Gullah Culture

The majority of the Gullah music itself contained drumming with an extremely fast paced music with no breaks or pauses. It was an interesting polyphony of loud screaming voices and several drums. The drums of the Gullah culture have a very interesting background, because it used to be a calling signal which signaled their rebellions again racism and discrimination (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKzyAWKi0oo). It seems as though most of their music is rooted in the history of racism and their gaining of freedom. Not only this, but now they sing about preserving their culture and keeping it alive from wide spread tourism and invasion. To demonstrate this concentration on their culture, there sometimes is a constant chanting of a certain word like “strawberries” for emphasis on a certain topic in the videos. It seems as though much of the music was based on a religious aspect as well due to the fact that much of the singing and dance takes place in churches. Also, the second video initially takes place in front of a sign saying “Agape Ministries” which is definitely relating to a religion, possibly Christianity. The culture also involves quite a bit of dancing as well, almost every time there are drums in the videos there is dancing as well. The dancing seems to be planned for the most part since several people end up doing the same thing and are right on beat with each other. The culture/language/music is an interesting combination of African culture and Western culture as well. Only the future will see if the Gullah people can preserve their culture from tourism or not.