In addition to his featured performance at the Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival, trumpeter, composer, and sonic storyteller Etienne Charles will take part in a special public talk connected to his Gullah Roots project. This conversation invites audiences deeper into the history, research, and cultural memory behind the music, opening up the world that informs Charles’s work on stage.
Presented as part of festival weekend, the talk will feature Etienne Charles in dialogue with a Gullah historian from the ensemble and a local moderator. Together, they will explore the history of the Gullah Geechee people, their cultural contributions, and the ways African-descended traditions shaped early American life, music, and democratic imagination.
The conversation will offer audiences a chance to better understand how history lives inside sound, and how musical traditions can carry memory, story, and identity across generations. Drawing from fieldwork, oral histories, and archival research, Charles’s Gullah Roots project is rooted in careful listening — not only to music, but to people, place, and inherited knowledge.
During the talk, participants will hear more about how that process shaped the compositions themselves: how rhythm, melodic phrasing, call-and-response, and other musical choices reflect Gullah traditions and their wider Caribbean resonances. Through storytelling, listening examples, and audience Q&A, the program will offer a fuller understanding of the artistic and historical foundation of the project.
For Springfield audiences, this event offers both a learning space and a point of connection. Many residents come from Southern, Caribbean, and wider African diasporic backgrounds, and this conversation creates room to reflect on those histories in a meaningful and accessible way. Rather than treating the performance as a stand-alone concert, the talk expands it into a richer public experience — one that connects arts audiences with historians, educators, young people, and community members through shared curiosity, cultural memory, and live exchange.
Youth and families are especially encouraged to attend, with a focus on making the event welcoming, intergenerational, and engaging for people who want not only to hear the music, but also to understand more about the stories and traditions that shape it.
