Jazmine LeBlanc is an Appalachian storyteller whose practice explores the intersection of folklife traditions, music, and community engagement. Her mission is to help people tell and share their stories in ways that affirm identity and strengthen connection. “Stories, like people, take different forms. There is not just one way to tell and interact with a story.” Jazmine believes that everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in stories and lives this belief daily through her work as a nonprofit leader in Chattanooga. In 2015, she founded the ELLA Library, a community-based arts and culture organization that uses the power of language and art to help people connect in the East Lake neighborhood. Jazmine has been as a mentor artist for the Berea College Folk Life Apprenticeship and has recently been named one of the National Association of Black Storytellers storytelling fellows and South Arts Emerging Traditional Arts awardees.
In reflecting on her start as a storyteller, Jazmine recalls that she learned, “the way most traditional arts are passed down—by listening. Before I learned to speak in this tradition, I learned to listen…My deeper roots came from my family, from church, from riding around with my father, my uncle, and my Pop-Pop, and from the mountains themselves. These early experiences taught me how stories carry memory, build connection, and shape community identity.” Beginning in 2018, Jazmine cut her chops telling stories to elementary-aged children at school programs who would “let you know immediately if a story isn’t landing.” This experience led to her training with master storyteller Kofi Mawuko because, “I knew I needed more formal training to understand storytelling not just as entertainment but as a traditional art form and way of community narrative.” She would later travel to Accra, Ghana to train for a month with the storytellers at the National Theatre of Ghana, studying the structure, rhythm, and cultural role of oral storytelling in West African tradition. She has also been mentored by storytellers Lyn Ford, Adam Booth, Kelle Jolly, and Jerry G. White, spending countless hours observing how they hold a room, use their voice and body, and make stories breathe.
Jazmine is interested in storytelling as an intentional art form and practice. While excellent storytellers exist everywhere, her work focuses on understanding the genre as a living tradition that carries cultural knowledge, history, and identity forward. She learned in Ghana that when the tradition is not intentionally practiced and passed down, it can be lost. She explains, “I saw what happens when a generation doesn’t pick up the mantle.” She sees this happening in her local community as well. “Many of the master storytellers working in Appalachian tradition today are aging, and there’s a critical need to train artists who can carry these traditions forward.” She continues to teach K-12 students storytelling as both an art form and a tool for understanding their own lives and cultural heritage. She states, “My personal mission for Chattanooga is for storytelling to help people gain a better understanding of themselves and others. It’s a tool for cultural preservation, helping, yes, but also for contemporary community building.”
As part of the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program this year, Jazmine will work with fellow artist Erika Roberts to develop the specific skills of oral storytelling performance rooted in traditional practice. Erika is a seasoned spoken word poet and is excited to learn how storytelling emerges in performance and is responsive to audience and situation. Jazmine will teach storytelling as a living oral tradition, with an emphasis on both performance craft and active listening fieldwork. Foundational skills include community interviewing techniques, ethical fieldwork practices, and how to listen for and collect stories from community members. From there, Jazmine and Erika plan to work on adapting traditional stories for contemporary community contexts and develop techniques for shortening or lengthening stories based on audience and occasion. This involves understanding story structure, pacing, and emotional arc, as well as developing voice, gesture, dialogue, and use of space in performance. Together, Jazmine and Erika are at the forefront of the storytelling renaissance in Southeast Tennessee.
