The language you cry in / a film from California Newsreel ; writer, Alvaro Toepk ; producer/directors, Alvaro Toepke and Angel Serrano.

Traces the history of a burial song of the Mende people brought by slaves to the rice plantations of the Southeast coast of the United States over two hundred years ago, and preserved among the Gullah people there. In the 1930s a pioneering Black linguist, Lorenzo Turner, recognized its origin, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Corporate Author: California Newsreel (Firm)
Other Authors: Toepke, Alvaro, Serrano, Angel (Film producer)
Language:English
Mende
Language of the Original:
Mende
Language and/or Writing System:
In English and Mende with English subtitles.
Published: [San Francisco, Calif.] : California Newsreel, 1998.
Subjects:
Mende (African people)
Folk songs, Mende.
Gullahs > Music.
African Americans > Georgia.
African Americans > Race identity.
Ethnomusicology > Sierra Leone.
Burial > Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone > Music.
Documentary films.
Genre:
Music.
Documentary films.
Physical Description:1 videodisc (52 min.) : sound, color with black and white sequences ; 4 3/4 in.
Format: Video DVD
Description
Summary:
Traces the history of a burial song of the Mende people brought by slaves to the rice plantations of the Southeast coast of the United States over two hundred years ago, and preserved among the Gullah people there. In the 1930s a pioneering Black linguist, Lorenzo Turner, recognized its origin, and in the 1990s scholars Joe Opala and Cynthia Schmidt discovered that the song was still remembered in a remote village in Sierra Leone. Dramatically demonstrates how African Americans retained links with their African past, and concludes with the visit of the Gullah family which had preserved the song to the Mende village, where villagers re-enact the ancient burial rites for them.
Note:This disc is a DVD-R and may fail to play on some DVD equipment.
Videorecording.
Call Number:DT516.45.M45 L35 1998 VideoDVD
Credits:Editors, A. Landazuri, A. Serrano & A. Toepke ; original music, Leandro Sevilla & Marcelo Masciadri.
System Details:DVD-R.
Participant or Performer:
Narrator, Vertamae Gosvenor.