AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN
English settlers arrived in the coastal South Carolina Lowcountry in the 1670s, initially planters coming from Bermuda and the Barbados who brought African slaves with them. By 1690, most local Indians had perished, been chased-away, or enslaved; and Charles Town was the fifth largest European settlement in North America. But the climate was unhealthy for Europeans - malaria, hurricanes, and pirates all were common, while neither cotton nor tobacco flourished.
The colony's early economy was based on the trade of enslaved Indians to the West Indies; during 1680-1720, forty thousand were sold in the town (now spelled Charleston). Meanwhile, after experimenting with several crops, the planters settled on growing rice. They imported thousands of West African blacks from the area of modern-day Guinea, Sierra Leone, and the Ivory Coast - skilled farmers from a part of the world where rice was grown and the climate was similar
By the late 1700s, South Carolina had a mostly-black population, people who had originated in 3.5 million square miles of West Africa, speakers of hundreds of different tongues; all captured, transported thousands of miles in horrid conditions, and forced to labor. They were feared, isolated, forbidden - not only their own cultures, but the white man's as well. They never assimilated into American culture the way slaves in Virginia and Arkansas did. They developed a creole tongue to speak among themselves. It was called Gullah, and so they were named.
In 1891, African-American businessman, former slave, and minister Rev. Daniel Jenkins founded a group-home for some of the many Gullah street-children then living in Charleston. The number of children seeking shelter at the Jenkins Orphanage quickly grew to 500; the orphanage moved to the city's Old Marine Hospital.   Needing to keep so many children occupied after school, Jenkins sought donations of musical instruments and hired local musicians to teach the kids.
By 1864, Jenkins received permission from the city to have musical performances on the streets, after each of which the boys passed a collection-box.   The funds were used to feed, clothe, and educate the children, whose needs far outpaced the ability of Jenkins' congregation to support them. But the boys not only played the music they were taught - they transformed it with their young experience of Gullah rhythms and songs from the 'praise-houses' throughout the Lowcountry and the Georgia Sea-Islands.
Within two years, what began on street-corners turned into tours of the US, and then the world. Jenkins' Orphans bands (clad in cast-off uniforms from the Citadel) marched in presidential parades, they performed for King George, at the St. Louis Worlds' Fair and at London's 1914 Anglo-American Exposition.   The 1920s Charleston dance is reported to have begun with the band. Graduates of the band could be found in the ensembles of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, and many others.
Despite financial problems caused by world wars, the Great Depression, and changes in regulation of group homes, the bands continued after the demise of Rev. Jenkins in 1937, and into the 1950s. The school continues today, though it has moved to North Carolina, and no longer trains a band.
#anamericanmusician
HTTPS://YouTube.be/bopD0Ud75RU