August 7, 2025
The Gullah-Geechee persons are descendants of West Africans who settled on coastal islands from North Carolina to Georgia.
The Voices of Gullah is a singing group composed of members of their 70s and 80s who journey the U.S. singing songs within the Gullah Creole language, a mixture of West African dialects and English. The St. Helena, South Carolina-based group is one in every of many inventive teams that assist protect the Gullah-Geechee traditions by way of music.
The group consists of Minnie “Gracie” Gadson, 78, Rosa Murray, 89, Joe Murray, 87, and their son, Charles “Jojo” Brown, 71.
The group just lately carried out on the historic Coffin Level Reward Home, one in every of solely three remaining reward homes on St. Helena Island, S.C. These small buildings as soon as served as locations of worship and gathering for enslaved Gullah-Geechee folks and, later, their free descendants. St. Helena Island is house to greater than 5,000 descendants of enslaved plantation staff, making it the most important Gullah-Geechee group alongside South Carolina’s coast.
Gadson, who grew up singing in reward homes, says she has a ardour for performing these songs, which frequently comprise encoded language, together with hidden messages of hope, escape routes, and attainable hiding locations.
Musicologist Eric Crawford found the singing group after immersing himself in Gullah tradition. The scholar realized in regards to the Gullah-Geechee folks after studying a pupil’s grasp’s thesis.
“As I started to research it, I started to know that ‘No person Is aware of the Bother I’ve Seen,’ ‘Roll Jordan Roll,’ ‘Kumbaya!’ — all these iconic songs got here from this space,” he informed the Related Press.
Crawford traveled to St. Helena Island, the place he met the singers and began recording their music.
Crawford displays on the importance of the reward homes as a result of enslaved folks may join with their West African non secular traditions by incorporating them into church songs. That is the place they created the “ring shout,” a counterclockwise dance the place individuals clap their arms and stomp their ft in rhythm whereas singing in a call-and-response model. In 2014, Crawford started taking the group on tour, which included the touring band’s members, together with Gadson, the Murrays, and their son, Charles “Jojo” Brown.
In his guide Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest within the South Carolina Sea Islands, Crawford particulars the oral historical past that has been handed down by way of music.
Anita Singleton-Prather, founder and inventive director of the Gullah Kinfolk Touring Theater, shares the significance of preserving the historical past and tradition of the Gullah-Geechee folks.
“This Gullah Geechee factor is what connects us all throughout the African diaspora as a result of Gullah Geechee is the mixing of all of those cultures that got here collectively throughout that horrible time in our historical past known as the trans-Atlantic slave commerce,” Singleton-Prather informed The Related Press.
Singleton-Prather, who performs the character of Aunt Pearlie Sue, has written 4 performs together with music that share tales and songs depicting the Gullah-Geechee tradition. The group’s most up-to-date play, Da’ Gullah American Revolutionary Expertise, tells the story of the Gullah Geechee folks’s contributions in the course of the American Revolution, together with rice farming and indigo dyeing.
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