Brother Blue
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Brother Blue | |
---|---|
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. | |
Died | November 3, 2009 Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S. | (aged 88)
Education | Harvard University (BA) Yale University (MFA) Union Institute and University (PhD) |
Occupation(s) | Storyteller, actor, educator |
Spouse | Ruth Edmonds |
Website | www.brotherblue.com |
Hugh Morgan Hill (July 12, 1921 – November 3, 2009) who performed as Brother Blue, was an American educator,
Brother Blue was a 2009 recipient of the
He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 88.
Youth and early career
Hill was born in
Entering Harvard on scholarship, Brother Blue won the undergraduate
Iconography
Brother Blue and Ruth's ubiquitous symbol is the blue butterfly, inspired by the blue morpho native to South America. The story of a caterpillar's struggles, hopes and dreams and metamorphosis into a butterfly was one of Brother Blue's signature motifs. Brother Blue also acknowledged the butterfly's ancient Greek association with the psyche. Blue's clothing was often covered in butterfly medallions and blue butterflies were frequently painted on his cheeks and the palms of his hands, sometimes even drawn on with a ballpoint pen. In the later part of his career, Brother Blue constantly wore a broad, breast-plate-sized medallion around his neck which was one of many butterfly-themed gifts with which people expressed their appreciation and affection for the Hills. Brother Blue's publications, media jackets, festival banners, ornamental staff, and stages were also frequently decorated with butterflies. In his role as Merlin in the 1981 George A. Romero film Knightriders, blue butterflies can be seen as the camera zooms in on his hands as they wave goodbye during a funeral which he officiates in the film.[5]
Brother Blue wore a predominantly blue ensemble, sporting blue turtlenecks or collared shirts and blue pants. He frequently wore a blue beret on which butterfly pins, some with rhinestones or sea opals, were affixed. He wore a sash emblazoned with "BROTHER BLUE STORYTELLER" in his capacity as Official Storyteller of Cambridge, Massachusetts.[6] Ribbons laced his shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles and he was known to carry bright blue balloons. Inspired by Judaic, Vedic, African traditions, he often appeared barefoot or would take off his shoes in the early course of a performance to touch earth as sacred ground.[4]
Brother Blue's 2002 business card read "Storyteller, Street Poet, Soul Theater".[7]
Opus
"From the middle of the middle of me," Brother Blue would say, twirling his finger in the air and tapping it on a listener's heart, "to the middle of the middle of you ..." as part of his traditional opening. He would continue, "I am older than the oldest stories, I am the storyteller." A signature story which gave form to one face of this archetypal "storyteller" from Blue is his tale of Muddy Duddy, a fictional musician who could hear the sound of a harp coming out of the earth.[8]
Brother Blue's unique style of storytelling made extensive use of rhyme, rhythm, and improvisation. He referred to himself as a street poet and, alluding to Saint
As an educator, Brother Blue taught at the Episcopal Divinity School and Harvard Divinity School, with Ruth Hill through the Harvard Storytelling Workshop in venues across Harvard University's campus, on television through WGBH, and in a later, more casual forum, Storytelling with Brother Blue.
Predominant themes in Brother Blue's performance and teaching were birth, love, anguish, death, ugliness, impairment, imprisonment, divinity, freedom, imagination, and the discontent which transforms social roles. He drew thematic inspiration from ancient story cycles,
These themes were often embodied by picaresque characters, though Blue also utilized high-status characters such as Othello or unnamed archetypal personalities such as the Old Storyteller or This Little Girl or Someone Who's Somewhere Everywhere.[9][10]
Teaching and story coaching philosophy
Brother Blue's refusal to assign grades to graduate students in his university courses was a source of controversy. He formally espoused an ethic of not "criticizing" in the usual sense, but instead "appreciating" and "saying thank you" in response to performances he proctored, coached, or judged. This stance was in line with a liberal humanist understanding of oral storytelling critique, which was expanded on later in Blue's lifetime by Doug Lipman's guidelines for Story Dynamics coaching, Jay O'Callahan, and others among Brother Blue's League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (LANES) colleagues who.[11] Cautious of "the green dance" of pursuing wealth, Brother Blue eschewed the world of commerce as much as he rejected quantifying people's aptitude, explaining that he preferred to address people "in their wonderfulness."[12]
Improvisation was a pervasive element in Brother Blue's performances and one of the chief skills he encouraged in his students.[13] "I call it cosmic jazz. I don't repeat myself, I don't write it down, you can't get it in a book, in a book" he said (2008).[14]
In the early and middle parts of his career, Brother Blue practiced Calling the Muse to open any gathering of storytellers or storytelling.[15]
Tradition strands
Universal traditions
Brother Blue believed that telling stories is a divine calling. "I think I was anointed to be a storyteller—I mean touched by the fire," he said. "I can tell stories in my sleep and blow the world away!"[3] Stating that he was "working on greatness!" he described what he sought from everyone as "stories to change the world." He declared that "Love will overcome all in this world. Love’s gonna win. Nothing can stop this. There will be these fools that come along, and I don’t mind being that fool, who is trying to express that. I have this madness—volition—this chosen madness to believe that I can change this world".[7] "Storytelling is a sacred art," he emphasized. "And the irony of it is that most people—if you say that—back away. They want to be amused mostly, or have a way of passing a little time. Not Blue. Even when I'm trying to be funny, I'm trying to give you my soul. That's strong".[3]
Music and song and the European bardic tradition
Brother Blue's chief musical instruments were harmonica and human voice, and occasionally tambourine, and drums. He also made music with a set of genuine early American slave chains in a signature story he developed during his time as a Divinity School teaching fellow. Finger snapping, stomping and dancing, often barefoot, are featured in many of his performances.[16]
At Harvard, Brother Blue studied under
Professor Albert Lord said that Brother Blue was "sui generis," meaning in Latin "of a kind of his own" because Brother Blue "does not really belong to any particular tradition in storytelling" but is "a phenomenon in himself."[4]
European figures referenced in Brother Blue's opus include: Albert Einstein, Homer, Virgil, Dante, William Shakespeare and particularly St. Francis of Assisi and Don Quixote, to whose life stories he would compare his, his colleagues' and his audiences' works and lives.[4] "I bring Homer to the streets. I bring Sophocles," he said. "To tell stories, you should know Chaucer. You should know Shakespeare. You should know Keats. You have to be constantly reading. You read, you think, you create. You have to know the new moves: You must be able to rap and be able to sing the blues!".[3]
United States pan-cultural traditions
United States historical and cultural figures referenced in Brother Blue's opus include: Bob Dylan, John Coltrane and Robert F. Kennedy. Brother Blue said he wanted to be "the black Clarence Darrow," which is why he had intended to go to law school before finding his calling at Yale School of Drama.[4]
African-American and African traditions
African-American and African-related motifs referenced in Brother Blue's opus include: "a chicken with a busted wing," lions, elephants,
Brother Blue was frequently featured by the U.S. National Association of Black Storytellers and is frequently referenced by the U.S. griot movement, spearheaded by oral storyteller griots such as Michael D. McCarty[19] in Los Angeles, California, who are extending the original West African griot tradition.
Awards
- W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, 2009
- National Storytelling Network Lifetime Achievement Award, 1999, “for sustained and exemplary contributions to storytelling in America”. Steve Kardaleff, interim executive director of the U.S. National Storytelling Network introduced Brother Blue's award with “His mother is verse, rhythm and rhyme, and his father is reportedly inverse time.” A nominator had described Brother GBlue as “a walking, talking, living legend.”
- League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (LANES) Brother Blue (Hugh Morgan Hill) and Ruth Hill Award, 2002, founding recipient, an annual award named for Brother Blue and Ruth Hill and honoring extraordinary commitment to and support of storytelling and storytellers.[20] Brother Blue described this award's purpose as "To honor those who give their lives to storytelling to change the world."[21]
- Cambridge Center for Adult Education Anne Bradstreet Lifetime Achievement Award, 2000 for “contributions to the poetry community.”
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Peace Commission Peace and Justice Award,1999
- U.S. National Storytelling Association Circle of Excellence Award, 1996
- U.S. National Association of Black Storytellers Esteemed Elder, 1995
- U.S. National Association of Black Storytellers Zora Neale Hurston Award, 1986
- Boston Music Awards “Best of Boston” award for Best Street Performance, 1982
- Corporation for Public Broadcasting Local Programming Award, 1975
- WGBH Special Citation for Outstanding Solo Performance on Public Radio, for “Miss Wunderlich,” which he told on “The Spider’s Web” (WGBH, Boston), 1975
- Walt Whitman International Media Competition winner, circa 1940s, Poetry on Sound Tape award for delivering selections from The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- Toussaint L'Ouverture.
- Brother Blue was also posterboy for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina[1]
Performances and bibliography
- "Brother Blue: Storyteller" and similar program titles, Cambridge Community Television regular series and special features (live and recorded, 1980s-2000s)
- Brother Blue: A Narrative Portrait of Brother Blue a.k.a. Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill (Portrait Series) by Warren Lehrer (Bay Press, WA, October 1995, ISBN 978-0-941920-36-0) contains several of Brother Blue's stories conveyed through Warren's imaginative typesetting.
- “Miss Wunderlich” in Jump Up and Say: A Collection of Black Storytelling (Simon and Schuster, 1995) and in Homespun, Tales from America’s Favorite Storytellers (Crown Publishers, 1988)
- “The Rainbow Child” in Spinning Tales, Weaving Hope (New Society Publishers, 1992)
- “The Butterfly” in Talk That Talk, an Anthology of African-American Storytelling (Simon and Schuster, 1989)
- New Age Conference, Florence, Italy (live, 1988)
- “Muddy Duddy” in The Wide World All Around (Longman, 1987)
- UNICEF pavilion, 1984 World’s Fair, New Orleans, Louisiana (live, 1984)
- Merlin in Knightriders directed by George A. Romero (1981)
- New Age Conference, Florence, Italy (live, 1978)
- Official Storyteller, United Nations Habitat, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (live, 1976)
- Boston’s First Night (live, 1974–2009)
- Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, New York
- New York Folk Festival, New York
- Artscape, Baltimore, Maryland
- Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, Tennessee
- National Storytelling Festival, Jonesborough, Tennessee
- Africa in April, Memphis, Tennessee
- American Imagery Conference
- Sacred Dance Guild
Storytelling festivals include:
- Mariposa Festival, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Toronto Festival of Storytelling, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Vancouver Storytelling Festival, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- Yukon Storytelling Festival, Yukon Territory, Canada
- Sharing the Fire, sponsored by the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling
- Corn Island Storytelling Festival, Louisville, Kentucky
- In the Tradition… festival/conference of the U.S. National Association of Black Storytellers
External links
- Official Brother Blue website
- Obituary in The New York Times
- Brother Blue and his wife on StoryCorps
References
- ^ a b Brother Blue on Street Storytelling | The Art of Storytelling Show
- ^ In the footsteps of Du Bois | Harvard Gazette
- ^ a b c d The Story of Brother Blue
- ^ a b c d e The Age-Old Teachings and Joyful Beseechings of Brother Blue | News | The Harvard Crimson
- ^ Knightriders directed by George A. Romero (1981)
- ^ City of Cambridge, Massachusetts resident and tourist printed brochures 1970s-2000s and website
- ^ a b Spinning a Blue Yarn | FM | The Harvard Crimson
- ^ Harvard Storytelling Workshop, 1980
- ^ Harvard University, 1940s, Harvard Storytelling Workshop, 1950s-90s
- ^ Gilgamesh, God King of Sumer, The Oldest Story in the World (1990s)
- ^ The Storytelling Coach: How to Listen, Praise, and Bring Out People's Best, Doug Lipman, Jay O'Callahan (1995)
- ^ Harvard Storytelling Workshop (1986)
- ^ Harvard Storytelling Workshop, 1950s-1990s, Storytelling with Brother Blue, 2000s
- YouTubefrom clips at the National Association of Black Storytellers Festival in Atlanta, Georgia (2007) and in Cincinnati, Ohio (2008).
- ^ Harvard Storytelling Workshop, 1950s-1990s
- ^ Harvard Storytelling Workshop, 1950s-1980s
- ^ Alfred B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (1960; New York: Atheneum, 1974)
- ^ Brother Blue archives, 1983
- ^ Michael D. McCarty - Have Mouth. Will Run It!
- ^ LANES Home Page
- ^ Brother Blue quoted by LANES board member Laura Packer