March 7, 2000

Storyteller captivates youths with spoken tales

When professional storyteller Derek Burrows was growing up in the Bahamas, there was no television. In some homes, like that of his grandparents, there was no electricity.

There was only Kerosene lamp light, and Bunday.

"When I was growing up in the Bahamas people liked to talk, a lot. They liked to express things in great detail with a lot of flamboyancy," said Burrows, 47.

They liked to tell stories. Not stories punctuated by laughtracks and buzzwords. Not 30-second stories delivered by talking heads with pithy sound bites.

They told African folktales about how the moon came to hang high in the sky. They spoke of life before slavery in Africa, "before the drum beat changed...before the chasin'and the catchin' and the sellin' without shame."

Burrows, who now lives in Jamaica Plain and tours the country telling stories and playing music, brought that oral tradition to Ashland High School Friday morning, along with his conch shells, acoustic guitar and mbira - a hollowed out calabash gourd topped by a piece of wood and metal prongs.

"Bunday," Burrows said to the teen-age audience, just a whisper above the sing-song notes of his mbira.

"Bunday," they replied. And he knew he had them.

He had them with stories about the first time he saw snow...

"I was 21 when I first saw snow," said Burrows, who was then a music student at Berkeley College of Music in Boston. "It took me three years to discover long underwear. Then long underwear became my best friend."

He had them with stories about performing in a juvenile detention center in Texas...

"I was lead into this system through a bunch of doors that kept locking behind me...I walked up in this place and I looked at these kids and I thought 'You should be home to your mamas, you should be outside playing with your friends."'

He had them with blues songs sung in the voice of a prisoner on the lamb...

"Cause I'm Long John and I'm long gone like a turkey through the corn with my long clothes on," Burrows sang.

Mostly, though, he had them with stories about his own immigrant experience. About seeing 400 Bahaman flamingos in the middle of Hong Kong and about getting "that coveted little piece of plastic called a green card.

"It's actually blue," he said.

Burrow's three performances at the high school were funded by a $900 grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, said Lauri Yarow, the faculty moderator of the International Club.

Nearly 470 students heard Burrow speak about immigration and achievement, about learning where to find your culture and how to celebrate other cultures.

"It's a way to learn about other countries," said Renata Guimaraes, 17. Guimaraes moved to the United States from Brazil five years ago.

"In Brazil you would never learn about different countries. It's different here you know, because there are a lot of people here from other countries all together."