SC finds the voice of Hilton Head Island, and it might not be what the world expects
South Carolina has found Hilton Head Island’s voice.
Ironically, it’s not the voice of a national sportscaster or a million-dollar ad campaign.
It’s a traditional voice — or group of voices that have been all but drowned out by the drumbeat of progress.
What the state has found is the rousing voice of a choir singing spirituals and gospel songs that make you want to get up and dance.
What South Carolina has found is the Voices of El Shaddai community choir.
Last week, the choir was named one of five 2020 recipients of the the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award, created by the state legislature to recognize work that keeps the state’s traditional art forms alive.
“The value of these art forms is that they tell who we are as South Carolinians,” said David Platts, executive director of the South Carolina Arts Commission, which administers the award along with the University of South Carolina McKissick Museum.
Other recent recipients from Beaufort County include Deacon James Garfield Smalls of St. Helena Island, for singing spirituals; Louise Cohen of Hilton Head, for Gullah storytelling and cultural preservation; and the late Joseph “Crip” Legree of St. Helena, one of the last shrimp net makers.
Statewide, the awards have included hash-makers, banjo pickers and quilters.
‘Swing Low’
The Voices of El Shaddai was formed in the early 1980s as the Hilton Head Community Choir, said manager and founder Gail Ragland. It merged with a group called El Shaddai led by James Joyner, and eventually became the Voices of El Shaddai featuring about 25 singers from seven local Gullah churches.
Eddie Days Jr. of Hilton Head directs the choir that performs dressed in African garments that Ragland calls “our way of paying honor to Mother Africa.”
They are accompanied in spirituals like “Swing Low” and “Down By the Riverside” by piano, tambourine, African maracas, and hand-clapping.
The art commission said: “Transcending geographic and musical boundaries, their music stems from oral traditions within the Lowcountry African-American religious experience. Repetition, a call-and-response pattern, and strong vocals are musical elements historically based in 19th-century African American spirituals, with melodic connections to West Africa.”
The voices from Hilton Head include the director’s mother, Betty Days; his sister, Lisa Days Kitty; and cousin, Linda Smart.
Members of the group have come and gone over the years, but long-timers include Murray Christopher, Vanessa Miller Young and her sister, Barbara Miller Smith; and Joan Simmons. Dorothy Singleton of Hilton Head is the oldest voice, now an honorary member.
Long-timers from Bluffton include Oliver and Carolyn Brown.
The choir has recorded two CDs, and it performs about 25 times a year at churches, community events, weddings, funerals and conventions.
“We do it because it’s what we want to do,” Ragland said. “It’s because they want to sing. They love to sing.”
Michelle Obama
Lowcountry singing is different from the tone Ragland grew up with in Aiken.
“It’s basically in the dialect,” she said. “On the coast, they all talked a little bit different, and it shows up in the music.”
Over the years, the choir has become a beloved and colorful piece of Hilton Head’s fabric.
“The Voices of El Shaddai promote and preserve a very important part of our island culture and heritage,” said Kathleen Bateson, the recently retired president and CEO of the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina. “And their music is inspirational, with an energy that leaps out and touches people.”
They touched some 4,000 people on the historic night they sang the “Star Spangled Banner” with Carrie Brown before the first football game for Bluffton High School in 2004. It was a community milestone when the Bluffton kids no longer had to be the outsiders commuting to Hilton Head Island High School.
They have sung at Hilton Head’s community Christmas tree lighting, Martin Luther King Day events, Juneteenth, and the Hilton Head Island Gullah Celebration. They sang on the soundtrack to the 2014 documentary, “Hilton Head Island Back in the Day: Through the Eyes of the Gullah Elders.”
And they performed at Central Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church on Hilton Head prior to a speech by Michelle Obama in January 2008.
“One time at a Hilton Head Gullah Celebration event, Louise Cohen was saying that it always seems that we have to look for people to bring here from somewhere else to represent our culture,” Ragland said.
“And she said we have the talent right here. Embrace it. Embrace the fact that people don’t have to be embarrassed or ashamed of their Gullah culture.”
Sometimes it takes a statewide award to embrace the unique voice that is Hilton Head.
