A passion for Cuba: University of Connecticut music professor explores African roots in the island nation - Faculty Club

Black Issues in Higher Education, August 15, 2002 by Kendra Hamilton

Along the way, the members of the group will be conducting interviews, collecting chants, videotaping ceremonies--and otherwise doing the work that supports scholarly publications. Stephens, meanwhile, says he's particularly looking forward to meeting and perhaps interviewing Lazaro Rosy Olorun, perhaps the most famous religious singer in all of Cuba.

The trips are valuable from an institutional standpoint--advancing the body of knowledge and raising the university's public profile through conferences and publications. But the greatest benefits, Stephens says, are a bit more intangible--and much more personal.

"I grew up in Savannah, Georgia," he explains. "And I remember parents and teachers being so careful to instill in us that we were not to have anything to do with certain things"--like Geechee speech patterns and the mysteriously named "roots."

Geechee, or Gullah is both a creole language--containing elements from many different African languages as well as English--and a culture of foodways, folktales and folk song, as well as crafts, herbal medicine and religious practices associated with the South Carolina and Georgia coastal region, whose ports were those through which an overwhelming majority of African slaves entered the United States.

It wasn't until he got to graduate school that he learned that what he called "Geechee" was called "Gullah" by scholars and was, in fact, a serious subject of scholarly investigation. Stephens' work investigating African retentions in Cuban culture is deeply connected to that moment of discovery in graduate school.

"It's a positive affirmation to a part of me that's not fully actualized, but that I know is there: My connection to my Africanness--things we believe, values we hold, institutions we support as well as more intangible things like our behavior, gestures, how we interact, what is considered acceptable or unacceptable.

"All these are things that we can glean through studying creative and expressive acts, cultural artifacts, music."