From a Black Mouth to a White Ear : The revival of Western-African Storytelling in the Nord-pas-de-Calais (France)

Since the seventies, there has been a revival of storytelling in France. The three mains charateristic of this revival are that storytelling takes place in towns rather than in the county side, the multiplication of professionnal storytellers and the fact that listeners are not used to listening to tales. In this perspective, storytellers from the South, and especially Negro-African storytellers, are wanted because they appear as genuine storytellers for French people. This case doesn't match with reality on two points. First, even if a traditionnal storyteller tells in France, he breaks with the tradition. Second, there is also a revival of storytelling in Africa. At the crossroads of these two kinds of revival of Western-African storytelling in the Nord-pas-de-Calais and researches the treasures of storytelling from a black mouth to a white ear. This analysis is based on collection of shows given by black storytellers to people living in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. It will raise the question of the special functions of storytelling performances in an intercultural context. With this interculturality, there are relationships, several means of communication : orality, books, television...And then the thesis will focus on the passage African languages to French.