The GULLAH CULTURE SOUND

Children can learn about the development of African music in America through Gullah history and culture by visiting the Gullah Music website. The descendants of Africans who were held as slaves in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida are known as Gullah. Additionally, it is the dialect used by the islanders.

The “Ring Shout” is a Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor performance custom. Some historians contend that the word “shout” actually refers to movement about the Kabaa in Mecca and not voice, and that it descended from the Arabic word saut.

One of the oldest African-American performance customs still in existence in North America is the Ring Shout. In McIntosh County, Georgia, it is still performed, with the McIntosh County Shouters being the most well-known group continuing the custom. Learn More here.

Gullah Geechee Culture & People

The Gullah-Geechee are descended from African people who were held as slaves on plantations along the coast from Wilmington, North Carolina, to St. Augustine, Florida. Gullah-Geechee people are also newly freed African Americans who moved to the area after emancipation.

These people and their way of life are referred to as “Gullah” in the Carolinas. They are frequently known to as Geechee in Georgia and Florida.

The Gullah-Geechee people have kept many African traditions alive, including music, foodways, religious practises, and words and phrases from African languages.

The United States created the Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. 2006’s Congress It consists of 79 barrier islands as well as settlements up to 30 kilometres inland on the mainland. The National Park Service oversees the Corridor.

The Gullah-Geechee culture in Georgia extends from the Savannah region to St. Marys and the adjacent areas. It comprises numerous well-liked vacation destinations including St. Simons and Jekyll islands, as well as inaccessible islands like Sapelo and Cumberland.

Cape Sapelo

The historic Hogg Hummock Community, also known as Sapelo Island’s Hog Hammock Community, is located in McIntosh County on Sapelo Island, Georgia.

One of the remaining authentic island-based Gullah-Geechee settlements in America, according to some historians, is Hog Hammock. Only privately owned boats or state-run ferries are able to reach the island.

On Sapelo Island, Cornelia Walker Bailey (1945–2017) was born. Her autobiography, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, has tales of island folklore, the Middle Passage, and the horrors of American slavery.

The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which stretches from North Carolina to Florida, is home to many coastal and barrier island towns where sweetgrass basket making is a traditional craft. The Gullah-Geechees are descended from West Africans who were held as slaves and worked on coastal plantations. They were able to preserve many of the customs that were imported to these lands during the Transatlantic Slave Trade because of their seclusion.