jenifer daniels ♎ :verified:from reddit /TIL: #TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries
TIL that lots of folks don't know what oral history is (in the subreddit comments). yikes
Benn Berkley 
🤨🤔🧐🧐🧐
But…but how…how did they think ancient stories were passed down before paper was invented? Did they think cave paintings were just ancient emojis? I’m truly baffled right now.
@ScribblerRVA @_L1vY_ chile...the reference they used was reading "Roots"
their term = "bullshit" until they learned otherwise
🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️jaaaaaheeeezuuuuuuus🙄😑”I read Roots” is the apparently the 21st century version of “I have a Black friend”. Alex Haley created a monster!🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
Chris Hanson@ScribblerRVA @jentrification @_L1vY_ They have an *extremely* uninformed view of history and humans’ place in our world; they almost certainly couldn’t even get within the order of magnitude if asked to estimate how long things our species has existed or had written language.
Shari Emerson@eschaton @ScribblerRVA @jentrification @_L1vY_
More ppl clearly need to see Bill Wurtz's EPIC "History of the Entire World, I Guess"
my brain got a whole upgraded data set on how long China-as-China, and way more context for India and the middle East, from that 20 minute video. (terrific way to uncover knowledge gaps you want to fill in!)
But - anthropology needs to try harder to understand oral-history societies. We're missing out.
history of the entire world, i guess
eat_more_bees@ScribblerRVA @jentrification @_L1vY_ you're missing so much about this story: African slaves had their identities deliberately suppressed when brought to America. Most African-Americans don't know where their ancestors came from originally. They kept this song and the words accurate without even knowing the language, through multiple generations, well enough that it was identifiable. Usually oral traditions are understood by those keeping them.
@eatmorebees no no, @ScribblerRVA did read the article. they were responding to another toot where I referenced other ppl not knowing about oral histories
@jentrification @eatmorebees You’re a better one than I. I was just simply not gonna acknowledge the toot. Having my own Blackness blacksplained back to me ain’t worth responding to.
@ScribblerRVA yeah i get it. but i am also frustrated that folks aren't reading and they do need to know when they are wrong @eatmorebees
Mysturji@ScribblerRVA @jentrification @_L1vY_
That’s why fundamentalist Christians think the Universe is 6000 years old. That’s (approximately) when writing was invented. (In the {relative} West)
That’s why fundamentalist Christians think the Universe is 6000 years old. That’s (approximately) when writing was invented. (In the {relative} West)
Fish Id Wardrobe@jentrification Impressive that there has been little or no degradation. Good to know. Perhaps this will help us assess the accuracy of information in other oral traditions
Solomon Foster@fishidwardrobe @jentrification Re accuracy -- I've spent a bit of time researching traditional Great Lakes ballads, and have found that (for instance) the names of the ships in a song usually builds a consistent picture with the maritime records and lets you narrow down when the song happened, even when the song was only collected after 50+ years in the oral tradition. eg https://whiskyandwater.wordpress.com/2020/09/24/the-loss-of-the-antelope/
Mr. Completely@jentrification oh my goodness that is wonderful
SpaceHistory, etc@jentrification - This is a beautiful story. I have a few questions. 1. In the English translation of the song, it mentions “a firing gun.” That seems like it would place the song after the 1600s. Do we know if that’s how old it is? 2. Sierra Leone was originally settled by Black North American people, as I understand it. Did this song pass back and forth across the Atlantic? Was it North American, then African then North American again?
James Baillie@rlpaulprodn @jentrification No, Sierra Leone was inhabited well before the emancipated black colony towns, although those formed a nexus for the modern country - the area has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, and native people there were enslaved and caught up in the machinations around the slave trade well before the foundation of Freetown in the late C18th. So this song would only have passed one way transatlantically.
Freja bunny rabbit@jentrification I love this fact, but the website is visually hard for me to read 
(also first time I read this I thought it meant the other Georgia, and was confused)
(also first time I read this I thought it meant the other Georgia, and was confused)@freja yeah the trust def built the website pre-responsive times and hadn't updated up
RevJeber@jentrification
They win the ultimate game of telephone.
They win the ultimate game of telephone.
Vayl Larkin (they/them)@jentrification I have Mende friends and some from Gullah culture here in U.S.. I had some Gullah baskets, and my friend from Sierra Leone showed me photos of baskets his grandmother makes. I noticed they were the same design with different materials, (cloth for the Mende baskets, Sweetgrass for the Gullah), and we learned that Gullah culture/language have strong Mende roots! I gave him one of the baskets I had, and I've since rehomed the others with my other Mende friends who were interested.
@VaylLarkinPoet yes! we miss the little things bit. even recipes (the base) are passed down yet updated with available foods.
they talk about this a lot on High On the Hog on Netflix.
NotMaddie!@jentrification How wonderful...I have chills...
Lisa@jentrification that amazing! i love the aural tradition
Michael Hudson-Doyle@jentrification I read "Georgia" as the country in the caucasuses and was even more astonished than I should have been for a few seconds...
T. Thorn Coyle they/them@jentrification Whoa! That is powerful.
LGsMom@jentrification This is such a poignant story. Thank you for sharing.
Sta bien@jentrification tears in my eyes
ProtectiveHen@jentrification So beautiful to listen to this song and treasure this family's cultural continuity! Merci beaucoup!
Coho@jentrification
That's so cool!
That's so cool!
DavinaM@jentrification that’s amazing. Thank you for sharing. My heart aches knowing what a rare achievement this is.
André@jentrification Similar to the story of the Ganga-Longboa from Cuba https://icarusfilms.com/if-taw
The resilience is amazing!
The resilience is amazing!
Duke.Vim@jentrification An amazing story, thank you for sharing this
Wigbert B 🎻🏛🎭🎤🗞🎥📚Thank You, this is a beautiful and very impressive story, which I will share with some #MusicHistory friends, who are specifically researching musical traditions in Africa as part of #WorldCulture…
Scott D. Strader 😐@jentrification What an amazing--and amazingly rare (?)--opportunity for historical linguistics studies! Usually you can only study these changes across large groups over time and not from a single family's phonetic/phonological changes. I wonder where else there are similar examples. Maybe small Appalachian communities? neat
VinceHancock@jentrification
Thank you so much for sharing this. Best wishes from Taiwan.
Thank you so much for sharing this. Best wishes from Taiwan.
Lynne Jackier@jentrification
This is such a moving story. It brings up so many feelings. The rage and grief of the reality of what the slave trade did to people and families, the power of music over centuries and the amazing outcome of reuniting a family torn apart centuries ago. It would be a powerful movie.
This is such a moving story. It brings up so many feelings. The rage and grief of the reality of what the slave trade did to people and families, the power of music over centuries and the amazing outcome of reuniting a family torn apart centuries ago. It would be a powerful movie.
Sci-Fi Girl
Techronic9876@jentrification that’s a pretty amazing story. You can imagine the enslaved people singing this hundreds of years ago, longing for the freedom they had
bytebro@jentrification Properly welling-up here. That is a good story and a very good song to have remembered.
@jentrification Also, just passed it on to my lovely friends in Bristol's Gurt Lush Choir, who's choirmaster 'has history' in taking good songs in bonkers languages, teaching them to The Lush, and introducing them to a Bristol audience.
@bytebro is it okay that i read this in what i perceive to be your accent? 😆
paraic@jentrification what amazing women to have guarded such a precious treasure of culture and family for so long
Sarah E Bourne@jentrification What a beautiful thing! I can't help but think about how lucky they were to have daughters across all those generations to pass it along to, and that those families were not split up while enslaved (at least before it could be handed down.)
Eboni.ai 👩🏾💻@jentrification Wow…I’m overcome with so many emotions reading this article and listening to the audio clips.
Beautiful - thank you for sharing.
Molly in Missouri@jentrification I imagine kidnapped humans singing this song, must have felt like their own burial. The families torn apart and the longing to be returned to their home. It's a joyous thing to be reunited now, but devastating to know generations suffered torture and murder before this song helped some find the homeland of their ancestors. Only liars claim people of the past didn't realize slavery was evil. Everyone always *knew* but justified it for money and power.
@whatzaname whew, you just said a word
whetstone@jentrification I met a preacher from Burkina Faso on a plane who told me a similar story: he was a guest preacher at a Black church in the US and heard some parishioners’ old family songs, and recognized them from home. He said they hadn’t known their people were from Burkina Faso.
Dreaming of dad jazz.@jentrification that's cool as hell.
@mcahalane@mastodon.world@jentrification so cool! (Obv not why it found its way here... but that it was passed along)
Izuku Midoriya@jentrification sick. it must feel like such an honor to have an oral relic handed down to you. would be a cool superpower.
Demian@jentrification Amazing story! I couldn’t help but watch the whole documentary, the Language you cry in. Seemed like a little bit of healing from the connection (re-connection?) which was moving.
WndlB@jentrification @StillIRise1963 Sometimes a post isn't enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mende_people?wprov=sfti1
Steve SchwinghamerThank you for sharing this remarkable finding!