Showing results for "World Music" in Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths

In this ancient Mexican folktale, the Aztec Sky god and Wind god attempt to fix silence on Earth by bringing music to the world. They set out to the Sun palace, where legions of musicians play for the almighty Sun. Unfortunately, this hot-headed ruler won’t give up his musicians without a fight!

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeastern Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting: on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

The English writer and scholar Joseph Jacobs travelled the land collecting and recording every traditional English story he could find. Many of these stories are similar to well-known European stories but the English tales have a distinctive wit and humour of their very own.

Wondrous dragons live in jewelled palaces under the ground and stars and animals speak. Emperors live out their exquisite lives surrounded by the most refined art and luxury. Yet all these stories are rooted in a love of ordinary things and timeless regard for honesty and simplicity. Virtue is more prized than riches and there is more delight in the song of a bird than in all the craft that man could ever devise.

The world of the Australian Aborigines is so full of extraordinary force and beauty that the idea of natural miracles, or what we might call magic, can seem quite normal. So natural magic figures very strongly in their stories, and in their lives. However as people are part of nature too, selfishness, greed, jealousy; also love, courage and a sense of humour are readily described in nature just as in men and women.