The lure of The troubadour tradition: From Travel Writers, to digital nomads and social media influencers
Travel writing naturally reflects cultural trends and is reactive to the political climate. In the 15th Century, Christopher Columbus, was a prolific writer of letters to king, sponsor, and family. But his descriptions of people, places, and culture were written with a cool disinterest. The commonplace 19th Century reports from missionaries, celebrating successes and opining about the reason for failures in spreading Christianity, with descriptions of ‘savages’ abroad, would not be met kindly now.
A genre borne of objective-driven journeys, was inevitably characterised by sailors, pilgrims, scientists and merchants, men on trips with a clear purpose; exploration for the crown, economic reasons and trade. Travel was functional, therefore the writing about it was somewhat utilitarian. But it’s the 21st Century, the era of voyages into the complete unknown is over. Billionaires are trying to colonise space; we’ve discovered, and named, every region of our own planet.
For my generation, it’s narratives involving a personal journey of self-discovery through travel that have taken centre stage. ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, ‘Wild’, ‘Tracks’, ‘A Walk in the Woods’ and ‘Nomadland’ have all been turned into Hollywood films. Joseph Campbell calls this sort of travel writing a "monomyth, where the hero is seen as one who travels along a path of self-improvement and integration, doing battle with the "others" who are the unresolved parts of himself or herself. Wholeness is associated with homecoming when the quest cycle is complete.”
Audiences tire of certain styles of narratives, and dismiss their value, depending on the economic and cultural conditions of the time in which we are reading them. We look for new ways to interpret meaning. In a post-World-War-Two-Britain where faith in God and organised religion waned, it made sense that readers would be drawn towards texts where the characters found a connection to the land and nature. Currently, the genre includes a politicised cannon of writers that have emerged to address issues of sustainability, exploitation, sex tourism, voluntourism and the ethics of travel. This would not have occurred if globalisation, the internet, access to cheap flights, and the popularity of travel hadn’t increased.
We have columns, magazines, prose, non-fiction, podcasts, bloggers, vloggers and social media ‘influencers’ on Instagram all pedalling stories from other parts of the world. Extensive travel, once exclusive, has become far more accessible. The once heavily patriarchal and paternalistic view of the world has been outgrown. The internet has ushered in more equilibrium, for those with access to it, it’s easier than ever before to hear a range of voices and find diverse perspectives.
The thirst for tales from elsewhere, is not new however. The medieval troubadours capitalised on it, and their impact was so big the trope of the troubadour is embedded in popular culture and has influenced both modern writers and travellers. New Princeton’s ‘Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics’ defines a troubadour as a “Medieval Occitan lyric poet. The term expresses the agent of the verb trobar "to find, invent, compose verse"; the etymon of trobar may have been hypothetical Med. Lat. tropare "to compose a trope" (a liturgical embellishment, Gr. tropos) or Lat. turbare "to disturb, stir up."
This definition does not include a reference to the only strand of this tradition that endures today: a troubadour used their poetry, songs and tales of political unrest to travel. They would receive donations for their work and sometimes bed and board. A troubadour could be location independent, as long as they narrated their experiences of life on the road, supplying a rich oral history of travel.
It doesn’t feel like much of a stretch, to link today’s ’Digital Nomads’ with the troubadours of yore. The moniker might be redolent of a brand slogan, but it is apt for individuals wishing to travel without taking a sabbatical or losing a footing in the world of work. Increasingly, Generation Z are looking for alternative routes to navigate their careers, for ways that will allow them to move freely, learn a new language if the mood strikes, be immersed in another culture, or simply to take advantage of lower overheads and a better climate.
Late in 2017 Estonia announced the first official visa for digital nomads. “The permit will entitle nomads to 365 days of working in Estonia, including 90 days' travel in the Schengen area. Since EU citizens can already move and work freely, it is aimed at people from further afield: the US, Asia and Latin America (and potentially post-Brexit Britain).” The romantic notion of moving around and using your skills digitally, rather than reciting a ballad, is this generation’s chance to follow in the steps of the medieval troubadour.
Even a decade ago, a digital nomad lifestyle would have been considered unusual and perhaps reckless, something only the privileged could entertain the idea of. But, in 2018, the potential of being one had become far more tangible. If you consider the political and economic climate in Britain alone, it is easy to see why school-leavers, graduates and young professionals might have decided to embark on a journey of self-employment. It may sound precarious, but the alternative was also insecure. In 2017, The Living Wage Research Report found, “21% of all employee jobs pay less than the Living Wage” in the UK. In real terms, that equates to “5.5 million jobs in the UK that pay less than the Living Wage.”
The great recession of 2008-2013 was discussed daily by media outlets and across social media. Banks such as Northern Rock and Lloyds TSB were contentiously bailed out, public-sector employees had salaries frozen, unemployment levels rose, housing repossessions rose, and austerity measures came into force. The same media furore ensued following the Brexit referendum result of 2016, the uncertain future of post-Brexit Britain was discussed daily. Pessimism seemed to stalk the nation. Why work in an Amazon factory, on minimum wage, when you know the globally successful company evades paying it's fair share of British tax? it seems subservient not self-serving. You could be making money running a co-op workspace for digital nomads in Bali or doing web-design in Estonia.
In 2017, the number of monthly applications for working visas in Estonia exceeded the country's birth rate. Karoli Hindriks, CEO of Jobbatical charismatically extolls a vision of the troubadour unfettered by visa restrictions, "Borders are not the reflection of policy and politicians," she said in a Ted talk delivered late last year. "They are the reflection of the borders in our heads. They are the borders that keep us from pursuing our dreams ... You, me, us -- we are the border guards of our lives. The world has changed. We're trying to catch up”.
An interesting by-product of the digital nomad trend has been the rapid rise in people narrating their travel experiences via social media, vlogging and blogging, and TikTokking across continents. People who initially might have moved abroad with a trade started simultaneously telling others about what their new life was like. And there is a huge audience for it, a whole host of people love seeing the #glowup of people like @worldnate, a former plumber, (who focuses on the excrement he was assailed with) learn to surf and become a brand ambassador and eventually influencer. Social media platforms have hugely impacted on the way in which travel writing is accessed. You don’t need to wait for a magazine subscription to go live electronically, or be delivered, when you can have a blogger on-the-ground, going ‘live’ on their social media channels and taking questions as they do so.
If Marco Polo, Bruce Chatwin, and other mostly male, white and privileged explorers once penned the definitive guides to how parts of the world worked, now anyone can do it, armed with a laptop, phone and maybe even a drone.
Another strand of the troubadour tradition still thrives too, singing your stories. David Ippolito was once described as "The most famous person in New York… that nobody knows" by The New York Times, a quote he proudly uses as a header to his website. But it’s telling, that his whim of singing on a hill, has turned into a 30 year venture. Every Saturday. In Central Park. One of the most iconic parks in the world. Ippolito turns up because the crowds do too. Every performance is kicked off with James Taylor’s ‘Sweet Baby James’. A song that centres around a character moving through America, admiring the changes in season and attitudes.
In 2011, American TV channel, PBS, commissioned a ‘Masters Series’ documentary called ‘Troubadours: Carole King/James Taylor & the Rise of the Singer-Songwriter’. Folk singer Carole King, attributed the huge success of singer-songwriters that were producing their own music, in the 1960s, to the social context of the time, “When we (James Taylor) sprang out of the box there was generational turbulence, cultural turbulence and a hunger for the intimacy, the personal thing that we did” people were interested in the authenticity of somebody telling their own stories. It’s this same thing that draws us to the personal quest narratives of novels like ‘In Patagonia’ or ‘Notes From a Small Island’, and makes us want to listen to David Ippolito in Central Park, even when it’s freezing cold.
As the narrator of the ‘Masters Series’ says, “History has made the folk singer into an image of freedom. A minstrel in need of relatively few worldly things. The itinerant singer is suddenly box office” The Troubadour’s purpose when hitting the road wasn’t for political exploration or mercantile errands, but for travel for its own sake. This gradual but fundamental change has thus occurred in the narratives that describe these journeys being undertaken.
When interviewing digital nomads, his hypothesis seemed to hold true. Gabaccia, blogger and Associate Equity Director at Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, told me, “my DN life was pretty low key, mostly camping on free sites and not having a fancy camper or converted van. Our truck's "conversion" (if you can call it that) included our pre-existing bed mattress from Ikea and a $700 soft topper to cover it”
R.C. explained her transition to the lifestyle by saying, “it suits me, I’ve been travelling since before I was born, mum did the trip from West Africa, to New Jersey, when she was six months pregnant, to have me. My mum is a world traveller, she’s done more countries than I can count. Every single person in my family has an African passport and some type of European passport, we use it as a door to see other ways of living and cultures. It’s been ingrained in me for so long that the world is yours, go out and see it.”
When I consider travel writing as a genre, it’s clear that the most significant development has been where the experience in the outer world has been transferred to the self that is being scrutinised, thus converting the journey into a mode of introspection. But there has also been a rise in both name and shame and activism accounts on social media platforms, challenging white supremacy in travel and highlighting ways of supporting indigenous communities without exploiting them. Doctor Kiona, has a following of over 92, 000 people and was able to set up a tour company off the back of her audience. Dialogues are erupting immediately as people engage in deconstructing the way we perceive things about the world in which we live.
The evolution of travel writing is of immense consequence, we are now more likely to ask ourselves, what bias might the narrator have? Should the traveller presume their ability to accurately describe and represent people and places who are other to themselves? Why might this encounter be included, are indigenous voices being erased? It is this questioning that makes us both more considerate writers and consumers.
The rise of digital nomads and social media influencers, has in short started to unshackle the homogenous narratives that once dominated the genre, bringing a whole new meaning to the oft trotted out phrase, ‘the world is your oyster’.
