The Gullah Geechee Shouters are a nationally acclaimed group, from the coastal community of Darien, Georgia, preserving a culture that stems from being direct descendants of Central and West African slaves, brought to the United States during the height of the rice, indigo and cotton trades.
The Gullah Geechee's language and its culture developed through blacks settled largely in isolation on the Sea Islands of the Lowcountry of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina.
Griffin Lotson, is a Darien, Georgia councilman and the town’s mayor pro-tem, as well as a businessman. He is manager for the Gullah Geechee Shouters and serves as a federal commissioner on the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. The corridor is a Federal National Heritage Area.
Lotson recently traveled with the Gullah Geechee Shouters in mid-January to Sierra Leone. The trip was, in effect, to bring the shout back to West African roots, some 300 years after the tradition started in America. Gullah Geechee Shouters were also interviewed by BBC World Service for the Newsday program, during the trip.
Lotson spoke with the Index-Journal by phone while traveling en route from West Africa to Georgia: “It went beyond my expectations,” Lotson said of the cross-cultural exchange.
Griffin said the visit was hugely significant because it marks the first time that West Africa and America have come together to celebrate the shout, which was “birthed on the plantations” by enslaved Africans from West African tribes.
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