Gimistory, the Cayman National Cultural Foundation’s annual storytelling event, began this year on Friday 24 November at Dart Family Park in South Sound.

Now in its eighth year, Gimistory brings together storytellers from Cayman, the Caribbean and as far a field as Europe and Africa.

The Cayman National Cultural Foundation produces Gimistory as part of its mission to preserve the culture of Cayman, as well as to help Cayman share the culture of other  places, and the Foundation sees the festival as a revival of the storytelling tradition.

On Saturday 25 November Gimistory was held at Elizabethan Square in George Town; it was a spectacular and often hilariously funny evening for the whole family, with storytelling, skits and songs.

The evening began with Samantha Pierre (known in the storytelling circuit as Ma Story, the ancestral mother who brings all the stories to share with her children), who introduced each of the storytellers.

The first was Cayman’s Rita Estevanovich, who recited the poem, ‘Cheking Out Me History’ by John Agard.

The poem challenges the colonial and post-colonial Eurocentric focus on history as it has often been taught in the Caribbean:

“Bandage up me eye with me own history, Blind me to me own identity, Dem tell me bout 1066 and all dat,
Dem tell me bout Dick Whittington and he Cat, But Toussaint L’Ouverture, no dem never tell me ‘bout dat Toussaint a slave with vision lick back Napoleon battalion and first Black Republic born.”
“…Dem tell me bout Lord Nelson and Waterloo,
But dem never tell me bout Shaka de great Zulu.

Dem tell me bout Columbus and 1492, but what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too?” she recited.

It was a good moment, and fitting that it should come towards the beginning of the festival, as it gave the audience a moment to reflect on their own perception of history and culture, and how it might have been tainted or distorted by politically loaded, selective versions of the past.

On Tuesday Ms Estevanovich again displayed her considerable talent, by reciting a poem she had written herself, this one written and spoken in a strong Caymanian dialect, called, ‘Mama Duppy Tips’.
Ken Corsbie’s act was a cross between storytelling and stand-up.

He had the audience in fits of laughter, through his expertly erudite and subtle delivery of his comic stories.

On Saturday Mr Corsbie’s theme was cricket. He spoke about it as a religion, about the propensity of much of the West Indian population to approach a cricket match with the same degree of reverence they reserve for church.

Also on the theme of cricket, he told a funny story about jungle animals, a tiger, an ‘ananci,’ (a mythical spider, known for playing cunning tricks on the other animals), and some other animals who held a cricket match.

The jokes came in quick succession in Mr Corsbie’s monologue, as with his throw-away line describing the ananci bowling:  “nimbly, spindley…passing the ball from hand to hand to hand.”

Mr Corsbie’s monologues are often peppered with verses from songs, which help transport the listener to another place and time; although the melody and rhythm of his storytelling voice is already a little like singing anyway.

Beth Cross is an American, coming from an ancestry of Scottish settlers, and made a point of her Scottish ancestry on Saturday by appearing in a kilt. She also told her story, about Ian, a man evicted from his home in the days of the Highland Clearances, in a good attempt at a Scottish accent.

The story was about Ian, who was displaced from his homeland during the infamous days of the Highland Clearances, and needed some wood to mend his boat with.

He found himself in the cottage of three Witches, and was soon off on a magical journey to London, and then back again to Scotland.

Introduced by Ma Story as a storyteller from the ‘mother country’ (meaning Africa), George Fiawoo, a dancer, musician and storyteller from Ghana took to the stage, and after playing his drums, told the story of how the tortoise got his shell, and how the crocodile came to live in the water.

The tortoise goes off to get some salt for his village, however, the crocodile finds tortoise’s salt, and claims it as his own, on the premise that, “any animal who finds anything in the jungle, that thing belongs to him.”

In the end, the tortoise uses his own words against him, when he ‘finds’ the crocodile’s tail.
The moral of the story is not to steal, and not to bully others or pick on them, Mr Fiawoo told the children (and perhaps some of the adults in the audience too).

The highlight of the show was Cayman’s Quincy Brown, who proved to be a truly, professional performer, with his fluid, seamless, and hilariously funny storytelling performance. He began by reciting the poem, ‘Roas’ Turky by Jamaican poet Louise Bennett.

The poem, written in Jamaican patois, (Ms Bennett’s hallmark) and delivered in a flawless Jamaican accent, is about Miss Mary’s turkey, stolen by a neighbour’s dog. “Kill the dog and save the turkey,” Miss Mary cries at the end of the poem.

Quincy Brown went on to tell some other very funny stories, this time switching to a strong Cayman accent and dialect, also on the theme of dogs, as he told the audience all about the proud owner of a West Bay puppy who claimed the puppy could speak, by saying words such as “Rough” and “Roof.” (“The cost of living in Cayman is as high as a… what?” the puppy said, “Roof.”)

The next storytellers (who call themselves ‘story crafters’ were Barry Marshall and Jeri Burns.
They ‘craft’ stories by telling traditional European fairy stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk, but in a contemporary form.

In this case, as they accompanied themselves on the drums  they told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk in a rap style.

The evening finished off with Trinidadian calypso singers  Philip Murray, known as  Black Sage, and David Bereaux.

David Bereaux came onstage first, and sang a funny calypso song about his shadow.

Black Sage has a seemingly natural ability to compose rhyming verse, on the spot, from topics given by audience members, and never lets a hesitation due to thought break the meter of the verse.

He sang:  “The very first thing I have to declare, you wonder how glad I am to be here; but you have to understand, I am so very pleased to be here in the Cayman…but I have to tell you, of course, today I, Black Sage got lost, but there’s one thing I don’t understand, when did Cayman have so much traffic Jam.

Other performers appearing at Gimistory included Daphne Orrett and Carlyle Ebanks better known as ‘Sookie & ‘Zekiel’ who have become a household name in the Cayman Islands. The pair possess an uncanny sense of comedic timing and the rare ability to perform extemporaneous, sidesplitting skits.
There were also  performances from Jamaican storyteller Amina Blackwood Meeks, who lives in Kingston, and is widely acknowledged as one of the leading storytellers in the West Indies.

There was also an unusual and original style of performance by Trinidadian Felix Edinburgh, who enthralled the audience with his funny character, dressed in bright colours, who asks the audience which word he was spelling by telling them a story.

At a private viewing of Gimistory on Tuesday Evening, at the home of Martyn and Vivien Bould, he told the story of a man who drank too much beer, went home to fill up his chamber-pot, and then threw it out of the window. He was teaching the audience how to spell ‘Philanthropist.’

christopher@caymannetnews.com