Gullah Culture in America by Wilbur Cross; Price: Rs.2,500; Praeger Publishers; 270 pp
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The popular global perception of the United States is of a multicultural, prosperous and hardworking society, with little time for history, environment or preservation of its cultural heritage. This impression is not entirely accurate, as there are numerous government and private organisations and foundations involved in conserving the cultural heritage of the rainbow coalition of people from around the world, who constitute the population of Planet Earth’s most vibrant democracy. For instance the Penn Center, based in the island of St. Helena off the coast of South Carolina, is actively engaged in documenting the history, heritage, cuisine, and prayer and shaman practices of the Gullah-Geeche people. Custodians and practitioners of this ancient African-American culture trace their origins to Sierra Leone and contiguous regions of West Africa.
In an attempt to publicise the laudable efforts of The Penn Center, veteran journalist Wilbur Cross has written this enlightening book narrating the hitherto hidden and unrecorded history of Gullah culture, and how it has impacted itself upon the American nation, particularly, the southern seaboard states. The Gullah people are the descendants of African ethnic groups who arrived in America in the late 17th century, and were forced to work (as slaves) on plantations in South Carolina and later Georgia. They were from many tribes including the Mandingo, Bamana, Wolog, Fula, Temne, Mende, Vai, Akan, Ewe, Bakongo and Kimbundu.
A former editor of Life magazine, Cross, who has authored or co-authored over 50 books in his career, has taken pains to study and unmask the intricacies of a lost tribe in Gullah Culture in America (GCA). Spread over 12 chapters, GCA starts with a foreword by Emory Shaw Campbell, executive director emeritus of the Penn Center. “Although thousands of articles and hundreds of books have been written on discoveries of Native American cultures and Indian lore, the Gullah-Geeche culture has been almost totally overlooked,” says Campbell, citing GCA as an inspiring story of “how the Gullah people rose from the ashes to revive and relive their culture in the most positive ways”.
GCA explores the Gullahs’ direct link to Africa, via the sea islands of the American south-east from the days when they came into contact with the western world after the American Civil War through missionaries who travelled to St. Helena Island, South Carolina, to establish a small institution called Penn School to help freed slaves learn to read and write. According to Cross, this was the first interaction between Gullahs and White Americans who observed that most of the islanders spoke a language that was only part English, combined with expressions and idioms often spoken in a melodious, euphonic manner, accompanied by distinctive practices in religion, work, dancing, and the arts.
Cross reckons that even today, there are more than 300,000 Gullah people, many of whom speak little or no English, living in the remoter areas of the sea islands of St. Helena, Edisto, Coosay, Ossabaw, Sapelo, Daufuskie, and Cumberland. The author sees himself as a standard-bearer for these unique and colourful people by showcasing their culture, and taking the reader behind the scenes, to portray what it’s like to grow up, live, and celebrate in this remarkably unique Afro-American community. The Gullah and other waves of slaves from Africa came to a country with barely any music or dance traditions. It was they who created it, endowing America with Jazz and Blues folk music which influenced the development of modern rock and rap music.
Cut to the Indian scenario, where several such minority cultures are dying a slow death due to the pressures of rapid modernisation and urbanisation. We need people like Wilbur Cross to research, and document these cultures. There are numerous tribes and groups such as the chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, and Ilagas of Karnataka, who need to be discovered, studied and systematically classified.
Srinidhi Raghavendra