The language you cry in- homework

Q.1 what is the gullah connection described in the video? The Gullah connection described in the movie is the Mende song and the rice, both of which were transferred from Africa to the Americas. These two things allowed for a connection to be made between two similar societies on two different continents about 200 years later. The rice that was originally grown near Sierra Leone was one the crops brought to the coast of America and grown near the border of Georgia and South Carolina. The song helped linguists and researchers officially link the ancestry of the two cultures. Q.2 what is an ethnomusicologist? Why were they more likely to interview the older citizens in a community? An ethnomusicologist is a person who studies music of a culture or ethnic group. Every ethnic group has unique music variations or differences. In this study they discovered that the same song was sung by people from Gullah and Sierra Leone showing that ancestry is shared. Older people in a specific society are more likely to know older songs, because they are not passed down through as many generations, and are closer in ancestry. Younger generations tend to use slang, while older languages are more stable. Q.3 what was particular about the song and the Tenjemi ceremony that accompanied the song? What were the different roles of men, women and children in this ceremony? One unique thing about the song was that it was a burial hymn and the whole Tenjemi ceremony revolved around the burial precession. Women were mostly in charge of the ceremony, as they also put white clay on their body, and were the only ones who sang, cooked, and actually buried the body. The men would sit there watching the ceremony and then would overturn the empty pot at the end. After the ceremony the children would fight over the leftover food in a ritual battle. Q.4 what is meant by The language you cry in? The title of this film, The language you cry in has a deeper meaning that you can live in a different country and speak a different language, but when you are crying during a period of deep grief or sorrow you resort back to your mother tongue and your original culture. Mourning with your ancestry shows your true identity as it is seemingly an unconscious trait. Q.5 why do you think this song might have survived through the generations? The song was able to survive throughout the generations because it came during the time of slavery and the song asks everyone to come together which was important for the slaves to do during the time period. This was also a burial song and because it dealt with ancestry and community it was passed on by the daughters. Whenever they heard someone singing the song they could immediately identify them as family. Women in America actually did not know that it was a funeral hymn but actually thought it was a lullaby and therefore would pass it down to their children.