An Afternoon of Palestinian Storytelling and Music

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh

Oral storytelling has a well-established history in Palestine, where it has functioned as a form of entertainment, a didactic tool, a mode of political critique, and an arena for navigating communal identity. Contemporary Palestinian storytellers continue to engage the practice of storytelling for these purposes, telling folk tales (hikayat and khararif) and personal tales as professionals on stage. In their tellings, these storytellers employ a range of vocal and musical techniques through which they engage their audiences in the practice of imagination, bringing them into the world of the story as tellers and listeners experience it together. What impact does the experience of a story-world have on Palestinian communities? In this presentation, I will explore the possible answers to this question, examining the power of Palestinian storytelling in the West Bank, the Interior, and in diaspora.

Hanna Salmon is a PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently conducting fieldwork for her dissertation, which examines the practices of contemporary Palestinian storytellers, the affective atmospheres that their storytelling produces, and the role of those atmospheres in cultural resistance efforts in Palestine.