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SUNDAY

You could rent Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust to get a good representation of the Gullah lifestyle on the South Carolina sea islands, or you could stop by the Kennedy Center for a performance by the Hallelujah Singers. Taken from the West Coast of Africa for the slave trade, the Gullah, or Geechee, people still retain many of their traditional ways of life and have created some new ones, including their language. With accents, phrases, and intonations that blend African and Elizabethan English influences, the Gullah have developed a language that sounds quite similar to a Caribbean dialect. The tongue’s plantation melodies, which mimic the sound of an African drum, have been used not only to pass on history and the events of the islanders’ lives, but also to transfer codes for meeting times and messages of freedom. Today, the Hallelujah Singers invite audiences to “jine we” in preserving the culture of storytelling, ceremony, and music of the Gullah people at 6 p.m. in the Kennedy Center’s Grand Foyer. Free. (202) 467-4600. (Ayesha Morris)