International Oral History

Abstract

I will start by telling you a story that I heard in Brazil when last April (1994) 1 interviewed in Campinas an illiterate person. It was a man over eighty with many sons and daughters. He had taught all of them religion and when I asked him how he had learnt himself he replied 'I go to church every Sunday, I sit in the back and listen to what the priest says and if I like it I remember it and that's what I tell to my children . . .'. I am going to do the same with my resumee of this International Conference. I am going to tell you what I have liked the most: Brother Blue, a street performer, historian and story teller, who attended the conference all and everyday, Bernice Johnson Reagon of 'Sweet Home in The Rock', and Grace Paley, the poet and novelist. Brother Blue because he has reminded us continually in his interventions of the strength of the street, the value of the life of 'normal' people and the need to address the young. Bernice because she outlined the intimacy of words and songs broadcast through the radio. As if the spoken word without images could better convey the secrecy and sacredness of language when we speak with the other or when the children whisper their thoughts. And the prose and poetry of Grace Paley because her work is like 'concentrated history'. More real and true than life itself just because her stories are so beautifully said. I cannot like Luisa Passerini tell you a true love story . .. but I can tell you that this Conference, the most international Conference in which I have assisted, has changed my life and I hope I will be able to share my feelings with you. Yesterday I asked Ron Grele what he wanted me to say and he advised me to develop briefly three broad ideas. Afterwards I talked to Mary Marshall Clark and she suggested that given my age (laughter in the audience) I should speak of 'the oral history movement'. (Mary says that she did not say that about my age, even though she thought of it . .. but it doesn't matter because oral historians can read the mind of other people . . .) Since I want my friendships to keep going I have decided that I will talk about three things: Oral history as a movement; cultures and oral tradition; and the future. The oral history movement starts, more or less everywhere during the sixties and, with greater strength, during the seventies. In those days what almost everybody wanted was to give voice to the 'voiceless': blacks, women, workers, marginalised persons of every sort. Then we were so