"THE LANGUAGE YOU CRY IN" - Film Response

This is an amazing story of a man, Lorenzo Turner, who collected and catalogued over 3,000 names and words of African origin in coastal Georgia and South Carolina. He found that in these states, some of the Gullah living there could recite texts in African languages. One of the longest texts he came across was a five-line song sung by Amelia Dawley, who lived in a Georgia fishing village. She did not know the meaning of the song, but a Sierra Leonean graduate student in the US recognized the language as Mende, the major language of Sierra Leone.
This is where the story begins, with a simple song, past down from generation to generation and sung by Africans living in America due the slave trade. Sierra Leone is a country out of all that provided slaves for the west, was the ancestral home of this rice-growing, island dwelling people. This was a major breakthrough in the understanding of how the song from the western coast of Africa came and be based in South Carolina and the state of Georgia in the United States of America.
It took 50 years for anyone to follow up on these so called clues. In the 1980s, Joseph Opala, an American anthropologist teaching in Sierra Leone, paid an interest in Turners works and decided to pick up where Turner had left off. Opala he discovered that Bunce Island, a British slave castle in Sierra Leone, sent many of the local native captives to Georgia and South Carolina. These slaves already had experience growing rice in Africa, so they were of great value to the slave owners in those US states, which are predominantly rice growing regions themselves. This resulted in a tight community of slaves in that area, called the Gullah people. The Gullah has been able to preserve many of their roots through writings, names and especially song. Remarkably one song in particular, a mende funeral song, “A Wa Ka Mu Mohne”. This song amazingly stood the test of time, westernization, the adaptation of new cultures and languages, and technological advancements through the simple yet ignorant human characteristic called ‘memory.
After learning of the song, Opala and his colleagues, ethnomusicologist Cynthia Schmidt and Sierra Leonean linguist Tazieff Koroma in a formidable search to see if Amelia Dawley's song was still remembered and see if it was still sung in Sierra Leone. They learned that one of the words in the song was unique to a dialect in southern Sierra Leone; however, by chance Dr Cynthia Schmidt discovered a woman living in the remote interior village of Senehum Ngola, and discovered a woman named Baindu Jabati, who knew a song very similar to Amelia’s. The song was traditionally performed at graveside ceremonies called Tenjami (crossing the river), and she knew it because in her culture, woman were responsible for the rites of birth and death. The first puzzle piece fitted.
Opala and Cynthia Schmidt, who discovered Baindu, then traveled to Georgia, and were able to get in touch with Amelia’s daughter, Mary Moran. She knew the song as well, and it was discovered that women on both sides of the Atlantic were responsible for passing down this song – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In 1997, Mary and her family were able to travel to Sierra Leone, meet the prime minister, meet her potential family member Baindu and visit her village which could very well have been Many Moran’s roots, and take part in a Teijami ceremony. Opala asked the tribe’s 90 year old chief why this song would be preserved by woman removed against their will from their homeland roughly 200 years ago; he said, “That song would be the most valuable thing she could take. It could connect her to all her ancestors and to their continued blessings.” Then he quoted a Mende proverb, which is where the tital came about and one of the most powerful lines in the film, “You know who a person really is by the language they cry in.” Today, Opala is credited with identifying the “Gullah Connection” between Sierra Leone and the Gullah people in Georgia and South Carolina.
This inspirational story was that of luck, miracle, total coincidence or just fate, one would never know. This film is the kind of breath-taking detective story that will keep you intrigued and will always bring a warm yet numb feeling in your heart. The language and simply life barrier was surpassed and one couldn’t help but feel guilty that our very own roots could and probably were involved in these inhumane acts of terrorism and segregation. The Language You Cry In links Africa and America, past and present, but also serves as only the beginning one would feel for the retracing of steps into the past and tracing all displaced people to their original roots. This was a sensational film, a provocative and breathtaking narrative, a real feel provided by the camera work and a story to be remembered, a story of memory.