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Listed by state, alphabetically

Boston

“TALES FROM THE LAND OF GULLAH”
September 19 – December 31, 2009
Families are immersed in the world of the Gullah people who lived on isolated islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina from their days as slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries until today. Many common nursery rhymes, popular sayings and children’s songs like Michael Row Your Boat Ashore come from the Gullah people. Children will participate in the daily life and rituals of a Gullah family from the 1950s before bridges and high speed boat travel united the islands with the mainland. Children will play Gullah games, learn to tell Gullah time, go fish netting with a Gullah fisherman, cook a Gullah meal, and much more as they learn about this special culture.
Boston Childrens Museum

California

African American Life on the Gullah/Geechee Coast: Photographs by Greg Day, 1970-1977

Fowler Museum at UCLA - September 20, 2009 to January 3, 2010
In the 1970s, photographer Greg Day lived in the African American basket-making communities along the Gullah/Geechee Coast, documenting a way of life on the verge of change. Casting for shrimp with nets made as they are still made in Africa, making sweet grass baskets, scraping bristles off a freshly slaughtered hog, dancing at a juke joint on a Saturday night—these rural pastimes would soon be displaced by suburban sprawl, hastened by the destruction of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Designated by Congress in 2006, the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor extends from Wilmington, North Carolina through coastal South Carolina and Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida. It is home to one of America’s most unique cultures, a tradition first shaped by captive Africans brought to the southern United States from West Africa and continued in later generations by their descendents. Today many African Americans, including First Lady Michelle Obama, trace their ancestry to this region. Once identified with the Creole language spoken by African Americans in the region, today the term Gullah refers to a whole range of customs and beliefs, cuisine, domestic architecture, and arts, including the sweetgrass baskets in the exhibition Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, opening October 4.
310/825-4288

Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art

Fowler Museum at UCLA - October 4, 2009 to January 10, 2010

In Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art humble yet exquisitely crafted coiled baskets demonstrate one of the enduring contributions of African peoples and cultures to American life. Featuring more than two hundred objects including a myriad of baskets made in the American South and Africa, African sculptures, watercolors from the Charleston Renaissance, historic photographs, and videos of basket makers in South Carolina’s Gullah/Geechee region demonstrating their techniques and telling their stories, the exhibition shows how a simple farm tool once used for processing rice has become a highly collectible work of art and an important symbol of African-American identity.
310/825-4288

Illinois

“GODS GONNA TROUBLE THE WATER” Narrated by Ruby Dee, this 1998 documentary recounts the history of the Gullah people, who emigrated from West Africa to the Sea Islands off the coastline of Georgia and South Carolina, and were later taken as slaves.       57 mins.  Sunday, October 11

DuSable Museum of African American History 740 E. 56th Pl. Chicago, IL 60637 773-947-0600 dusablemuseum.org

South Carolina

MOJA FESTIVAL

September 24 – October 4, 2009
2009 marks Charleston’s 26th annual MOJA Arts Festival:  A Celebration of African-American and Caribbean Arts.  Selected as one of the Southeast Tourism Society’s Top 20 events for many different years, the 2009 MOJA Arts Festival promises an exciting line-up of events with a rich variety of traditional favorites.

The MOJA Arts Festival is a multi-disciplinary festival produced and directed by the City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the MOJA Planning Committee, a community arts and cultural group and the MOJA Advisory Board, a group of civic leaders who assist with fundraising and advocacy.  MOJA, a Swahili word meaning “One,” is the appropriate name for this festival celebration of harmony amongst all people in our community.  The Festival highlights the many African-American & Caribbean contributions to western and world cultures.

MOJA’s wide range of events include visual arts, classical music, dance, gospel, jazz, poetry, R&B music, storytelling, theatre, children’s activities, traditional crafts, ethnic food, and much, much more.
Works by nationally renowned artist Jonathan Green will be the centerpiece of the 2009 MOJA Art Festival Invitational Exhibit at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park.  Jonathan Green and Protégés features 25 of Green’s original paintings along with two-dimensional and three-dimensional works by four young rising stars of the visual arts world that Green mentors: Jean Dornevil, Ryenier Llanes, Willie Leftwich and Juan Diaz.
Jonathan Green is a prodigious artist with a great vision.  His works never fail to inspire people of all ages and from all walks of life with his unique depictions of the beauty of Gullah culture.
MOJA FESTIVAL

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Avery Research Center for African American Culture

Calendar of Events

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Gullah Cooking And Living Program
September 16, Hilton Head
“Gullah Cooking and Living” program with Daufuskie Island native and cookbook author, Sallie Ann Robinson, at the Coastal Discovery Museum at Honey Horn, 3 p.m. Cooking demonstration, tasting and refreshments. Reservations required. (843) 689-6767 ext. 223.
Coastal Discovery Museum – Hilton Head Island

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The Gullah Experience: Celebrating Our Lowcountry Heritage
Through September 19
Walter Greer Gallery at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina
“The Gullah Experience: Celebrating Our Lowcountry Heritage,” an exhibit of 80 pieces created by a dozen well-known regional artists, is on display in the Walter Greer Gallery at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina. Free admission. 14 Shelter Cove Lane. (843) 842-2787.
Located in the heart of Hilton Head Island, the award winning regional Arts Center of Coastal Carolina is a remarkable showcase for professional performing and visual arts, as well as cultural festivals and educational outreach.  And proof that life on our legendary white sand shores is so much more than a day at the beach.

Arts Center of Coastal Carolina

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Low Country Joe’s Gullah! Gullah! Ghost Tour! – Hilton Head / Daufuskie Island
(call for dates)
Join us for an enchanting evening cruise by boat to your mind bending tour on an island full of true-to-life tales of voodoo, haints, witches, root doctors, ghosts, cemeteries, massacre, murder and mayhem all told by Low Country Joe himself!
•    Secret Gullah Cemeteries!
•    An Undertaker’s House Eaten By A Bird!
•    Speaking in Tongues & Indian Chanting!
•    Decaying Haunted Houses!
Low Country Joe’s
1-888-GHOST-123 (44678-123)
HeyJoe@LowCountryJoes.com

Researchers reported that as late as 1979, 100,000 South Carolinians spoke Gullah. Current estimates count 7,000 to 10,000 people speaking Gullah at home. Without intervention, the Gullah language will soon live only in scholarly textbooks and on fragile academic recordings.

The origins of Gullah date back to a sad chapter in America’s past. When slave traders sailed to West Africa and stuffed their ships full of men, women and children to be sold as slaves to Southern planters, Gullah was conceived. As that black culture meshed with the white, Gullah was born. A thick, lilting mix of African and English dialects, it started as a makeshift second language used among the sea island slaves, and it slowly evolved into the unwritten native tongue of their descendants.

Oddly, slavery and the antebellum South fed energy to the language. Gullah served a very practical transitional purpose, and its use and culture actually developed during those years. After the Civil War, however, the separation between the black and white cultures became highly exaggerated for nearly a century and a half. Cut off from the cultural homogenization that occurred everywhere else in America, life along the sea islands changed very little. Sea islanders still fished the coastline, shrimped the marsh, hunted for game in the woods, and spoke their native tongue unashamedly.

Gullah stubbornly survived in this splendid isolation, until the world rediscovered the islands and invested millions of dollars to develop them as resorts. Suddenly, bridges were built that introduced paved roads, indoor plumbing, better education, and access to higher paying mainland jobs. Gullah became thought of as “bad English”. Soon it was something to be ashamed of or denied. Then television, the greatest homogenizing influence of all, came along and nearly snuffed the language out altogether.

Finding true Gullah today is like finding gold. Its rare, and its kept hidden from “outsiders”. Still, there are a few islanders determined to keep it alive. There still are those who knit their own fishing nets, who still cook the Gullah recipes and serve their families whole meals fresh from the sea. Thankfully, there are those who take what’s left of the sweetgrass from the riverbanks and fashion baskets of great skill and beauty – just like their ancestors did back in Sierra Leone.

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Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home is a documentary for sale on this website: presented by Justin Nathanson and The ChasDOC Film Society, the film explores the potential loss of important historic African American communities in Mt. Pleasant, S.C due to growth and development. Through the testimonies of the residents themselves, the film explores the culture, the history, the importance of land and the concept of home, giving a voice to those who seldom have had a chance to be heard.

A proposed highway extension threatens to bisect these close-knit neighborhoods of cousins and kinfolk, established by freed slaves and home to generations of their families for hundreds of years. Many residents are artisans and craftspeople, practicing traditional skills including sweetgrass basketmaking, brought over from West Africa and handed down from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters. Today, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina is the primary place in the U.S. where this grass is harvested and “sewn” into this particular type of basket.

Bin Yah will attempt to preserve – at least on film – the memories of the special places that may be lost forever as the struggle between the real “bin yahs” and the “come yahs” escalates.