Gullah Island

The Gullah people are the descendants of African slaves who live mostly along the coast of Georgia and South America. During their time as slaves the owners interacted with them less than the owners of other slaves. Due to this their culture and traditions are very close to their old traditions in Africa. The Gullah people have a music culture that seems more like the traditional music culture from Africa than that of other African Americans. There were people at the Music and Movement Festival who were playing drums that resembled the drums that are played on the African continent. In the music culture and culture of the Gullah people a central figure seems to be a woman known as Queen Quet. She was one of the main participants during the dance of the festival. The dancing seemed to be like the dance performed by the Africans in the videos we watched when we were studying the music cultures. They danced with similar motions although they appeared to use their feet more than in the west African dancing. Also from what I saw they did not seem to believe in the spirit possession aspect of the dance that they did in Africa. This may be due to their differing religious beliefs as I noticed this event was taking place in a Baptist Church. Also like that music culture the instruments were all drums, the music was completely focused on rhythm.