MS. GROESBECK: Thank you very much, and welcome
to Hilton Head Island. When it's your party, you hope for
good weather. I do think that the fog is rolling in tonight,
though. It's a little chilly.
It is my pleasure to welcome someone whom I have gotten to
know over the years here, someone who gives you peace, and I think
that's what she'll offer you. Louise Miller Cohen is the
winner of the University of South Carolina McKissick Museum and
South Carolina Arts Commission 2007 Jean Laney Harris Folk
Heritage Award, which is a lifetime achievement award, selected
for her excellence in Gullah traditions and for maintaining a high
level of artistic commitment to her advocacy of Gullah
heritage. "She's enriched the lives of people across the
state through her talent and her dedication," said Saddler Taylor
at the University of South Carolina.
Louise Miller Cohen is a Hilton Head Island native.
There aren't many. Most people would say that Louise sounds
like she has a Jamaican accent, but she was born on this island
and grew up here. She had a little stint in Savannah, I
know, and then came back by boat one night in a very dramatic
event. But I want you to hear that voice and that wonderful
accent.
Her island roots date back to the 1800s. Her family's home
still stands on property that was purchased by her great
grandfather after the Civil War. Now, she talks to me about
"before the bridge." You all came over the bridge to get
here, but before the bridge, the only access was by boat, by
packet boat, and that's why our paper is called The Packet.
She grew up here, as she says, before the bridge, and she loved
her relationships and the stories that she tells with her Gullah
dialect.
Louise was featured this week in our local paper.
There's a full picture of her. She plans our Hilton Head
Island Gullah celebration, which you have brochures for.
She's a storyteller, founder of our local Gullah museum. She
dances, she sings, she shouts to cooking Gullah cuisine. Her
knowledge of medicinal plants native to the sea islands is well
known. What I love about her is that she's the mother of
four, grandmother of five, went back to get her college degree at
40. So with that, I welcome Louise Miller Cohen.
MS. COHEN: Huddy. Just saying hello to you
in Gullah.
Well, thank you so very much, Sue Groesbeck, for doing the
introduction and thank all of you for being here. Thank you
for this great invitation. And of course, you're all ready
to learn a little bit about me. I'm Louise Miller
Cohen. I am a member of the fifth generation of my family
here on Hilton Head Island, and I call myself a keeper of the
culture because, you see, after the bridge came to Hilton Head
Island, it changed things, great change. Our language is the
Gullah Geechee language. But when people would hear us speak
the language, they'd say it was broken English. They'd say
it was flat, it was country, it was just bad talking, and we was
not going to make it, speaking like that. So then we really
was ashamed of it, didn't want to speak it, and of course, you
couldn't speak it in school, and not even at home. So we
just kind of suppressed it, buried it, didn't want to speak it,
and literally didn't want to tell people where we were really
from, because when you say you from Hilton Head, they say
"What?"
So if you want to be from Beaufort or from Savannah, Georgia,
you know -- back then, Hilton Head didn't seem like it was much of
anyplace to be from, I guess. And just to have people ask
you, "What did you say?" That was embarrassing. Or
just to speak and someone would laugh, you know. Instead of
saying, "MAIN-land," we say "MAIN-LAND" and they would laugh, so
we were really ashamed of that.
So we just kind of got away from speaking our own
language. But I just thank God that my language was really
me. I could not run from myself. So I used to speak
very slowly, distinctively, not to speak my language. And
people still heard the accent and they would just ask me, "Are you
from Jamaica?"
And I would just say, "No."
But then 12 years ago -- and that's not very long -- we really
started celebrating our cultural heritage here on Hilton Head
Island. It's always in the month of February. If you
hear my voice, cracking a little bit, it's because I have had a
hard month, because I'm one of the organizers, and of course, you
know, the person they ask to do it, that person doesn't stay
home. You're responsible for a lot.
We just performed a play which really took us back before the
bridge, and we really got to reenact our spiritual journey for
everyone that came to see it. And that's to let you see this
journey that we had to go through to become a member of the
church. We couldn't just walk up there and give the pastor
our hand and say, "I believe and I want to become a member of the
church."
There was this process that you had to go through, and it was
what people called "seeking" now. We just say,
"praying." But it was a time in your life when you would
separate yourself from everybody else, and it would just be your
personal time with the Lord. During that time there was
dreaming, and God would show you in dreams who this person would
be that would guide you along this journey.
So we reenacted the whole thing, and there was a lot of
singing. Because what we did, we took everyone back before
the bridge, and we reenacted the whole praise house
experience. We had praise houses on this island. There
were several praise houses. In fact, there was a praise
house in every community. And in between church, which back
in those days was only once every three months, you had the prayer
houses, where you would go like on Sunday nights. Tuesdays
and Thursday nights you would be in the praise house.
So that's kind of how we grew up here, and also it helped
develop our spirituality. On this island we were spiritual
people, and, in fact, growing up as a child, I went to all the
churches on Hilton Head Island. We had four Baptist churches
and one AME. I went to all of them. So I could imitate
everybody, I could pray just like the people, I learned
songs. And what was so neat about it, though, a lot of these
people went on to be with the Lord and they don't even know that
today I'm carrying on. But I thank God for it, because I
know that they're here in spirit, so they know we are carrying
on.
And I know some of you have probably seen things on TV, the
praise house shout, or they might refer to it as the rain
shout. Well, that was one thing that you were not supposed
to see as a child, because the elders, the grownups, would get
together and they would perform that, and they would always
perform in a circle. It's a shuffle. It's not a
dance. People sometimes refer to it as dance. It's not
a dance, because when you're dancing, you know you're boogeying,
you're crossing your feet, and all that. You don't do that
with just a shuffle, and you just go around in a circle.
Well, anyway, when they were performing that, there was just
something so awesome about that. When it was performed, they
would do it sometimes with a stick, and just the sound of those
people's heels on the hard wood -- we was supposed to be playing
hide-and-go-seek and stuff, but when you heard that, the singing
and the clapping and all the rhythm, you just had to stop, and we
had to draw near to hear and try to screen our eyes to see.
So anyway, we draw near, we heard, and we pretended we didn't know
it, but when Mama would leave home, my cousin and I would practice
it. And she died not knowing that I could do it and carrying
on today.
So I just thank God for Jesus and thank God for the experience
I had on Hilton Head Island. And on the island, it was different
from a lot of places. And of course, when the slaves were
brought in, a lot of people were brought in through Sullivan's
Island, and from Sullivan's Island, in my family, of course, they
was sold off to Edisto Island, and from Edisto Island to Roosevelt
Plantation, which is not that far from Hilton Head Island, and
that's another story that I will get to tell you one day.
But anyway, I'm just going to try to sing a little bit, and
I'm not dealing with a full deck here at all at this time.
So I'm just going to probably do a verse or so of "Kum Bah Yah,
Lord" because I know you sing "Come By Here, Lord." We sing
"Kum Bah Yah, Lord." And like I say, I learned the songs by
just being in church with the elders.
When you see "Gullah" on that paper, you will also see
attached to it the "Geechee," too, Gullah Geechee, because we in
South Carolina call ourselves Gullah. The people in Georgia
say, "Oh, we're all Gullah Geechee down here."
I say it's the same people. Okay? Same
people. Because my mom and dad were from South Carolina, but
then they went to Savannah to live, so if they were from South
Carolina, and that made them Gullah, then they went to Savannah,
Georgia, to live and that make them Geechee, I just joined the two
together, and say Gullah Geechee. Okay?
But anyway, they think a lot of people that were settled here
in South Carolina were actually from Angola, and they say the ones
that settled in Georgia were like Kissi, so that's where the name
Geechee came from, but it's the same people on these
islands. And you know what? When they were brought
from Africa, they came from different parts of Africa. They
couldn't even communicate because they were from different
tribes. So they had to create this common language that they
could talk, and they did. And of course, that's how we got
the English-based Creole language, which is our Gullah Geechee
language.
Okay. I'm going to just throw a few words out there, so
to help you understand me up here, because see, I change the words
on you. I tell you one word. I take one letter from
the word, and I change it. So we might be talking about the
yard, and you understand what I'm saying when I say "yard," but
I'll turn around and pull that R out and I'll say "yaa'd," and
then you say you don't understand what I'm saying, but I'm saying
the same thing to you.
And then sometimes we just change the whole word. Like
my garment, you would probably say "Oh, that's a nice
dress." My grandmother would say, "Yes, that's a nice frock
you got on." So she just described what I had on. She
said it was nice but she just said "frock" instead of
"dress." And they say that's a French word, but you have to
think, all the people around us -- that's what Gullah Geechee is,
a melding of all these different languages together.
Some words we kind of change everything. When you say,
"carry," we say "tote." Okay? You say "both," we say
"alltwo." You say, "steal," we say "t'ief." You say,
"see it," we say "shum." You say "over there," we say "over
yonder." You say, "I'll be back real soon," we say, "I'll be
back directly." That's just some of the words.
Now, for the sake of time, I'm not going to say the 23rd Psalm
from the King James Version for you like I normally do. Is
that all right? Okay. I'm going to just say it for you in
Gullah. All right.
"Dis be de 23rd Psalm. De Lawd, 'E mah sheppud. Uh
een goi' want fuh nutt'n. 'E meck me fuh lay down een
dem green grass 'n 'E lead me to deh still wahtuh. 'E sto'
muh soul; 'E lead me een de pat' ob right-juss-niss fuh 'E name
sake. Aae doh le wark shru' de whalley ob dem grayb yaa'd le
een gwoi' skayed uh dem dead people, fuh, le know de Lawd, 'E duh
deh wid me; 'E stick wha' 'E khah een 'E han' 'n de staff een de
udduh han' gwoi' compit me. 'E fix up uh table fuh me fuh
grease muh mout' 'n muh enemies een gwoi' git none. 'E
'noint muh head wid uhl. Muh cup obbuh flo. Sho' nuff
all 'E goodness 'n 'E muhcy gwoi' be wid me all de day ob muh life
'n le gwoi' lib deh een de house ob de Lawd fuh ebbuh 'n
ebbuh. Amen.
That was it, the 23rd Psalm, spoken in my language. A
lot of you, when you come to Hilton Head, probably say, "Where are
the colored people?" If you ask where the natives are, you might
get the right answer, but some people are still ashamed of their
Gullah. I'm not. I was, and I went through that.
And I like to tell people, "I'm completely out of the
closet. I'm completely out of the closet." Okay?
I speak the language. You see my hair? No more
chemicals. It's natural. It's me. Because when I sat
in my beautician's chair every six weeks I had to do it, you
know? But gosh, every time my hair started growing, it came
up kinky, so I couldn't get away from myself. So yes, I do
wear my hair natural. Of course I shout in the songs, cook
the food, so I am the keeper of the culture.
I'm going to sing just a little bit, and I got to say it now,
I'm not dealing with a full deck. But I'm going to sing just a
little bit of "Kum Bah Yah, Lord" and you know we make music with
our hands, right? And I call it Gullah gospel with natural
music, because a lot of times we wouldn't have the piano.
That came later. But we make music with our hands and stomp
with our feet and it is beautiful music.
So I'm going to try to sing just a portion of "Kum Bah Yah,
Lord" and I'm going to do probably just one verse, slow, because
we did it that way, and then we're going to add a little speed to
it. Okay, we'll add some music to it.
That's the slow way to sing it. I want you to hear a
little bit of music, so I'm just going to speed it up a little
bit. Keep time with your hands. We can do it.
And we don't have to rehearse. You can do it. So come
on. (Clapping.)
Oh, kum bah yah, Lord, kum bah yah. Oh, kum bah yah,
Lord, kum bah yah. Oh, kum bah yah, Lord, kum bah yah. Oh,
Lord, kum bah yah. Oh, kum bah yah, Lord, kum bah yah.
Oh, kum bah yah, Lord, kum bah yah. Oh, kum bah yah, Lord,
kum bah yah. Oh, Lord, kum bah yah. I can't sing right
until you kum bah yah. I can't sing right until you kum bah
yah. I just can't sing right until you kum bah yah.
Oh, Lord, kum bah yah. Oh, Lord, kum bah yah. Oh,
Lord, kum bah yah. Oh Lord, kum bah yah. Amen.
We're going to pray and ask God's blessing on this
conference. Father God, in the name of Jesus, we just want
to thank You, Lord, thank You for this day. I just praise
You, God, because this is the day that the Lord has made. I
praise You, God, for an opportunity to just rejoice and be glad in
it. I praise You, God, for all the people that are gathered
here this evening. Jesus, I praise You and I thank You,
Lord, for all the different schools that are represented here this
evening. I thank You, Jesus, for the assignment that You
have given to each and every person here this evening. Thank
you, Jesus. God, I just thank You for Your word. I
thank You because You say where even two or three of us are
gathered together, Lord, You say you are in their midst. So
I praise You this evening, God, that you are here. Thank You
for Your presence, Lord. I just thank You, Lord God, for the
school that we have right here on Hilton Head Island, Jesus.
I thank You, Lord, for Sister Groesbeck, Lord. Thank You for
the relationship. Thank You, God, for caring, and I just
thank You for bringing us all together, Lord. I just praise
You, God that You are our father, God. Thank You. I
just thank You, Lord and I thank You, Lord, for travel mercies,
Lord, that You suffer no hurt home, Lord God, to come upon Your
people, Jesus, and Father God. In the name of Jesus, Lord, I
just ask that You bless this conference, Lord God. Bless it,
God, and let it be what You would have it to be this evening.
Jesus and Father God, I just ask that You bless even the
information that's going to be shared, Jesus. Let it be, God, what
your people need. Father God, it is in Your precious name
that I ask all these blessings and God, I call them on right now
in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. And we do thank
you, hallelujah. Amen.
MS. FORD: Thank you, Louise Cohen. That was
a wonderful welcome for all of us. Thank you for your
teaching, for your music, and for your praying with us and praying
over us, and reminding us of how lucky we are and how much
gratitude we all share. Thank you.