Composed for the Mill Ave Chamber Players
during their 2019-2020 season.
 
 
"North American Folktales" takes stories from five distinct communities from the North American Continent.
 
Two of the stories come from indigenous cultures:
"How Stories Came To Be" comes from the Seneca Tribe who historically lived south of Lake Ontario.
"The Coyote and The Hen" comes from the Mayan Civilization of Mesoamerica.
 
The other three stories come from immigrant communites:
"The Magic Rice" comes from Korean immigrants during the first large wave of immigration in 1903-1949.
"Getting Common Sense" comes from West Africa and was brought to North America during the forced diaspora of slavery.
"Paul Bunyan" is a collection of stories about the mythical giant that stem from the colonization of the continent by European immigrants.
 
With these stories paired together I hope to highlight that though we are all from very different places, and took very different journeys in arriving to our shared continent, we are now all a part of the collective history of our community. Whatever differences we had and have, we all tell stories. All of our stories matter.
 
Composed, Engraved, and Published by Thomas Breadon Jr.