[Bards] Differing Styles

[Jay Rudin]

Brian asked:

> You make a decent point, however, wouldn't a storyteller
> benefit from learning rhythm by doing poetry?  Couldn't that
> help them learn pacing and word stress better? 

Of course, but that has nothing to do with the question being asked, which was about competitions.

It will help a story-teller to learn poetry.  It will help a poet to learn song.  It will help a singer to learn story-telling.  It will help a writer of war stories to armor up and fight in a couple of wars.  It will help a writer of love songs to fall hopelessly in love with somebody who's married.  It will help any bard to be a herald, or to hold court as baron/ess or king/queen.  It will help a singer to do 50 sit-ups each day.

It does not follow that the competition should require more than one style, or a melee, or infidelity, or holding court, or sit-ups.

Many years of watching competitions in that format convinces me that requiring a poem does not force people to learn meter, requiring a song does not teach them to stay on key, and requiring a story does not teach them about pacing.  I've had to sit through way too many off-key songs, rambling stories, or droning poems from people who could have been entertaining me (and demonstrating their diverse skills) if they had been allowed to.

> Remember, poem and story are classified as two different
> styles, so it would not be necessary for someone who is
> tone deaf to sing. 

Of course.  But people who don't enjoy memorization usually do poorly at both song and poetry.  And great singers will entertain better, and often show greater range of abilities, with three great songs than with a great song, average poem, and average story.

Remember, I started my post by saying that I don't care how people set up their competition.  Indeed, I think the competitors *shouldn't* have a say in it.  My main point was that the three-style trichotomy, as a tool to promote diversity, is inferior to many other tools for that purpose, and often leads to lesser performances, as bards are forced away from showing us their best.

As baron, I ran one Steppes Eisteddfod by calling for two pieces:  
1. Peform your best piece, no matter how often we've heard it, 
2.  As you enter the competition, you will be randomly assigned the name of somebody important to the history of the barony.  Three hours later, you must do a piece praising this person.  (Somebody asked me if I would let somebody draw again, if they got somebody they *really* didn't like, or somebody they knew nothing about.  I responded, "No -- if I could arrange it, everybody would be put in that position.")

I think we got a great deal of variation from that, far more than requiring separate styles would have done.  The bards had to stretch themselves in a way that was specific to the Steppes competition.

Brian, our biggest disagreement is that you are looking for the best form of competition, and specifically for the kind of competition that provides the most variation in a single competition.

By contrast, I am far more interested in variety over the course of a year than a single night, and I believe that many different competitions in many different formats is better than any single answer.  For my first several years, all competitions were "Do two or three pieces without repeating a style."  For me, this meant a sonnet, a generic myth, and maybe a drinking song -- every time for several years.  While that meant a minor amount of variety from me each night, it *encouraged* repetition over the course of a year, especially in the styles in which I had few pieces.  It absolutely failed to break me out of my beginner's rut.

Also, any format plays to some people's strengths, and other people's weaknesses.  If we had a single format, then we are permanently favoring some people, and discriminating against others.  But as we use different competition formats, different people get opportunities that play to their strengths.  Also, and just as important, it gives the people whose strength is multiple styles the opportunity to enter competitions in which they do *not* have an advantage. We all deserve the opportunity to compete when the odds are against us.  (Winning such a competition, while rare, is sweet indeed.)  In a fighting tournament, I am sometimes drawn against a newbie, and sometimes drawn against Miguel.  I don't want either to happen all the time.

One of the reasons I don't think the competitors should have a direct say in how the competition runs is that I know exactly what kind of competition is best for me personally.  To improve my odds of winning, it would have an odd number of elimination rounds, and you could not use the same style twice in a row.  You would need to do at least one original piece, one documented period piece, and one extemporaneous piece.  That format exposes the weaknesses of the largest number of great bards, while avoiding my own, and lets the majority of my pieces be poems, including the final one.  But I would argue just as strongly against this being the standard format as I do against any other.

I never want to see the format of "use all three styles" or "use two of the styles" go away.  The people whose strengths are in multiple performing styles would be unfairly lessened.  But we should not *always* hold competions that discriminate against the people whose strength is a power singing voice, or research into the folklore of many cultures, or deep knowledge of Ansteorra's history, or even the bards who stick to their own persona and only perform as a bard in a single culture did.

Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin
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