Oral History: Gullah Geechee Elders Preserve Songs And Stories Of Their Enslaved Ancestors

The Gullah-Geechee people 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 in their 70s and 80s who travel the U.S. singing songs in the Gullah Creole language, a mix of West African dialects and English. The St. Helena, South Carolina-based group is one of many artistic groups that help preserve the Gullah-Geechee traditions through music.

The group consists of Minnie “Gracie” Gadson, 78, Rosa Murray, 89, Joe Murray, 87, and their son, Charles “Jojo” Brown, 71.

The group recently performed at the historic Coffin Point Praise House, one of only three remaining praise houses on St. Helena Island, S.C. These small structures once served as places of worship and gathering for enslaved Gullah-Geechee people and, later, their free descendants. St. Helena Island is home to more than 5,000 descendants of enslaved plantation workers, making it the largest Gullah-Geechee community along South Carolina’s coast.

Gadson, who grew up singing in praise houses, says she has a passion for performing these songs, which often contain encoded language, including hidden messages of hope, escape routes, and possible hiding places.

Musicologist Eric Crawford discovered the singing group after immersing himself in Gullah culture. The scholar learned about the Gullah-Geechee people after reading a student’s master’s thesis.

“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 told the Associated Press.

Crawford traveled to St. Helena Island, where he met the singers and started recording their music.

Crawford reflects on the significance of the praise houses because enslaved people could connect with their West African spiritual traditions by incorporating them into church songs. This is where they created the “ring shout,” a counterclockwise dance where participants clap their hands and stomp their feet in rhythm while singing in a call-and-response style. In 2014, Crawford began taking the group on tour, which included the touring band’s members, including Gadson, the Murrays, and their son, Charles “Jojo” Brown.

In his book Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands, Crawford details the oral history that has been passed down through music.

Anita Singleton-Prather, founder and artistic director of the Gullah Kinfolk Traveling Theater, shares the importance of preserving the history and culture of the Gullah-Geechee people.

“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,” Singleton-Prather told The Associated Press.

Singleton-Prather, who plays the character of Aunt Pearlie Sue, has written four plays along with music that share stories and songs depicting the Gullah-Geechee culture. The group’s most recent play, Da’ Gullah American Revolutionary Experience, tells the story of the Gullah Geechee people’s contributions during the American Revolution, including rice farming and indigo dyeing.