Photo: AP/Luis Andres Henao.
“Voices of Gullah” members, Joe Murray, from left, Minnie “Gracie” Gadson, Rosa Murray and Charles “Jojo” Brown, sing Gullah spirituals at the Brick Baptist Church, St Helena Island, South Carolina.
Not long ago, I read a fascinating memoir called The Water Is Wide, by Pat Conroy, about teaching poor children on a South Carolina island in 1969-1970. The depravation on that island was troubling to read about.
Today’s story about a different South Carolina island shows a different side. The island elders in this article about preserving tradition have agency.
Luis Andres Henao writes for the Associated Press (AP), “Minnie ‘Gracie’ Gadson claps her hands and stomps her feet against the floorboards, lifting her voice in a song passed down from her enslaved ancestors who were forced to work the cotton and rice plantations of the South Carolina Sea Islands.
“It’s a Gullah spiritual, and the 78-year-old singer is one of a growing group of artists and scholars trying to preserve these sacred songs and their Gullah Geechee culture for future generations. …
“On a recent summer day, her voice rang out inside Coffin Point Praise House. It’s one of three remaining wooden structures on St. Helena Island that once served as a place of worship for the enslaved, and later, for generations of free Black Americans.
“Gadson grew up singing in these praise houses. Today, as a Voices of Gullah member, she travels the U.S. with others in their 70s and 80s singing in the Gullah Creole language that has West African roots.
“ ‘This Gullah Geechee thing is what connects us all across the African diaspora because Gullah Geechee is the blending of all of these cultures that came together during that terrible time in our history called the trans-Atlantic slave trade,’ said Anita Singleton-Prather, who recently performed and directed a play about Gullah history.
“The show highlighted Gullah contributions during the American Revolution, including rice farming and indigo dying expertise. At the theater entrance, vendors offered Gullah rice dishes and demonstrated how to weave sweetgrass into baskets.
“More than 5,000 descendants of enslaved plantation workers are estimated to live on St. Helena Island, the largest Gullah community on the South Carolina coast where respect for tradition and deep cultural roots persists.
“Singleton-Prather [says] that despite slavery’s brutality, the Gullah people were able to thrive, ‘giving our children a legacy — not a legacy of shame and victimization, but a legacy of strength and resilience.’ …
” ‘It’s important to preserve the Gullah culture, mainly because it informs us all, African Americans, where they come from and that it’s still here,’ said Eric Crawford, author of Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands.
“For most of his life, he hadn’t heard the word Gullah. That changed in 2007 with a student’s master’s thesis about Gullah culture in public schools.
“ ‘As I began to investigate it, I began to understand that “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Roll Jordan Roll,” “Kumbaya!” — all these iconic songs came from this area,’ he said.
“Versions of these songs, he said, can be traced back to the 19th century when ‘Slave Songs of the United States,’ the first book of African American spirituals, was recorded on St. Helena Island. …
“He was so curious that he traveled to St. Helena, where he met the singers and began recording their music. … Crawford said, sitting on the original wooden pews of the island’s Mary Jenkins Praise House, ‘They were forced to go to their owners’ church and stay in the balcony. But then in the evening, typically on Sunday evenings, Tuesday and Thursday, they had this space by themselves, away from the watchful eye of the owners, and they could engage in their own songs.’ …
“At a recent concert they clapped their hands in one rhythm, stomped the floor in another and swayed, singing at the island’s Brick Baptist Church.
“ ‘These singers are as close as we would ever come to how the enslaved sang these songs,’ Crawford said. ‘That authenticity — you just cannot duplicate that.’
“He began to take the singers on tour in 2014. Since then, they’ve performed across the U.S. as well as in Belize and Mexico. The touring band’s members include Gadson; 89-year-old Rosa Murray; 87-year-old Joe Murray; and their son, Charles ‘Jojo’ Brown.
“ ‘I’m gonna continue doing it until I can’t do it no more, and hope that younger people will come in, others younger than me, to keep it going,’ said Brown who, at 71. …
“His mother agrees. Sitting in her living room, surrounded by framed photos of dozens of grandchildren, she said she’ll continue singing for them.
“ ‘I hope and pray one or two of them will fall in my footsteps,’ she said.”
More about the Gullah culture at AP, here.
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