We're bringing you a brilliant conversation on with this full moon night, with visiting friends R. Carlos Nakai, of Navajo and Ute heritage - and the world's premier performer with the Native American flute - and Will Clipman, passionate world percussionist, poet and performing artist.

(Please pardon the scratchy voices and coughing in this epsode. We'd been having a lovely time together roaming around Orkney together with RC and Will and their wives, Pam and Sherry, for several days before we recorded this. Unfortunately, along with the stories, music and breaking bread we also passed around a pretty bad cold.)

We're so pleased to bring you this far-reaching and musical conversation among friends. Join us to hear about these and many other things:

• R. Carlos Nakai speaks of ancient tribal history from his early home in Arizona
• About ceremony, culture, storytellers and gathering knowledge from the elders
• Will's early beginnings with drumming; being born to a musical family in Philidelphia; What's in the "boom boom room"?
• The musical marriage of RC's Native flute and Will's passionate percussion
• The Native "culture of women" - life creators
• RC: Learning how we belong - "Who are you?"; philosophies and stories of all of our clans all over the world
• Will: finding his Swedish Sámi roots; the Sami Pathfinder and the ceremonial drum
• Singing the songs of humanity, and the ancestors' residing in the music
• We all have one human story
• The magic of music, improvisation and what the listener brings to the music
• Anthropologists as listeners
• Shapeshifter and the wallaby dance
• Working with children: mythic creation, mask-making and storytelling; the power of saying, "Yes!"
• A musical treat, and a bit about how RC and Will approach performing together
• Singing to the sea; praying to the water
• Drumming inside the Dwarfie Stane
• Will tells a Sami raven tale, and other stories from RC and Will's Indigenous cultures
• The freedom of poetry and making music
• Elders in many cultures; the knowledge within us

Website for R. Carlos Nakai: https://rcarlosnakai.com/

Website for Will Clipman: https://www.willclipman.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This full moon October night, we're having a Halloween-appropriate visit with Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson: Icelander, author of Icelandic Folk Tales, fabulous traditional storyteller ... and Tom Muir's pet Viking.

No Picts were harmed during the making of this podcast.

A peedie warning: Not surprisingly, some of the conversation is a bit dark for the very sensitive, or bairns. See topics below and proceed informed.

Join us for a blether between two storytelling northmen, mildly spooky at times as is suitable for the Halloween season, where you'll hear about:

• Storytelling traditions old and new in Iceland
• "Destination Sagalands" (EU project) - friends made in the Nordic lands, and fun personal stories
• Finding a unique voice for stories and storytelling
• Hjörleifur's book, Icelandic Folk Tales
• Storytellers like being admired!
• Hjörleifur's family stories tradition
• Life in an Icelandic turf house
• Hjörleifur tells the story, The Merman Laughs (and eating rotten shark!)
• The dark details of making of a supernatural slave to steal neighbors' milk from the cow; the primal fear of the people living in turf houses
• How to make necropants
• Raising the dead
• About Icelandic rímur, and samplings of rímur, "sung with gusto" by a man with a golden voice
• Iceland and her trolls
• A troll folktale
• An Orkney ghost story from Tom
• A comparison of Orkney and Icelandic tales
• Announcing a new book-in-the-making with Hjorleifur and Orkneyology Press!
• Hidden People tales

Also mentioned:

Cape Clear festival website https://capeclearstorytelling.com/ and Rhonda's personal Cape Clear video https://youtu.be/mEInv4Miz3A?si=CpvVk6pbwc1-VXK_

Hjörleifur's Icelandic Folk Tales book link: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/icelandic-folk-tales/

Heather Yule, storyteller: https://www.heatheryulepapertales.co.uk/my-story

Liz Weir: https://www.lizweir.org/

Terry Gunnell's Hidden People book: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/1687155.Terry_Gunnell

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this full moon night we had a visit from a young Scottish-Dutch storytelling friend, who is also a great grandneice of Orkney's beloved poet, George Mackay Brown. Please enjoy our blether with stories.

In this episode you'll hear about:

• Ailsa's experience of learning about her heritage from Tom
• Orkney stories and their histories
• letting folk stories continue to grow in our own time
• encouraging new storytellers
• the delights of spontaneity in storytelling
• a wee tale from Aberdeenshire - Fittie's Portion
• "young" storytellers, and how not to be defined by age or other labels
• Ailsa's School of Storycraft for kids
• telling stories about things you care about; defeating apathy and reconnecting emotionally
• local history storytelling
• stories about kindness; "heart stories"
• Ailsa tells her heart story, Kate Crackernuts, which is not - as is commonly misunderstood - an English tale, but was collected in the Orkney Islands
• finding earlier versions of folktales
• Gaelic waulking songs
• ... and a bonus story, which Ailsa first heard from her granddad, Fraser Dixon: The Story of Tam Bichan - from Dingieshowe, Orkney
• contact Ailsa Dixon here: https://tracscotland.org/storytellers/ailsa-dixon/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.