'Believer I Know' Vinyl Album

'Believer I Know': Sacred African American Music and Rituals of Georgia and Louisiana featuring the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters & Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble

Showcases the spiritual power and fascinating similarities of two of the oldest surviving African American cultural traditions in North America. Whitney Plantation had the distinct honor to host the first meeting of the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters and Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble in 2024, which you can learn more about through this National Park Service video.

Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, along with partners throughout the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, The Historic New Orleans Collection, and the National Council for Traditional Arts, welcomed the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters & the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble to south Louisiana to foster the passing of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. Gullah Geechee youth connected with elders to learn about their culture rooted in the African traditions of enslaved people who toiled along the lower Atlantic coast. Youth participants, mostly from Winnsboro, LA traveled with the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble (the Rockers) to perform together with the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters (the Shouters) from Darien, GA.

This cultural exchange was designed to ensure that the Ring Shout and the Easter Rock will continue for future generations. The youth participants used the insights they gained in a series of concerts, including performances by the Shouters & the Rockers at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, Whitney Plantation, Central St. Matthews Community Center, and New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. The joint performances allowed performers and audiences alike to appreciate the similarities and differences between the Gullah Geechee Ring Shout and the Louisiana Easter Rock, two African traditions that connect communities separated by hundreds of miles. Highlights of this project also included the filming of Afro-Descendants Southern Roots Road Tour featuring the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters & Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble, a short documentary taken from performances in South Louisiana during the summer of 2024 and a taping of American Routes Live which premiered on Juneteenth (Juneteenth with the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters — AMERICAN ROUTES) and Easter weekend (Easter & Passover: Let Hope & Freedom Prevail — AMERICAN ROUTES). Both groups also recorded an album together at Esplanade Studios for a eventual release on Smithsonian Folkways to document the historic meeting of these two groups.

This project cast a wide net of subject matter experts and partners to accomplish things that they would not have been able to do otherwise. This included Heather Hodges, The Historic New Orleans Collection; Dr Susan Roach, folklorist at Louisiana Tech University; Griffin Lotson, manager of Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters; Nick Spitzer, host of American Routes; Blaine Waide, National Council for Traditional Arts, Author Trelani Michelle, and artists Heather Heckel and Monica Rose Kelly.