The gift of oratory

There is this notion that traditional cultures with their oral customs are not as advanced as western cultures with their written customs. Is it possible that Barack Obama is not just a fusion of the two cultures, but is highlighting the equal importance of these two customs? How else does one explain his rising star power? It is not just his award winning publications or his personal story that is drawing people to him. Perhaps more importantly, it is his ability to tell stories that give people like Chris Matthews “crawling feelings up [their] legs”. In the recent TIME magazine article where Obama talk about his mother, he is quoted as saying that “what is best in [him, he] owe to her”. I have no doubt that that is true, after all, Stanley Ann Dunham raised and shaped his ideals. But what is lost in this discourse is what he gained from his father. A friend of Obama Sr., who is quoted in the same TIME magazine article, described him as “oratory”. “’Everything was oratory from [Obama Sr.], even the most commonplace observation.’” Obama Sr. was African, and with that he had the African gene story telling. In most African cultures, the histories of individuals, families and the entire communities were passed down orally. When you had the gene of storytelling, you were responsible to invoke the aspirations, struggles, and yes, the hopes, of the families and communities. Sitting around the fire, was always accompanied by storytelling. To this day, when there are family gatherings, you always have that uncle(s) or aunt(s) that starts with: “remember the time…” and that have us laughing and crying. Many African people (in the “motherland” or in diaspora) have this ability of storytelling. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly had that. Barack Obama Jr. certainly has this. I have no doubt in my mind that this oratory gift that he has, he inherited from his father.