Shouting Stones: The Gullah Afterlife
Posted: Friday, July 18, 2008
by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo
" Draw Lebel, the Angels are a-coming Down"
--Carolina Rice Spiritual
Africans, by contrast, continued the use of traditional signs and deep Christian elements in the words and phrases of their 18th century spirituals, especially the spirituals concerned with death. The Resurrection is a constant theme, as is the glory of heaven and its welcome table with feasts of milk and honey, discussions with Peter and Paul. The spirituals celebrate the miracles of Jesus, sing of robes and wings, falling stars, streets of gold, bands of angels, joining the saints bound for the promiseland, pilgrims of sorrow trying to make heaven home, and the day Gabriel blows the trumpet to summon the people to judgment.
The few wooden makers for African graves deteriorated rapidly. Several European stones refer to "benevolent masters." But neither wood nor stone grave markers for their chattel exist. Special symbols from African tradition, shells, or personal items may have marked African graves. It is impossible to tell: their burial sites have all been built over. From more than 25,000 deaths, despite having been a majority (70%) of the city's population since 1710, no 18th century marked African grave survives!
Charleston's Africans are listed in wills, diaries, church's baptism records, newspaper ads, billing records, court transcripts, political correspondence. The Africans walked the streets, nailed boards, laid brick, assembled barrels, loaded cargo, sewed gowns, cooked pies, fixed drinks, built furniture, smelted buggy wheels, caught and sold salt water and fresh water fish, tended the sick, sung in church, were domestic partners, cousins, brothers and sisters to the Europeans. Yet for one hundred years-an entire century-their graves are harder to find than the bones of the city's beef market. Not one piece of stone or wood, pile of rocks, or mound of dirt remembers the spirit of those who died; their memory has no sacred homage. Buried at night, by torchlight, friends and family assembled to pray and sing for the desceased.
Deep in the state's archives, a 1790 plat recovered by a preservation technician at the Charleston County Library shows a burying ground for strangers and Negroes at the northwest corner of St. Philip and Boundary (now Calhoun) Street (from latitude N64E to N69 1/2 E). Built over, today it's a Kinko's and parking spaces. No marker commemorates this mid-city's once sacred ground. Furtive references mention a Church Street burial site, unsupported by plot maps or specific documentation.
African slaves in New England may have worked on a number of Charleston's memorials. Several firms shipping stones to Charleston had employed slaves as carvers.
Despite the absence of graves or sites, the African spirituals tell of a diverse, flourishing creativity combined with a brilliant intellect belied by custom and institutions of control.
For example, the spiritual," Balm in Gilead" is a pointed, detailed exposition of two differing positions expressed in the Old and New Testament.
In Jeremiah 46 (the Old Testament), it says, "Go up to Gilead and get balm, O Virgin Daughter of Egypt, but you multiply remedies in vain; here is no healing for you." This verse denies forgiveness and attests no counters to the full measure of God's wrath as He applied divine justice to an unchasten Egypt. But in the New Testament, Jesus heals the blind and the lame, raises the dead, and strikes away afflictions as asked. In a specific reference and contradiction to Jeremiah's admonishment about Egypt's inevitable fall in the Old Testament, the spiritual lyric concludes that we are not irrevocably condemned. Its verse challenges Jeremiah: "There is a balm in Gilead, [Jesus] to make the wounded whole." (The Africans developed this interpretation from sensitive listening, thoughtful insight, fruitful comparison. Shared in a plaintive ballard, its humble courage to interpret two differing passages affirms spiritual beings.)
The Holy Ghost
Special spirituals bear witness to this belief that life is "spirit," given the gift of a body that one day would "lay down." These spirituals are called "shout songs." The shout songs have a call and response pattern of fills, hollers, echoes, vamps, and melody lines weaved in counterpoint. Africans use the rhythms and tempos of the spirituals, especially the "shout" songs, to "open" a passageway, a spiritual stairway, for the listener.
The masters of time, especially the lead singers, carry these rhythms, mystic in origin and transmitted and taught through the oral tradition. The clapping and stomping, the voice's careful sliding pitch and placement, call the living spirit, the person of the Holy Ghost from the Trinity. (See The Swan Silvertones, "My Rock" on youtube.com for an extraordinary contemporary example! Also, The Caravans, "Oh Mary, Don't you Weep," provides a slower example.) Gradually the tempo is increased and rhythms added until time becomes space, singers and clappers are placing notes in space. The tempo is so fast that the ear can see the notes weaving around each other, dipping in and out. The harmonies add texture. From this "space,' created from the fabric of time, the Holy Spirit comes to transform. Time turns into an eternal form of space and calls the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit leaves this space guided by this multi-dimensional musical bridge, and enters time as we know it. The Holy Spirit is a presence that can mediate both time and space, and transform time. Music is a sacred art that calls the transforming, moving presence of Spirit.
Biblically, as God struck the rock and produced water and honey, the striking hand, stomping feet, and praising voice extolled the mysteries in the sacred rhythms until they brought forth the Holy Ghost. A state of being inside and outside of time all at once, vivid senses and inner feelings, increased intensity in the texture of sound and colors conveys the presence of the Holy Ghost.
There were no flashes or thunder, but the experience was (and is) undeniable. Instead being at the footstool of mercy, bowed before the feet of Christ, think of the revelation experienced if Christ (in the service of the Holy Ghost) were sitting at the believer's feet, his head wearily resting on your knee!
William H. Grimball, a Charleston lawyer whose family owned plantations before the Civil War, wrote in 1984: "In their spirituals our black breathen face death with a boundless hope founded on an unshakeable faith. Their faith and hope stand as an inspiration to us all. They say in these songs, all I wanna know is my sins forgib'n; all I wanna know is my soul is free."
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Fascinating! Insights about how slaves deaths were handled offered reaaly good insights in colonail Charleston.
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