Frannie Oates’s program title, Sassafras-Skin, may refer more to herself than her song lyrics and characters from her stories. At the center of the stage, a platform on which she performs mainly is filled with mostly stringed instruments. In the platform’s center is a box seat covered with what looks like buckskin. It becomes her prominent instrument as she uses it for background rhythms or for punctuating her stories and comments. Songs include the seminal “Individuation,” based on “a view of our inside” — not differentiated as male or female, as well as a string of references to Cherokee lore and Oates’s ethnic background. She uses a narrow wooden lyre-like instrument to suggest Irish, then includes Scottish references. When she speaks, it is very softly. Much of Oates’s narrative concerns North Carolina, where she lives. Born and raised in Ashville, she tells of how the area has changed. She recalls it as a “time of misty mountains” rather than smoke from crowded human homes. She is upset about climate change and warns Floridians about its effects that she’s witnessed. The number of songs dwindles. She does tell a successful tale about a girl abandoned in a wooded mountain, then found in a cave by a Cherokee woman and saved. Her after-program talk downstage with her audience includes answering questions about her background and National Storytelling Festival participation and movement. Her Cherokee concerns have raised enough interest and comments to end her program at almost twice the intended length.
