The 10th annual Storytelling Festival at the H. Leslie Perry Memorial Library didn’t lack for much Thursday night.
Want music? Try drums, rattles, bells, some plucky stringed instruments and lots of singing.
Dancing? You could sway at your seat or join in a climactic group hug, in which the entire audience joined the featured tellers in an energy circle that grew ever tighter as a pulsating buffalo-skin drum pulled everyone toward the center.
Other exercise? Teller Rebecca Tighe had one teenager running and hiding in a bathroom to avoid a central role in her story.
Multicultural crowd? The 40 or so people of all ages at least covered black, white, Hispanic and American Indian.
A bit of tobacco? You can’t smoke Vance County’s signature crop inside the library, but storyteller Laine Cunningham brought some chopped leaf as a tribute to the spirits of the drum and the air.
What about good stories? The laughter and applause said the tellers told top tales from Africa and America. Besides, how often do you get two stories in one hour about why mosquitoes bite?
“There’s nothing else like this in the county,” said Claire Basney, who organized the festival in her role as the head of youth services for the Perry Library. “It’s so nice.”
If you’re among the more than 40,000 Vance County residents who missed out on Thursday’s fun, here are some of the sights and sounds you missed (click on the photos to hear samples of the stories).
The Healing Force delivers a joyous tale about an outcast African boy who becomes the king’s musician and finds his way home to his parents.
Rebecca Tighe, telling a Yoruba story, portrays a lonely mosquito courting a not-so-friendly ear.
Tighe the lonely mosquito hopes for better luck with Claire Basney’s leg but again finds her insect love is unrequited.
Laine Cunningham, who specializes in the stories of native African, American and Australian cultures, kicks off her presentation with a “pot-latch” song of sharing.
Cunningham tells the story of the wendigo, a ferocious beast that feasted on the Ojibwe, or Chippewa, people.
Cunningham’s buffalo-skin drum, played with the help of some eager assistants, powers an energy circle in the grand finale of the Storytelling Festival.