,”
she said. Her name was
Barbara Freeman, and she'd
travelled here with another
American lady, Connie
Regan.

Were they folksingers?

No, they were story-
tellers. Professional, fulltime
story-tellers who go from
festival to festival, climbing
on to one stage after
another, just fike
troubadours, but instead of
singing, they tell stories.
Folk tales. Modern yarns.
Stories about animals,
people, life.

They were quite young —
Barbara 36, Connie 33 —
even though they both had
streaks of white in their hair.
It couldn’t have been added.
They were too natural for
that sort of thing.

Yet it gave them each a
perfectly suitable “older”
look. After all, they carry
around in their heads all
sorts of folk material that is
basically timeless, much of it
ancient, and all of it filled
with the sort of wisdom you
associate with great age.

There was a IHittle
along for the boat ride, who
got the full benefit of Bar-

distortions at
command. .
Barbara and Connie bill
themselves The
Folktellers and during their
performances they tell their
audiences how the sea got its
salt, how dogs came to hate
cats, and how Big Man Jack
killed seven in a whack. . .
_Mostly, I suppose, you'd
say that they tell children’s
stories. But if that’s the case
then the truth ts that the
child within us never

-adventures, -but didn’t find

headed west together, had
their particular path until

Annual National
Storytelling Festival in
Jonesboro,. North Carolina,

set out for the Fox Hollow
Folk Festival in Petersburg.
New York, to become full-
time storytellers.

When they got to Fox
Hollow, they found the place
crammed with cars and
people. The backstage area

fenced off and

festival

right in the middle of all the
singers and folk world
heavies, and made the first
crucial contacts that opened
the way to the stage, and a
fife on the road. ;

Since then, they've
performed thousands of
times, at festivals, in high
schols, concerts, pubs,

coffee houses and at benefits

mean, how many people do
you know who make a living
telling stories, as opposed to
writing them or filming
them? But in our era of box
office receipts and Nielsen
ratings, of Dolby Sound and
Imax screens, Star Wars and
multimiliion dollar budgets
for what is, after all, simply
entertainment, it was

Factory Authorized

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nobody burlds

We don't try and
sell you an cxtra
cosl service
coutract

Al! THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES. : ’
side to go, Mel takes a well-carned break from preparing his boat “Fairlady” for ;
long dreamed of Caribbean cruise in late August. (Ian Smith photo).

Use Your Credit
Power on Maytag

Dependability

pogere

sh

refreshing in the extreme to
listen to an ancient tale
being told by a lady whose
only “special effects” were
the amazing range of ex-
pressions that her facial
muscles were capable of
producing.

According to Barbara
Freeman, storytelling is
making a comeback. There

wr
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are workshops availab!
how to do it and _pi
enthusiasm for live. “f
tellers is growing. Maybe i
a reaction against TV ‘a
the illusion of the °
screen. :

But maybe it’s just that:
our hearts, we'd still rat!
.be told a story by a pi
than by a machine.

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