Oral History
People and Place
Have you noticed that when the guys at Substack post a conversation they preface it with: ‘This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity’? What do we make of such a statement? How much of the interview has been edited? What has been taken out or, perhaps, added? Does the edit subtly change any of the meaning? I am not suggesting anything other than good intentions here, it’s just that I’ve become more aware of the difficulties and pitfalls we encounter when transcribing speech since learning about oral history as a method of gathering stories.
My interest in writing about place covers people and culture as well as landscape and nature. People are interpreters, owners, and guardians of the landscape, yet so often they take a backseat. I think some of us are so transfixed by the wonder of geography, the awe of history, and our anxieties over climate change that we forget about people and the lives we all live.
For my current Place Writing project, which is for a PhD thesis that will ultimately be published in book form, I get to chat with people. I wanted to capture their stories as it humanises our understanding of place. One of the ways to do this is to audio record them. Of course, in writing it up, I would rearrange the words to get the essence of the conversation and make it easy to read, and cut it here and there so it fits within my narrative and word count. We rarely write conversations verbatim—word for word—because that can get boring. And this accounts for the message at the beginning of the Substack interview posts.
I thought oral history would be a great way to enhance my creative non-fiction project because I could combine other people’s words with my own and this would make the reading experience more entertaining. But, what is oral history? I thought I knew, but I didn’t. Hence, I’m here today, sharing some of the things I learned about it.
I felt confident about conducting interviews for my project; I’d done similar things in my work as a manager, interior design consultant, and trainer. Ahead of conducting interviews I’d collated a bank of questions as an aide memoire—a useful guide to get the best out of the conversation. So with all that in hand I was half ready to embark on collecting stories. But the technical aspects of audio recording concerned me as I wasn’t used to handling this type of equipment, in fact I didn’t know what sort of equipment to go for, and I really wanted to do it properly. So, in my search to establish a suitable technique, I looked to the Oral History Society (OHS), which is situated in the British Library, London. The staff there suggested a two-day training course—Introduction to Oral History.
The British Library works with the OHS to grow the collection of ‘National Life Stories’ and it actively encourages the training of oral historians. It states on its website that the ‘life story interviewing programme has (…) nearly 3,000 long life story interviews.’
Along with nine other attendees on the training course via Zoom, I learned, contrary to my previous assumptions, that oral history is not a question-and-answer session. Ah! I could ditch my bank of questions! I was told I could not steer the conversation. In fact, an oral history interview is not a conversation. The course leader explained that oral history was different from other types of interview and he went on to list why four familiar methods of capturing stories could not be classed as oral history:-
Stories passed down orally from one generation to another are not usually recorded, thus, this tradition does not qualify as oral history.
Though beneficial for the interviewee, indulgent reminiscence even when recorded is not oral history, it is considered therapy.
Journalistic interviews, often distilled into two-minute news bites for radio or TV, are not treated as oral history because they are edited and likely to have been commissioned for commercial or political reasons.
Podcasting, where the interviewer and interviewee play equal roles, is not oral history because interviewers must not appear as a character in an oral history recording.
The clue here is in the word ‘history.’ The idea is to capture the voices of ordinary people who have witnessed events of note. The oral historian plays a unique role, as a facilitator, in gathering stories.
A powerful and beautiful conversation between two people is not oral history.
Oral historians are enablers or facilitators and shouldn’t influence the speaker in any way. The interviewer must remain inconspicuous in the recording. However, to encourage people to remember events as accurately as possible the OHS website states, in a section entitled ‘Advice for Beginners’, that: ‘it is important to get them [the interviewees] to tell us about direct personal experiences – eye-witness testimony – rather than things that might have been heard second hand.’ In practice, interviewees are invited to speak in their natural voice, at length, and in depth. When the recording enters an archive, such as the one at the British Library, it becomes primary source material for the researchers of today and tomorrow. Of course, not all interviews have to be, or indeed can be, stored in such an archive—there are many smaller, less formal, group and personal archives of sound and film around the world.
My PhD never started out as an oral history project but since I wanted to capture real characters through their voices I initially thought it might be a brilliant way to develop my research. For recordings to be entered into the sound archive at the British Library they have to be of high quality and therefore best recorded indoors with no extraneous noises. But I had intended to interview people in the landscape, with sounds of traffic and nature, perhaps with children playing in the background. Then, another thing I hadn’t thought of was that oral history recordings carry associated data, such as the name of the participant and the date and place of the recording. So there was no chance of providing anonymity should the interviewee request it. In any case, voices resonate with information; they can indicate where a person comes from, where they currently live, their class and social upbringing, their age, gender, and even their current health. So it would be difficult to gather life experience in recordings without giving away clues to identity.
The oral history sound archive doesn’t require a full transcript; it only requires a short searchable summary of what the audio recording contains. But for writers like myself, who work in creative non-fiction, transcription is necessary if we are to truly represent the speaker through their words. The advice from the OHS was that, for oral history purposes, there should be no editing; there should be no interfering with what was actually said. Any transcription should be as true to the recording as possible, which means it would have to include the pauses, the ers, and the ums. Well, that wouldn’t work in a piece of creative writing, would it?
Taking stock of everything I learned, it was clear that oral history wasn’t the way to go. I want to gather stories and report them, rewrite them, perhaps edit them heavily, to create an interesting and readable piece of ‘testimony’ that stays true to the speaker. This might require me to ‘translate’ what was said and I might revise the order in which things were mentioned—I’d certainly want to remove wordiness. I realised that, after such adaptation, my written work would not be oral history and I was not performing the role of an oral historian.
Was I relieved or saddened by this understanding? I went into the course seeking information on the technical aspects of recording conversations. I came out of it with more knowledge about oral history and, as a result, changed direction. So instead of oral history testimony, I’m working on informal anecdotes and reported speech, which allows me the flexibility I need for my project. And now, whenever I see a Substack interview post, I am reminded of what I learned. I’d love to know what you think.
What training events have you attended that changed the way you write?
What is your experience of oral history?
Is there an equivalent to the Oral History Society in other countries?
Do you use, or contribute to, a sound archive?
How do you incorporate people, and their lived experience, into your writing?
Links and Credits:
I’m grateful to Manchester Metropolitan University for the financial support they gave which enabled me to attend the OHS course.
The British Library : ‘Our oral history collections cover a wide range of subject areas relating to British life, work, culture, and experience. We collect audio and video interviews, and suitable original oral history material that provides insight into aspects of UK personal memory, identity and experience.’
The Oral History Society promotes the collection, preservation and use of recorded memories of the past.
See my interview with poet, Judy O’Kane—Poetry from the Vineyard. Once drafted, I checked it with Judy before publishing. I wanted to make sure she was happy with my transcription and that I had allowed her character to shine through the words. It’s quite a difficult challenge!
Photo credits: First image, my photo of the British Library. Second image, Evergreen Protective Association volunteer recording an oral history at Greater Rosemont History Day, photo by Baltimore Heritage via Flickr/CC BY 2.0. Third image is by Christina Wocintechchat via Unsplash.
To answer one of your questions, my experience of oral history has come through Studs Terkel's books like Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.
Agreed! Didn’t know about the rigour of oral history, but it makes sense as you described it. I love to hear stories that people tell about themselves and their places too. Just had a few weeks travel with so many fascinating stories- didn’t officially record them but also I can’t wait to incorporate them into future writing. Thanks for your interesting post!