Performance by Georgia Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters
June 15, 2019 @ 6:30 pm – 7:00 pm
| FreeThe Georgia Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters will perform as part of Oakland Cemetery’s Juneteenth Celebrations. This event will kick off a year of programming with artist Charmaine Minniefield as she creates Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives, which will culminate back at Oakland Cemetery for Juneteenth 2020.
The Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters are one of the world’s top Performing Artists of the Geechee Gullah Culture. All performers are descendants of African slaves, offering History & Heritage Presentation of African-American Culture from Slavery, in an effort to continue the traditions of their ancestors.
“The opportunity to share the performance work of the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters within the embrace of this project is an honor,” says Minniefield. “In recent years, my work has focused on remembrance and re-imagining the Ring Shout; I see this African-American worship tradition as a doorway into the past, bringing forward the spiritual practices of ancestors gone before to remember those forgotten.”
Originally celebrated in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, Juneteenth is a nationally-recognized commemorative day celebrating the abolishment of slavery in the Confederate south at the end of the Civil War. In addition to the Ring Shout performance by the Gullah Geechee singers, visitors will be able to take guided tours of the African American Grounds at 5:30 and 7:00 p.m.