Black Cultural Center to begin look at African culture with Friends and Family Day

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The event will combine two themes: "Get in the Game — It's Happening Here," which invites participants to participate in the football season with an emphasis on upcoming Homecoming activities, and "One Step Closer: Journeying Home to the Hearts and Heritage of the Gullah," which will encourage participants to learn about the Gullah sea-islands culture.

During the fall semester, the four performing arts ensembles from the Black Cultural Center will travel to St. Helena, S.C., to research the Gullah people.

"The Gullah held onto their African traditions through language, foods, arts and crafts," said Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, program and service supervisor at the Black Cultural Center. "They have been connected to Sierra Leone, even though the slave trade brought thousands of Africans to the Caribbean and to North America from various parts of West Africa and from many different tribes."

Jos N. Holman, head librarian for Tippecanoe County Libraries and a professional storyteller, will be the guest speaker during the welcome ceremony at 3:30 p.m. In addition, various members of the Black Cultural Center's performing arts ensembles will demonstrate a traditional southeastern ring shout performance with artist-in-residence Twana Harris, who is also a minister.

"The southeastern ring shout is probably the oldest surviving African-American performance tradition on the North American continent," said Anderson-Douoning. "It continues to be performed in a black community in McIntosh County on Georgia's coast. This compelling fusion of counterclockwise dance-like movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion of hand clapping and a stick beating a drum-like rhythm on a wooden floor is clearly African in its origins and most salient features.

"The ring shout affirms oneness with the Spirit and ancestors as well as community cohesiveness. As the tradition developed in slavery times, strong elements of Christian belief were grafted onto it."

The group will explore some of the Gullah traditions on Friends and Family Day with samples of Gullah foods and activities such as double-dutch jump roping, storytelling and Bible stories in Gullah dialect, quilting for kids with Builders of a New Generation, dominoes, checkers, chess, spades and a basket-weaving workshop by the Tippecanoe Basket Weavers Association.

"We want to get into the meaning of the games we played as children by taking a look at the jump-rope songs and rhymes played and chanted by children in the street," said Anderson-Douoning. "We also will examine songs used to communicate messages between slaves that helped strengthen the mind and the body during their fights to resist slavery and escape to freedom."

For more information, contact Anderson-Douoning at jjanderson@purdue.edu or (765) 494-3094 or visit http://www.purdue.edu/bcc

Writer: Maggie Morris, (765) 494-2432, maggiemorris@purdue.edu

Source: Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, (765) 494-3094, jjanderson@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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