Beaufort’s popular Gullah Festival has begun! Thousands expected over three days
Downtown Beaufort was teeming with people heading into the weekend— even more so than usual — as the 40th Original Gullah Festival kicked off Friday. It will remain a bustling blend of education and entertainment for the next three days, with Waterfront Park the backdrop for bands and vocalists, dozens of food and clothing and jewelry vendors and workshops from rice farming to sweetgrass basket weaving.
Mostly the festival is an explosion of colors and sounds and smells and a good time for visitors to meet interesting local residents and visitors from as far away as Africa while enjoying views of the Beaufort River and eating and drinking and shopping. It’s also an annual reunion of sorts Gullah residents.
Check out the full list of activities at The Original Gullah Festival.
“We’re expecting thousands coming from all over the world, actually,” said Scott Gibbs, a board member of the Original Gullah Festival, as he took a break from organizing the main stage entertainment.
Even a delegation from West Africa’s Sierra Leone is expected, Gibbs noted.
“They’re coming because we’re descendants of Sierra Leone,” Gibbs said. “That’s where my lineage is.”
One of the most significant events of the weekend will come at 11 a.m. Sunday at a special marker located at the end of 11th Street in Port Royal. The site overlooks the marsh and the waters of Battery Creek once plied by ships carrying enslaved people. It reads: “Dedicated to those who were taken from the motherland.” The Original Gullah Festival erected it in 1995 and each year people gather to re-dedicate the commemorative marker honoring the ancestors that spawned the Gullah-Geechee culture that still remains today.
“It’s a celebration of who we are as we were taken from Africa and brought here and had to learn these ways here, which created the Gullah Geechee culture,” Gibbs said of the festival. “Because we had to learn to adapt and function.”
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Check out the Gullah Village as well. The village, located at Waterfront Park, highlights Gullah culture and the descendants of enslaved Africans who call the Lowcountry home.
Spiritual Vibrations, a drum group made up of Onayemi Olalekan ( Kevin Young), Willie Bleach, Vincent Dratin and Sedeek Prather, set the tone when the band kicked off the festival Friday morning with a “drum call.” The expert players used bongo, conga and djembe drums — even a Tibetan hang pan drum — to communicate with each other and the crowd before their rhythms washed over the waters of the Beaufort River.
“It’s fusion of the energy,” Bleach said later. “We just release the vibrations. It starts with the heart. That’s where life starts for all of us.”
Music, like laughter, added Bleach, surpasses language and cultural boundaries.
Sheldon native Tyger Snell and Reaqwon Cohen of Beaufort were busily setting up Belly Full by Tyger, a food truck that will be selling fresh-caught blue crab, fish, oysters and shrimp this weekend. Snell is the owner. Cohen is the general manager. It’s long been a dream of Snell’s to cook at The Original Gullah Festival, which he attended as young boy.
“My mother used to feed people and I wanted to do something in honor for her,” he said of the name, Belly Full. “She always said, ‘A belly full ain’t nothin’ but a belly full.’”
Colorful African clothing for men and women hung from racks at the stand operated by Mahamdou Dankaram of Indianapolis, who is originally from the West African nation of Niger.
“I go everywhere,” he says. “Florida. Alabama. Tennessee.”
He never misses attending The Original Gullah Festival. “I make money —people buy,” he said.
It’s the first time setting up a table at the popular Beaufort festival for Jennifer President of Columbia, who you’ll finding selling Queendom Gullah Dolls, figures she crafted with her own hands. The inspiration came from her late mother, an expert seamstress. Outfitted with jewelry and colorful and traditional Gullah headdresses and skirts, President has taken the craft of Gullah dolls to the next level. With each doll she sells, she includes a copy of The Lord’s Prayer written in Gullah, which begins, “Our Fadduh awt’n Hebb’n, all-duh-weh be dy holy ‘n uh rightschus name.”
President’s children purchased her a table to attend The Original Gullah Festival as a Mother’s Day gift.
“I’ve been wanting to come for years,” President said.
