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Kristina: Why do you do this? They are hardly high art.
Joel: Oh, but some of them come close. They've evolved over hundreds of years many of them. There's the steamed sweet potato chant I particuarly like. [sings] Imo. Mushi yaki imo.
Kristina. Nice. Almost like a lament.
Joel: Everyone knows it. OK, that's a Japanese one but the Chinese have a lot too.
Kristina: You only record their sounds? You don't videotape them?
Joel: Next step. Find the performers, get permission, set up a location, performance.
Kristina: And pay them?
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Voiceover
Joel, on a dockside, is explaining the selling side of street theater to Kristina and the need to record examples of these before they disappear. Historically, outdoor advertising chants, in Japan, China, or anywhere, were and often are brushed aside as being associated with merchants or hawking, yet in comparative hindsight, these might have been often a gentler, more humane and artistic performance art than the amplified jingles of contemporary commercialism. There is a need to separate antecedents from modern progenitors. Or, ancestors may sometimes be worthier than then their descendants.
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