Uncovering the Ancient Tradition of Oral Storytelling
Renata Zhigulina is an actress and multidisciplinary artist based in LA who regularly performs live poetry and storytelling. She set out to make an innovative spoken word sample pack for Splice around poetry, vocal performance, and the storytelling of a world traveler. Splice interviewed Renata about her creative process, the magic behind the pack, and how she is continuing the ancient tradition of oral storytelling.
How would you describe your inspiration for this project?
Renata: Spoken word for me is connected directly to the ancient tradition of oral storytelling. It’s a very vast arena for imagination. So when we talked about creating a pack, I thought, okay, when we take a physical journey, we go from one place to another, it has an element of discovery, of something new, something outside of the norm. When we travel there’s also an internal journey, the dreams where our subconscious can communicate to us. So to me, taking travel or a journey as a canvas allowed for so much imagination to come and different emotions and different worlds to explore.
What was the recording process like in the studio? How did that feel different from your live performances?
Renata: So the first day of the process, I came with a collection of written stories where I tried to play with different formats. I would start with a feeling or I would try to find a feeling from the piano melody that would then feed me an idea as I'm telling it.
And then the second part when Toledo came, I came with ideas and I kind of knew what emotions we would explore, which would be more intense, more dramatic, more charged. But we also perform live together a lot, and live performance is based on live improvisation. So when we were in that studio with two microphones, we could see each other, we could hear the same music, we could hear each other as if we were in each other's head. And all prepared ideas went out of the window, and we entered into the world of improvisation and just connecting to him and seeing what story comes. It's a unique process to capture in a studio, to have a completely live improvisation in the moment and captured in the moment.
These lyrics in this pack are unusual and various. Where do you think of these things? Where does inspiration come from for you when you’re writing poetry?
Renata: I think anyone's storytelling somehow is drawn from their experience. But we also have this world of dreams and imagination and subconsciousness. And many storytellers, especially if you work with improvisation, you draw from the room, you draw from the audience, you draw from the moment. It's a combination of things, I would say. Sometimes it's a dream. It could be a movie I watched, could be a book that affected me, it could be something that really happened, but then put through the prism of fantasy that changes the story and the character. Some pieces are connected to places. Places are very effective. And sometimes I don't know where they come from.
How do you imagine producers and musicians around the world using these lyrics and samples? In what contexts?
Renata: Sometimes when creating music, you're in search of lyrics. In my case, lyrics come first. I'm not a musician. Like lyrics is my language, how I compose. But I know for musicians sometimes lyrics could be a point of inspiration, even one line or few lines or a thought that can provoke a melody or a feeling or spark a scene. That's the magic. So I think short samples are actually would be effective for music writing purposes, also using it in DJ sets, maybe adding one or two lines or a stanza to an existing music piece or just taking it for an inspiration to create something.
Why is oral storytelling and live poetry important to you? Why is it such a valuable form of expression to you?
Renata: Stories existed as long as people were able to talk and communicate and share experiences. And stories were historically used as medicine in many traditions, because how else do you share? You go through your own life experience, right? And then you realize that other people before you also had similar experiences, and then you get to learn about yourself and about this world. And when it's done through fairy tales and myths, something you can relate to, archetypal characters or situations, that always existed. Storytelling has allowed everyone to connect to themselves and their own life experience and I’m continuing that tradition, which is very special.
So to me, that came naturally. My love of stories comes from my grandmother telling me stories, the fairy tales my aunt would read to me and I would ask her to read them to me over and over again and I would remember them and recite them myself and share it with other kids. I just love the idea of hearing a story and then sharing a story. And sometimes in the process you add things as well. You add your imagination, your fantasy. So that process was something very organic in my life since I can remember.
And then later on when my life went more towards theater. Theater is also all about telling stories. It’s allowed me to express myself, my feelings, my emotions, how I relate to the world or what's happening on a personal level, on a global level. It's almost a relief system that I have, self therapy maybe in certain ways. At some point, I started sharing it with an audience, with music and that opened new doors of this spoken word, life performance world. It sort of came in a natural manner, but to me, it's something that always existed, that just changed form, and now it looks like this.
I think it's special in the fact that these are very short excerpts and they could be taken in so many different directions. It's kind of a matter of your personal relation to it. So it allows a lot of room for creative process, for imagination. You can create your own tradition of storytelling.