brand new ancients

Brand New Ancients: Kate Tempest brings her contemporary epic to New Orleans

For an ancient art, the epic poem has experienced a long and slow near-demise. In preliterate times, the bardic storyteller traditionally served a variety of purposes: historian, entertainer, propagandist, even prophet—functions that bound a community together and offered a common narrative and identity. Today, however, epic poems are usually taught only as a segment in Brand New Ancients: Kate Tempest brings her contemporary epic to New Orleans