Tales from the Undercroft

Old Tales & True Tales : Kelly Kanayama

Ms K gave a solo performance at Jurnets on Monday 6 February.  After gobbling his chips, The Gob hurried along to catch it...

One look at Kelly Kanayama tells you she comes from some far away, exotic place, and as soon as she begins to speak, you know you're in for tales from another world.  One by one, strange, beautiful names and unexpected ideas flow through her stories, across oceans and continents from the other side of the Earth.
  Did you know that once, the sky and the earth were so enamoured of each other that there was barely room for people to live between them, and every one went around bent double?
  Us regulars to the Undercroft Tales already know that Kelly's stories are full of mythological wonder, and expected nothing less, but none of us had any idea she could sing as well!  Without a word, the evening began with a haunting song in another language, delivered in a melodious voice that made me think yep, when people sing at storytellings, this is exactly what it should be like.
  The ancient stories began from the time when the world was young, and Maui (pronounced M-ow-ee) made islands by pulling them up from the sea.  Not just any old islands, of course, and certainly not this one, but great mountainous, exciting ones with volcanoes still smouldering and forests rich with animal song: the eight islands of Hawaii.  Time was definitely a theme Kelly had chosen, as we grew closer to our own time over the tellings, but there was another recurring theme as well, the one which none of us seem able to avoid in story, that old man-woman thing… Maui didn't fix the sky because he could, or for anyone's benefit at all, but simply because he wanted to impress a girl.

  Lucky for us she wasn't that easily gobsmacked, & we all walk tall because of her. There was a Flood Myth, where a man (who was also an eel) gave everything he had because he loved his wife, from which we all still derive bounty, as niu: the coconut.  Hmm, maybe the concepts aren't always that alien and different, even half a world away: who amongst all the gods could overcome and calm the angry war god Ogun, but the goddess of love, Oshun..?
  Inspite of how far we travelled in time, from the beginning to the 1950's, it felt like a sea breeze, and Kelly gave us an insight into how it is that everyone growing up in Hawaii is steeped in story.  It's not just the ancient Polynesian myths that have remained, like minerals in the volcanic soils, it seems the islands have been a destination and melting pot for many nations over the centuries.  Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean, Philippines - they've all cast their folktales and languages over the land, and every island has not just a richness of national myth, but its own particular folklore too.
  O'ahu, where she grew up, home to Honolulu, is a place where the goddess Pele will not tolerate pork beyond a certain midway line… woe betide the hapless infringer of her ban, who will suffer mysterious misfortunes, failed MOT's and other hassles as a result: testimonies supplied.
   I have a suspicion that Pele, the mistress of volcanoes, conqueror of handsome men and shape-shifter in many forms, is Kelly's favourite home spirit, as she has appeared in her tales often.  In our times she tends to choose the guise of a grey old crone, and hides her powers, which put me in mind of other female deities, such as Celtic Brigid whom Joy described at this month's club tellings.  A world of oceans lies between them, but there seem to be universal truths on the wind.
  In her final tale, Kelly proposed the idea that stories seek to escape and fly around the world, like living things, ever eager to find new ears.  Presumably they also seek strong voices to tell them, and those of us who know Kelly will vouch she is certainly one of those, as even being currently on crutches (with a broken ankle), she still can crack an evening of tales like this one.