Taking a less tense and musical tone, “Legacy of Weyanoke” took the remnants of the days’ conference attendees on a journey from Africa to the American South through song.
The quartet was accompanied by their two-person band. While playing bongo drums, maracas, a tambourine, and a cabasa, the kente-cloth-wearing group sang African chant songs, and concert spirituals.
The audience, made of head-nodding, foot-tapping on-lookers, listened closely as they were taken to Nigeria by a Yoruba chant. From there, melodic strains transported them to Ghana with a Kente cloth weaving song, to Jamaica and The Bahamas with a coconut-picking song, and dropped them off in America with a Weyanoke song.
Once in America, Legacy of Weyanoke sang two Gullah songs, “Waiting On You,” “Moses,” and “Ride the Chariot,” a mainland Negro spiritual.
Considering the previous festivities, this was a different, yet highly enjoyable presentation. The audience was actually able to visualize the presentation’s events and feel the emotions of the Africans.
Legacy of Weyanoke’s mission is to spread awareness to the public about African folk music and literature, and its role in America through performance. As evidenced by this display, they are doing just that.
Room 138B in the Norfolk State student center held a lively and almost heated roundtable discussion on how the 1619 era affected Native American, African, and European American culture.
Conference-goers shared knowledge on the matter, attempting to answer such questions as “Why did Europeans specifically bring Africans to America?”; “Who’s role in the shaping of 1619 southeastern American society was more vital?”, and “How did 1619 introduce the politics of race into American society?”
Breaking the subject apart, we realized that the early American’s entirely unique ways of living were practically obliged to assimilate. Incoming Europeans and Africans, with their own cultural baggage, intermixed with the resident Native Americans. Throw in such environmental factors as climate, and topography and you have what is now recognized as creolization.
This is also when the emergence of creole societies began to take place.
Influences in architecture, food, farming, medicine, religion, dance, and song from all peoples involved in the colonization of the New World were greatly evident in the 1619 era. Working together, to carve out a sense of comfort in an unfamiliar environment, these deeply-rooted cultural aspects have stood the test of time.
After all that has happened to America since its colonization, the habits and traditions of all peoples involved were, and are still evident in society today.
