Gullah Culture
by Cecile McHardy Independent Scholar
To frame the issue re: big lens - recommend inter alia - Hans Wolff, Morris F. Goodman, Ian F. Hancock 'English derived Atlantic Creoles: a comparison' African Language Review, 8, 1969; F.G. Cassidy & R.B LePage, P.E.H Hair and particularly David Dalby's 'Black Through White: Patterns of Communication' African Studies Program, Indiana UP 1970.
MARITIME CREOLE
It
is Dalby's thesis that a Black Portuguese developed as a lingua franca
in West Africa in the 15th century and spread around the globe as a
maritime creole. That it was an African construct for communication
not only between black and white but a trade language between indigeneous
coastal people who spoke different languages. It set a pattern. Even
today for every European or American able to speak an African language,
millions of Africans are able to speak a European language. [Also even
today a great number of people in West Africa are multi-lingual] Black
Portuguese had a full century of development before the Dutch displaced
the Portuguese in the slave trade. A similar phenomenon - Black Dutch
= Afrikaans characterised speech communities in the Dutch Islands in
the Caribbean and Surinam, it is the mother tongue of Cape Coloureds,
not only of Afrikaners of SA. [ consult Dalby for linguistic arguments
re phonological, grammatical and semantic structure reminiscent of many
African languages though vocabulary derived from European language].
So too Black French which developed by the middle of the 17th C around
the French bases and colonies on both sides of the Atlantic. Goodman
points out the African features of Creole French dialects in the Caribbean
- Guadeloupe, Martinique, Trinidad, Haiti, etc & Louisiana in N.America,
[Gumbo], Cayenne in S. America but also half a world away, in Mauritius,
Reunion and the Seychelles. Black French survives in West Africa, the
Wolof of Senegal has left an imprint on the creole of Mauritius.
LINGUISTICS | GULLAH
First
recorded English voyage to WA, Capt. Towerson in 1554 took five Africans
from Gold Coast/Ghana to England to learn English & to become Interpreters.
The
English West African companies became active at the end of the l6th
C - first English fort was built in Gambia in 1618 , 1631 in the Gold
Coast and by the end of the 17th C English privateers settled on off
shore islands around Sierra Leone, their Afro-English descendants played
important role in maritime trade/communication [Liberia - Kru = Crew].
By the 18th C Black English was spoken along the whole Guinea coast,
from Gambia to the Bight of Biafra. An African/Efik trader of Calabar/Nigeria
kept a diary - extracts survive c 1780. Black English was carried around
the Cape to the Indian Ocean and beyond and helped set the pattern for
a further chain of oriental English [China coast pidgin and Neo-Melanesian
are examples]
The most distinctive forms of Black English survive among the Maroons of Surinam and the Djuka achieved renown in developing the Afaka script an original syllabic form of Black English. [I have examples of this as well as tapes of speech made in 1964]. Bridges, branches, roots & braids its a rich tapestry!
WORD SHOUT SONG
The museum's current exhibit, Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner Connecting Communities Through Language is no exception. Installed through July 24, Word, Shout, Song showcases the Gullah culture and its unique dialect, whose very existence is a testament to the strength and breadth of the African diaspora. Largely found along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, Gullah songs and traditions survived a trans-Atlantic journey, a century of slavery, and years of modernization. It was Lorenzo Dow Turner, perhaps the first African-American linguist, who first realized the “baby” English of these coastal communities was rooted in African ancestry. The exhibit documents Turner's research in the 1930s, and the field work he conducted in the South, Africa, and South America, often lugging a hundred-pound recording device along with him. To learn more about the bridge between language, culture, and community, we spoke by e-mail with Alcione Amos, who curated the exhibit, and Portia James, the senior curator at the Anacostia Community Museum.
NEA: This exhibit traces the generational, cross-continental survival of both language and song. What do you think this says about the power of words and music?
AMOS: I think the words we have heard from our elders and the songs we learn in childhood stay with us forever. I personally have experienced this as I remember what I heard from my mother in Brazil—where I was born and grew up—to this date. But I think the exhibit transcends even that. It shows that people who were subjected to the dehumanizing process of slavery were able to keep some of the culture from which they were taken against their will. One of the sections of the exhibit, perhaps the most emotional to me, is called the “The Song that Made the Roundtrip to Africa.” It tells the story of an African song that survived for generations in a family in Harris Neck, Georgia, being passed from generation to generation by the women. After a while they did not know what the words meant, but they knew the song was important. It was a link to their past that could not be snatched from them, even by the horrors of slavery. The song was recorded in 1933 by Dr. Turner, rediscovered by scholars in the 1990s, and finally went back to its origins in Sierra Leone. Think about the power of this song!
LINGUISTICS | GULLAH GEECHEE BLACK ENGLISH
Creolized
forms of Black English found in Jamaica, Guiana, coastal areas of Georgia
and South Carolina, etc carried back to West Africa - Sierra Leone Colony
by 1800, middle of l9th C - Afro-American colony of Liberia; removal
of Jamaican Maroons to S.Leone, the extraordinary role of fugitive slaves/Maroons
incorporated into British military establishments as garrison troops
in West Africa, the role of Blacks as mariners.etc.
Hancock's work tells us a great deal about the historical development
of these creoles but also the physical contacts between different points
of Africans in diaspora. He demonstrates for eg the close link between Sranan [black English of Surinam], West African Krio=creole of Sierra
Leone, Gambia, Cameroons and Gullah [Geechee]. A detailed investigation
of the movement of people of African descent in both directions across
the atlantic and within the caribbean. Former captives settled Sierra
Leone by 1800, and there was continued forced migration of Africans
in the reverse direction to the southern states of the USA until 1850's.
Monica Schuler's Alas Alas Poor Congo gives account of captures as contraband aboard slaving vessels,
settled in refugee camps in Sierra Leone recruited as 'apprentices [a
species of indenture] to meet the labor demands in the Br. Caribbean
after emancipation in 1833 when freed slaves refused to work without
wages`. A great problem arose - what to do with contrabands at the end
of their apprenticeship.
These were CHILDREN / YOUTH including young women some 8,000 absorbed into British Military establishment - the West Indian Regiments - [a sobering fact considering contemporary events of RUF use of children soldiers - we need to unearth/propagate these facts of history] Linguistic history - Akan for eg. exerted important influence in creole of the Caribbean, as did Ewe-Fon in the l7th/19th C and a parallel for Bantu as result of large scale captive labor from Congo Angola. [NB the l3 American colonies secured captive labor mainly via the Caribbean before the revolutionary war, before the disposession of Creek/Cherokee lands for establishment of Tennessee. extension of Georgia, Indian genocide and removal [ethnic cleansing] the Florida acquisition [Seminole wars] and the Louisiana purchase]. All these events resulted in population displacement, refugees, marronnage. Yoruba is a late impact -19th C. Dalby argues the creole spoken by the freed population of Sierra Leone has influences from Mandingo and Mende loan words in the Gullah results from transportation of captives from Sierra Leone to the US in the period immediately before the Civil War. [The subsequent emancipation and physical isolation of the Gullah preserved its distinctive character]
Historical circumstances led to transportation of captives from particular areas of Africa to the new world. e.g Louisiana /lower Mississippi where a large part of labor force brought by the French from Senegambia beginning of l8th C - Wolof, Mandingo, Bambara - famous for rice cultivation in the Casamance used on rice plantations in the delta.
It is said that Loan words from Wolof have a big influence in American English generally, jive, juke, honkey nup, OK, boogie woogie, rap, hep, cat, whup - but this is a source of controversy because you can find these exact words in the Irish dictionary written by Dan Cassidy.
More importantly they posessed a rich minstrel tradition, including a professional caste of bards or 'griots' who have much influenced the development of 'jazz'. A much neglected area of enquiry in this regard is religion, the provenance of these people Islamized by the 9th century with traditions of both scholarship and literacy worthy of serious exploration.
Reprinted with permission from Cecile McHardy May 23, 2000
** [[ Karen Ellis: The Etymology of JAZZ, jism, jive, juke, honky, boogie woogie, hep, cat, are Irish American Vernacular English derivations.]]
Family Across the Sea
Family Across the Sea shows how scholars have uncovered the remarkable connections between the Gullah people of South Carolina and the people of Sierra Leone.
Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Foodways, Festivals/Customs, African American Culture
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South /
1990