The ‘Bardic Tradition’ of IDEA

Kevan Manwaring

If you’ve spent time listening to the recordings on IDEA, you know how important storytelling is to the archive. Indeed, each subject is asked not just to recite a scripted passage (The Rainbow Passage for our earliest recordings and Comma Gets a Cure for most) but also to talk a bit about themselves, their hometowns, their culture, or pretty much whatever they would like to discuss. In a way, this is a continuation of the ancient “Bardic Tradition.” And by listening to the recordings, one gets a sense of not just the subject’s accent or dialect, but of that person’s “story.”

Expanding on this idea of subjects as bards, IDEA Founder and Director Paul Meier talked to the “Bard of Bath,” Kevan Manwaring, on his recent In a Manner of Speaking podcast. If you find the unscripted storytelling of IDEA’s subjects interesting, you will undoubtedly find Paul and Kevan’s discussion fascinating. Go here to listen.