Re: ordering the chaotic

"The importance of the audience involvement that these [storytelling
techniques] create, along with open-ended story structure and communal
playing out of oppositions, cannot be overstressed.   For in many
African cultures, this is a theological as well as an aesthetic matter. 
Life is regarded as a pulsating spirit or force, separate from any
individual or group, a vital element of the gods that bearing their
timeless message, descends in the group when they engage in a
performance.  The oppositions given voice and movement at that time
are simply temporal representiations of the eternal struggles;
oppositions are presented, therefore, as complementarities, opposing
forces that could not exist without each other.

James Fernandez, who has studied the expressive life of the Fang of
Gabon, is describing this central concept when he notes that 'what is
artistically pleasing to the Fang has a ... vitality that arises out
of a certain relationship of contradictory elements.  The Fang will
only live easily with such contradictions; they cannot live without
them. ... Vitality arises out of complementary oppositions,... what is
aesthetically satisfying is the same as what is culturally alive.'
[...]

Within such a system of presentation and celebration, the individual
who sets himself apart from the group does so less to demonstrate his
individual talents than to set up a dynamic opposition.  The
individual and the group thicken the texture of the performance by
establishing interlocking voices (whether it be in storytelling,
drumming, singing, dancing or orating).  The more interlock, the
greater the complexity of the entire event, of course, and the more
vitality the community feels is being channeled through them.  Thus,
there is a high value placed on what Robert Farris Thompson has called
'apart playing'; 'each [performer]... intent upon the production of
his own contribution to the polymetric whole.'  It is in this metrical
dimension of the performance, the pulses flowing throught the group,
that 'apartness' is most clearly called into play, and we see it to
its greatest effect in the displays requiring a special kind of
virtuosity; a great performer is judged not only by his ability to
control the medium, but also by his ability to engage the participation 
of the other performers and the audience.  Out of the turbulence, the
master brings order, teaches value, but also provokes and
excites,playing competing rhythms that ultimately convey a message of
community of interest and cooperative motives.

A singer-response dialogue establishes a sense of mutual supportiveness 
between a single performer and the rest of the group.  Complementarity
is the key to ordering the chaotic; its value become clear in those
African groups that discuss performances in terms of the importance of
'cool' -- 'an ancient indigenous ideal: patience and collectedness of
mind'.  As one might suppose, from such a perspective both noise and
complexity are conceived of as hot, as is any outrageous behavior on
the part of the performers and the characters they play or describe.
But all these fit the pattern of complementarity.  The master singer,
dancer or drummer will draw everyone's attention and channel all the
contending voices into a response to his or her forceful initiative.
Or to put it in West African aesthetic terminology, he will, through
the imposition of a cool elegance and verve, provide a sublime balance
to the hot environment by drawing upon the hot element within the
performance itself."


     Roger Abrahams, Preface to _African Folktales_ (Pantheon)


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