Talking Black in America — Roots

(waves crashing) (people singing) -

Kofi

Born to earth and of the earth, we grew like infant corn among the Locus Clan. We gathered our dawn in armfuls of dust. We blew brain storms in the night of our birth. Termites came and ate away our voice, ate away our rainbow's gown of flames, soiled memories with wild banquets of blood.

There once were gods who came at dawn and took away our voice. (waves crashing) Leaving here, the howls of storms, the screams of devotees and the rancid breaths of priests. But those who took away our voice, they are now surprised they couldn't take away our song. (waves gushing) It's a deep history, an amazing one.

It's not a happy story like Cinderella loses her shoe and gets the other one back and all that. This is a painful one. And it's not a story where we are dealing with fables. We are dealing with human beings themselves.

So it's a story that has to be told, but we have to tell it gently and carefully. (people chattering) (vehicle horn honking) (gentle music) A very sensitive topic which we don't talk about easily. You only mention slavery under certain circumstances. And sometimes, you need to pour offering to appease the ancestors and tell them that we are not doing this for fun, but we are doing this for knowledge.

And we are doing this as well as memory, 'cause if we remember you, then every year we can do something which deserves your status. (looms clicking) (people singing) (vehicle horn honking) We are a very multilingual society. We don't know the numbers, so we've been floating a number of numbers of languages spoken in Ghana. So the recent one I have heard is 84 languages.

We have dominant languages playing out, depending on the locality. (ladies speaking) (dry grass rustling) (group singing) (dry grass rustling) (birds chirping) You are all welcome to the slave camp. My name is Aaron Azuma, the senior most site guide of the Pikworo Slave Camp. This slave camp was established around 1704.

The slaves would have to display themselves on the platform. Then the merchants would travel all the way, the far top, so that they can see all the slaves and then choose the strong ones. As for the female ones, they look at their beauty, their outer beauty. (trees rustling in wind) There's a reason why Pikworo, as beautiful as it is, locals don't go in there, because they're just traumatized many generations later.

So I think when we look at our history as people who are Black people in the world today, there is a lot that we have to contend with. (somber music) We have a legacy of strength and resilience, but the collective trauma that many of our communities have experienced has not really, really been something that people have looked to try and heal. (gentle instrumental music) (vehicle horns honking) This is where they used to stay approximately six weeks before they were transferred down to the coast. Males and females, young, strong men, as well as pretty young ladies were taken by force from places both near and afar here.

People tell slaves were taken from the coast. Uh-uh, that was the exit point. That was the exit point. (birds chirping) The Europeans never went as far as Pikworo, but they were quite ingenious in creating this market and this structure that allowed for a whole industry of slave catchers and people to go and burn communities down and bring people to sell.

Everybody who was captured at Pikworo Slave Camp and kept there was not from the area. Most of them were from the hinterlands. There, we have the Mossi Tribe. We have the Wangara.

We have... different areas, Zabarmas, a whole lot, so... Their culture also varied. They could come from anywhere, all speaking languages from somewhere else.

So this topic you are dealing with started here of people trying to communicate with one another. (stream trickling) And when I went to Assin Manso, I found for the first time in my research, which I had done for over 40 years, I found there were tears coming down my cheeks. (birds chirping) (somber music) (birds cawing) Although I'm an academician, I've done all that, I suddenly put myself in the picture. I realized that, no, it is not a happy story, but it's a story that has to be told.

So, I gathered myself strength, and I continued but I had to learn to wipe my tears as well. (birds chirping) (bird cawing) We have arrived here at the Last Bath or the center where they were sold for the final time before they were moved to the Cape Coast Castle. The whole perimeter was used as the auctioning center back in the days. And behind me we have the Last Bath.

(stream trickling) (birds chirping) Assin Manso was a river. It was the last point for the slaves who were coming from the interior, from Asante, further on. And when they came to Assin Manso, they had their bath, Last Bath as it were. And then, of course, they were sent to the slave markets.

That was where the final, final sales were done. (waves crashing) (somber music) If you look at the coasts, slave castles were dotted throughout and every castle was built by a particular European power. (somber music) These forts and castles had capacity, but not huge capacities. It's for a transient group of people who are coming in and then shipped out.

At the peak of it, the whole structure could talk of a minimum of a thousand at a time, 600 men on this side, 400 women right in there. No matter how hard anybody would tell the story, we will never be in the position to truly comprehend what they endured. (somber music) Very, very powerful interests were involved in the slave trade. The Church of England had plantations in the Caribbean.

The British royal family and other major European royals were involved. (waves crashing) These fortresses were right next to the embarkation point on the sea. (waves crashing) (somber music) At most, you wanna keep them there for as short a space of time as possible, unload them and let them go and let somebody else come. I'm sure right from the castles, people wouldn't know what language to use with one another.

There's not going to be any vacuum in any setting or any domain. People would definitely have to begin to talk anyway. The answer will not be trying to learn any of their own languages, but the dominant language that is not going to be their language but the master's language. (ominous music) I'm sure their African language never came up as the solution.

Although we're talking about what influence they had all the same, as people shifted quickly as they had to, to English. (ominous music) When the colonizers and slavers arrived here, they set up a system which despised our languages at the same time that they were afraid of them. Part of colonialism was really a sense of these governments telling us that white is always superior. Our religion is better than yours.

Our way of life is better than yours. We are better thinkers than you. Anybody who takes your language away from you, really is trying to have you obliterated at a certain level. So, the imposition of somebody else's language on yours is depriving you of continuing to use your language for your own communication, for your own purposes of development, as a way of getting you to commit suicide.

(waves crashing) (somber guitar music) You see, that's like I always tell my friends, you know we say... Like I said, "My name is "Taylor." "But that's not an African name. "That's not an African name." "That's a colonial name. "That's the Englishman name.

"Taylor is an Englishman. "McKenzie, that's Scotch." So in other words, it showed them, the slave master's self, that was their name, so you carry their name. Now what you gotta find out is what's your folks was, what their name was? And you don't know.

You don't know. You don't know your roots. (somber music) (waves crashing) We don't really have the records to know what exactly happened in the 17th century or the 18th century. Language can give us some indication.

I mean, we can go to archives and look at archival records, but language should also give us some indication. I am not one of those people who believes that enslaved West Africans were sponges and they offered nothing in terms of language. (bass guitar music) (people chattering) You know that wherever slaves had been sent to, they've left a remnant. I went to US Virgin Islands Saint Croix, and there was an old lady who called me one day and said, "I need to share my story with you." And I said, "What is it?" She said, "I will sing." Don't sit down there, Donkor What are you doing there, Donkor And then I said, "You know the word, Donkor?

"Donkor is the Akan word for slave." She said, "Yes. "My grandmother taught my mother this song "and my mother taught me and I've taught my children." Look at women passing on oral tradition. So they have their song where they've passed on from generation to generation. (upbeat music) And then, of course, there's the music part, the drum language which will tell you something, the horn music.

So when we say, oral tradition, we're not only talking about narrative, tell their story, but also what other things are we showing? So the oral tradition in Africa has been carried on across the diaspora. (upbeat music) What they bring within them, you can't get that out of them. All right, like the drum, that is why Bahamian can beat drums so good.

Oh, they can beat the drum. (Isaiah chuckling) They can beat drums. There's a whole life of symbolism and so on that's outside the spoken word that is just amazing. (upbeat music) You know, people believe in spirits.

There's a song that we used to dance to with the jumping dance. A spirit walking on wire, toolay Put your foot in the fire, toolay Spirit walk on the ground Ain't nobody around, toolay Spirit walking on wire Put your foot in the fire, toolay It's a good rhythm. (upbeat music) (Pompey singing) Could you imagine the spirit walking on the wire when you're coming in the night? What would you do?

Spirit walk in the air Walk in the day, don't care, toolay Spirit walking on wire And you have the group in the back of you saying, Toolay! (upbeat music) You lap that and you lap that. Let's see if we got it right now. Going too fast.

You know, Africans were brought here (dry grass rustling) through Christopher Columbus when he came in and they brought the slaves here. They bring their tradition here. It just carry on from then right until today's time. (dry grass rustling) But I think it's African descent.

I had some tourists from Carolina that does this type of work but out of sweetwater grass. They don't have the straw we have. But they do it out of what you call sweetwater grass. (upbeat music) (water sounds) There aren't many Caribbean people who know about conch like we do.

That's one of the Bahamian food, seafood. Other people would call it the snail. Jamaicans don't eat conch like us. In the Bahamas I would say there's a fruit called sapodilla.

In Jamaica, they call it naseberry. We have sugar-apple. They call it sweet-app. We have potato bread.

They call it potato pudding. With our mutton, we cook something we call souse. They call it mannish water, all right. So we have boiled fish.

They have fish tea. So when you look at it, we all hail, the derivative of us probably would've been in Africa and we end up different places and we just call things different names. (upbeat music) The Bahamian has a blend with the United States or to the Carolinas, so that even added more twist to us. (cicadas screeching) We're standing on an island where we know 40% of all people of color that were taken and survived the middle passage, that arrived in North America, first stepped foot on North American soil right here on this island of Sullivan's Island.

Any vessel coming into the New World were required to quarantine their cargo, African cargo, human cargo here on this island for approximately 10 days. Then they would be taken into Charleston and to be sold as part of the African slave trade. And then now their labor, their talents, their gift, and their skills would now be diffused across the low country of South Carolina and Georgia, northern Florida as well. (cicadas screeching) (somber music) (birds chirping) (vehicles humming by) (cicadas screeching) My grandmother used to say that this used to be done in Africa.

The ancestors used to do it. I taught my three sons and my sisters. Them taught their daughters. We practice our spirituality by placing our cemeteries on the water because we think spirits move and they move back to things they like.

And at one time they thought the spirits would move back to Africa. I mean, they put it there because they didn't want a barrier to the spirit. (somber music) (cicadas screeching) (birds chirping) When you look at our food ways, you know that it's Africa. You know, we got okra, what we call gumbo.

And we've got rice dishes. And so a lot of Africans throughout the South, the foodways a African way. Living off of the land, living off of the water, fishing, and living in a family compound, everyone, they're raising their children together on one plot of land, "heir's property," and that is living in a communal way. And all of these things, unbeknownst to us, all came from West Africa.

We brought those things with us. (electric guitar music) (vehicles humming) (cicadas screeching) But all of those things didn't tell me I was Gullah or Geechee at the time. What really emphasized Geechee at that time was how I spoke, my language. When a stranger comes to your door, you say, "What oona come here fa?" (Emory chuckling) Why did you come here?

And, "We glad fa see oona. (Emory chuckling) "We glad oona come fa see we." (cicadas screeching) Yeah, I done gone and mess up 'cause you know one thing, y'all is sure and y'all is saying things up here And people ain't know what y'all saying. (indistinct) They know how come y'all say what y'all say. (indistinct) We didn't usually use the term, Gullah, that much but they always call us Geechees.

And so they'd say, "Oh, you're a Geechee?" And, to learn, you kind of put up a little barrier because you want to select who you talk to and because folks started poking fun at your talk, at your speech. (somber music) Sometimes they go downtown. Down to the market. - To the market.

Yeah, yeah. -

Emory

There was always a wonderment of where did our speech, why do we sound different? (cicadas screeching) As a language, it started in the slave prisons and on the slave ships. Because there were Africans from numerous countries who spoke numerous languages and dialects and they had to develop a way of communicating that everyone could understand. They were also introduced to the languages of their captors, the British, the Portuguese, the Irish, the Scottish, etc..

You know, I talked about kids laughing at my speech and if they hadn't laughed, I'd know a whole lot more Gullah now. And if they had known what Gullah was or what the speech was, they wouldn't have even questioned me or said I was country. But as we continue to educate the public about this culture, then the public would, the outside public would then accept it and we would feel accepted. And so that's the first education piece that must be done.

We don't need to educate ourselves about our culture. (people cheering) (people applauding) (people chattering) (upbeat drumming music) We Papa in heaben, let ebrybody hona you nyame cause you da holy. We pray dat soon you gwine rule oba we. What's da big ting you want, let it be in dis wol same like it be dey een heaben.

Fagib de bad ting we da do. Cause we fagib dem that do bad ta we. African American English in New York or Chicago or San Francisco sounds different than the Gullah that you would hear on the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands or the Jamaican Patois. (somber music) Basically, you can attribute a large part of it to numbers, to relative numbers.

The South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands are the one place where there was consistently for a long time very high numbers of Africans. You often had 80, 90% or more Africans to white people. So their kind of isolation and the domination of Black and particularly African ways of life and speaking was much stronger there as it was in parts of Jamaica. The rhythm of it is very much like Caribbean English Creoles.

And so a lot of times, my husband for example is from Jamaica and now living in South Carolina and will often hear a Gullah-Geechee speaker and assume that they're from Jamaica or from the Caribbean. So the sounds are very similar. The accent is very similar and that's the influence of West African languages, of course, on the pronunciation, on the accent. If you were to ask Gullah speakers what they speak, first and foremost they would say that they speak English.

And so I think it's a mistake for us to sort of set it aside as something different because it is what African Americans who are from certain parts of South Carolina speak, at least some variety of it. And it is an aspect of African American English that seems to have played a very critical role in its early development. I mean, there is some controversy over where African American English comes from. But one side of that debate, of course, is that it was once a Creole-like variety, a Gullah-like Creole.

(upbeat harmonica music) Sail on (upbeat harmonica music) Sail on my little honey bee Sail on I was born in 1927. That's a long time. (Cadillac chuckling) (harvester whirring) I started off as a water boy. Bossman told me I can make a little money by just hauling water, keep water to the...

hoe here and things while they chop and people plowing mule. (upbeat harmonica music) Water boy, water boy, bring your water around Don't like your job, set your bucket down All that old stuff. Some of them hollering and singing the blues out there. I said, Lord, sometimes it gets hot.

(harvester whirring) (upbeat harmonica music) The blues, they thought it come from America but no it didn't. It came from Africa. That's where it come from. When you brought the slaves in this country, you brought the blues here.

I took a course in Afro-America folklore and I was in familiar territory. (Kofi chuckling) That's when I realized that the blues are really just like funeral songs among my people. (upbeat harmonica music) You know she's been around the world You are singing out of a pain that is lodged right down there in your very soul. It is a pain that can incapacitate you, demobilize you if you don't manage to rise above it.

(upbeat blues music) Oh yeah, man (upbeat blues music) The funeral dirge among our people is not for the dead, it's for the living. Somehow the pain has managed to merge or transform itself into joy. So you actually find delight listening to the blues in the same way as the funeral dirges of my people here also rise above the pain of death. (upbeat blues music) Well, I was gone Gone on the road I was gone A long time When a society enslaves people and creates a diaspora, they're putting a ticking time bomb in their culture.

Because the people who you've enslaved have to be ultra creative to survive. And in the end, what they do is they create something that is not only wonderful for themselves, but crosses over to the very children of the people who enslaved them. (upbeat blues music) Well, I went Down to the church house Fell down on My knees to pray I got to thinking about that girl who drove my Drove my spirit away My spirit away, kept thinking about her My spirit away Hey, my boy. At four o' clock?

Okay then, I'll be there. All right. That's my boy. He called me to let me know, he said I'll be ready at four o' clock.

That's the one I carry to work, my grandboy. I figured that was him. My nephews and my son pick up older terminology from my parents. Like I noticed the other day, my son, (Sammie chuckling) whenever something went on in my house he would say, "I'll be John Brown," and that's something that my mom says all the time.

I don't even know what it is. I don't know who John Brown is, but they say it. (people laughing) (upbeat blues music) Give it all to me baby We're from the Delta so we have this accent. I don't know what it is but when we go out people would be like, "You're from Mississippi, right?" I'm like, "How do you know that?" Them like, "You got an accent." But, I mean, we don't hear it so, I mean, we actually don't know.

We had to pick up on how we talk from someone. It might've been passed down from generations. (upbeat blues instrumental music) In the early part of the 20th century, the South was mainly rural. And about 90% of the African American population was living in the rural South.

Although you had institutional segregation, say, with the educational system and churches, you had a lot of people who were, there was a lot of contact between Blacks and whites during that time period because of the system of tenant farming. The growth of the country store in the rural South, also as the system where you, it was like their banking system as well as where you bought supplies. Anything you couldn't grow, you bought at the country store, and that was not a segregated area so people sort of shopped together there. So you had a lot of linguistic contact between African Americans and whites during that time period.

(upbeat harmonica music) Then in the period of The Great Migration, which started around World War I and continued til after World War II, you had a mass exodus of people leaving the South. Then you had African Americans living in concentrated areas in these urban areas of the North, but they didn't have the same kind of contact that they had had previously with the white population. In 1919, an agreement was made between landowners and landlords that they would not rent or sell to Negroes, until gradually the population density was four times in the Black Belt than it was in the adjacent community. Where one family lived, there might be two or three families in the same space.

This area here is the entering stage of that early period of the limits of the Black community, close to the downtown area. This was the dividing line. On that side I could go and do whatever I wanted to do. On this side I better not come, just across the street.

You had 300,000 people scrammed into a narrow band of land at its height. So you had people in kitchenettes and piled on top of one another, commerce everywhere, restaurants, clubs, businesses, etc.. And so you had a very vibrant, though repressed community, it was a very vibrant community. (upbeat instrumental music) (people chattering) For a population to develop its own variety of language, there has to be some kind of apartness.

Whenever people are apart, they diverge culturally and linguistically....pint? okay. What would you like on your baked chicken today? How you doing, ma'am.

A good majority of the African Americans in this community, their families originated from the South. They migrated here. I'd say four to five people that you see that be African American in this community, probably if you go back two generations, their family was from the South. -

Waitress

I have a small lemonade. So the Southern cooking had its roots already in this community, so it was just offering what they already know. I have a smothered pork chopped dinner and a red beans and rice. Okay, now we are getting into another era and this is the beginning of public housing.

They contained us within the Black Belt and rather than let us expand out geographically, they went up vertically. Public housing literally cordoned off the entire Black Belt all the way around in a 360 degree radius. That's how hard they worked to contain us within that Black Belt. (somber music) In the first two decades of research, linguists were divided in their views of the origin of African American English, whether it was a Southern regional dialect descended from nonstandard English and Irish dialects, or the descendant of a Creole grammar similar to that spoken in the Caribbean.

Research on the language of ex-slaves showed that some of the most prominent features of the modern dialect were not present in the 19th century. African American vernacular English is becoming not less but more different from other dialects. We're at the site of what was once the Brewster-Douglass Projects. At its peak, the six buildings of 14 floors apiece housed eight to 10,000 residents.

In that context, we can see how a fertile environment for the development and the maintenance of a unique variety associated with African Americans could develop. (somber music) (vehicles humming by) In the mid 1960s, we did a large language study in Detroit and interviewed over 700 residents. It became immediately clear there were two worlds of dialects, one participated in by the white population and another participated in by the Black population, most of whom were still products of The Great Migration. (train clackety-clacking on rails) As a child in the hood, it was all Black and the only time we seen white people was we went a town over and they owned the stores, or the mailman, or the electric guy that came to fix the wires or whatever.

But we didn't have that experience. It wasn't a shared cultural kind of exchange going on. (upbeat drumming music) We communicated with the Black vernacular was how we communicate, so you had to learn that. (upbeat drumming music) In terms of what has been retained in the diaspora, I believe that a lot has.

Maybe some parts of the diaspora have had the opportunity, if you like, to retain more than others. So if you are born on the continent and you go to America or to the Caribbean, what happens to you is that you kind of say, but I know this. This is something that I recognize. And it's not said in so many words but it's just the posture and the way you've done your hair or what you've decided to wear.

I mean, it's just all of it yes. Everybody get to the dance floor for this one We're about to turn up grandma Granddaddy, grandpappa Mamma, father Sister, daughter Slide like this Go like this Please don't do your toe like this African people, wherever they are, are predominantly a people of primary oral cultures. Orality here must be understood in an expanded. It is a medium in which the whole body speaks, (Kofi chuckling) not just by word of mouth, through body language, a wave of the hand, (motorbike rumbling) through dance where the whole body becomes the medium through which language, meaning is communicated.

(ladies cheering) (ladies clapping in tandem) (people singing) (upbeat music) That's what it is That's what it is to me That's what it is to me One of the things, the differences between African speech and European speech is European speech, like tonight on the news, talking heads. That's it from Channel 5. What do you say, Sue? What do you say, Bob?

Right. When Black people talk, they get involved with the body. The body is a part of the speech event. Don't look at me funny up in here.

We've got to make a priority and recognize that sometimes we're our worst enemy. The whole idea of the Griots coming from Africa, morphing that energy into what the preacher was doing on Sunday. Man, that was rhythmic, man, in church to the point where the grandma was throwing up the car, praising the Lord. Do you understand what I'm saying?

And then when you just at the job and somebody just starts singing, or the dudes on the corner sharing a bottle of wine start singing. There's no instruments around that. You have to have that cultural tie, that common thread that's interweaving us together that you could participate in the song, regardless of whether you can sing or not. And then culturally speaking, we even pour a libation.

We're gonna pour this out for the brothers that ain't here. (Professor Griff chuckling) You understand what I'm saying? We don't pour too much out, but I'm saying, (Professor Griff chuckling) we pour it out for the brothers that ain't here and we are who we are. So regardless of where you find us, we have these same cultural experiences, regardless of whether we speak in Spanish, Black English, Ebonics or whatever.

There's just some things that wherever you go, you're just gonna find Black people participating in. Exactly how you see these rappers from up top, our brothers up top, they rap with their hands, you will find the same exact thing in Africa. It will be in dance, in talk, everything. So that expression, once again comes right back to the source, the blueprint.

You call your girl She hit me back like you rang I'm the hottest thing you sang Mental institutions asking me is you sane Some people refer to it as "The Dozens", but, I mean, it's just this idea of verbal one upsmanship. You're sort of exchanging insults. Look at the crowd, their eyes glued like they got lashes on and the draft is on. I'm with some mean boys, run up deep in a Jaheim voice.

While you're at the crib with your son watching Nickelodeon Teen Choice (people laughing) So I have some colleagues who actually wrote a paper where they touch a bit on humor, especially in the sense of "The Dozens" Your mamma so fat, How fat is she? Your mamma so fat that she could get busy. You know, so you can go off into this thing, but you'll find that same thing, especially with Oware. So Oware is the seed and hole game that you find played throughout the continent, all the way to East Africa as mancala and Yoruba's ayo.

And in these different locations, you have the same rules, that you can insult the other person in order to get them to think about something else or get so mad that they miss what they should have actually played. (people laughing) And the more humorous it is, the better it is to put the person off their game. (people laughing) (people applauding) And the same things that are just hilarious to us here on the continent are the same things that are just absolutely hilarious. Because I speak Twi, someone will say something that's funny and we're all laughing.

I'm like, that's just like something that somebody would say in North Carolina. You also have in terms of people apparently saying rude things about people's mothers and so on and so forth, which they don't really mean, that sort of thing, that's all from here. Then there's just the gestures that we make, almost speaking with your hands and that sort of thing. (people chattering) Some of those in terms of body language are things like cut-eye.

So if I look at you. (Obadele sucking teeth) Right, that means something. Now, non-Africans don't even know what that means oftentimes. They're like, well, I guess he was looking there, right.

But these are things that you find here on the continent, and then you also find them in the so-called diaspora. They are things like, I made the gesture as well, sucking your teeth. So especially in the Caribbean, but then here, tsip, and Yoruba kpo a. So we'll do (Obadele sucking teeth) People don't quite know what to call it.

The example, people say kissing your teeth. Some people say whatever, but this sound, (Esi sucking teeth) yeah, it's a sound of annoyance and it's a sound of irritation and so on. We all do it. (Esi chuckling) And it's a very West African way of expressing sort of irritation and annoyance.

Sometimes you also, it's like, you got to be kidding. That particular gesture is used widely across the New World, but it has no relationship with anything you have heard in English, in French, and the other languages in Europe. It's obvious that that might be coming with the people. The meaning is clear and it's universal.

Allied to that is the cut-eye. (Evershed chuckling) Where is that one coming from? (Evershed chuckling) It's obvious that wasn't coming from any of the European languages. So if at least those two are obviously uniquely African, then you cannot ignore other linkages.

(people chattering) The picture we have in Africa where people move into public space, because then they have no mastery of the language out there. They carry whatever they were doing, their own language into the use of this new language. (people chattering) Evidence abounds where the initial features brought into the language, persist. like this cut-eye thing, why was it not abandoned?

(Evershed chuckling) It was never abandoned. (bass guitar music) If you look at various elements, part of it is because we never stopped being African. We weren't sitting around in classrooms being instructed on the Queen's English. Africans who were kidnapped, stolen, taken away from this place, and when they were taken, they still retained their core language that they think in.

The words will be, quote, unquote, English, but then the way that I'm gonna use it is gonna be consistent with how the language is supposed to be used in what's really my mother tongue. You can look at various examples, such as resumptive pronouns, right. There was a song called "Tennessee", by Arrested Development back in the day. It went like, "Eshe, she went down to Holly Springs" Let me understand your plan Eshe, she went down to Holly Springs Rasadon and Baba, they went down to Peachtree So you mention the name and then you mention, she.

You mention the name and then you mention, he, and you'll find that in contemporary African languages, that same thing is done. Syntactically, we'll have a final locative. So you were like, where's she at? It's a pretty good city, you know what I mean?

It's all about where you decide to locate yourself at. -

Lady

My sister, she take over my mom business on Broad and Meeting Street. That's where she at. So the, at, is a locative and in Twi you'll say (Obadele speaking Twi) The (Obadele speaking Twi) is a locative. In Yoruba (Obadele speaking Yoruba) The (Obadele speaking Yoruba) is a locative.

In Wolof (Obadele Wolof) Where is he or she located? (Obadele speaking Wolof) So these are things that you can definitely see in both places where it will be like, oh, that's incorrect English. No, that's correct African. (relaxing instrumental music) In West Africa, people still pour a libation, surprise, surprise.

(Obadele chuckling) And then even on the block in LA, let's pour out a little bit for the homies, yo. (upbeat drumming music) So that's the beauty about it, the way they're behaving, the way they're using the language is very systematic and is bearing out the patterns, the footprints of history. That's what culture's all about, cultural inheritance. You do things but you don't really know exactly why.

(upbeat drumming music) (people singing) (upbeat drumming music) (relaxing instrumental music) Slavery has affected the whole world. Not only slavery, but the whole world has been affected by our culture. The African culture that went to every part of the world has been affected by our culture. I mean, it is an incredible story.

(waves crashing) (pebbles clicking to rhythm) (people singing) African languages have had quite an impact on languages of the diaspora, but the reverse is also true. The influence is happening both ways. People are indebted to African Americans as the various forms of music have evolved. They've also evolved here and people have picked them up.

(Reggie rapping in Twi) The African American culture has had an impact on the whole wide world. You could go anywhere on this green earth and you will find us being represented with soul. You hear presidents of America use terminologies that come straight out of the hood. So it's no different, it's worldwide.

(people singing) Of course, home is home because this is home. This is where my brothers and sisters come from. It's home, this is the blueprint. (relaxing instrumental music) (people chattering) (waves crashing) Every African American who has an opportunity to visit the continent should come because they will find answers to questions they didn't know they had.

It's a way to revive the pain that we carry if we engage in the continent. African Americans should come to various countries and start to feel like they belong here. (somber music) (pebbles clicking to rhythm) (man singing) The most isolated individual in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in the diaspora, everyone carries so much of us. And there is a library of knowledge in those heads, a lot of knowledge in there.

(birds chirping) You know the saying, "You can take me out of Africa, "but you cannot take Africa out of me." (Kofi chuckling) (people singing) (waves crashing) I'll be broadcasting live from the land of the original man Extend my hand, grab the mic and rip a rhyme For my friends around compositions Written in my red blood, my rhymes flood, My cranium instigating my whole soul to unfold again I'm breaking them down till it's broken I can't close, I'm open I speak my mind, I keep my mind spoken At the same time I'll be hoping That ill-bred head will leave the gun down on the ground And act like the chosen One, not two, three, four, five Six, seven, eight, nine or 10 When the sun shines I begin were true I'm 'a win The man above is love When I sin I sin He don't strike me out, though I guess he understands I'm just not in tune yet Yes, I begin (Reggie rapping in Twi) (people singing) (people clapping in tandem) (Africans wailing joyfully) (people laughing)