Renowned singer, actress, and storyteller Marlena Smalls has performed before American presidents, ambassadors and the Queen of England, but what she is most proud of is having worked with children worldwide.She and her singing group, Hallelujah Singers will be appearing this Friday and Saturday at the Bermuda Festival. She typically weaves music and narration to celebrate the Gullah culture of South Carolina.“The Gullah culture is basically who we are now,” she said. “It is not unique to Florida or Georgia or South Carolina.“The Gullah culture extends itself from West Africa, coming across the Atlantic Ocean. Wherever you are, to some degree, you experience the Gullah culture. It is not just in music or dancing, but also in the words we use.”She said words such as ‘okay’, ‘boogie man’ and the song ‘shoo fly’, and even the game ‘hide and seek’ originate from countries in Africa.On Friday, Ms Smalls will perform before a local school group during a dress rehearsal. This is something she has done in many countries including France, Spain and the United States, and she finds it very satisfying.“Often, children will still remember me ten years later,” she said. “They will walk up to me, and say ‘I danced with you in the second grade’.“When they approach me, standing next to them will be their children. I was only with them for a minute or two and yet they still remember. I am very excited to be meeting children in Bermuda.”Ms Smalls grew up in Ohio, but her mother was from South Carolina. In the 1920s, her mother moved to Ohio at 16-years-old to finish her education in music. Some of her older siblings had also moved to Ohio.The thinking was that the job situation in Ohio was better for people of colour than it was in the more heavily racially segregated American south. But Ms Smalls said when she was growing up, she didn’t have to go far to find southern culture.“We visited South Carolina, but during that time most of the blacks in our community in Ohio were from the south,” she said.Although she grew up with Gullah music and stories in her home, she started properly researching African culture in the 1970s.She wrote her first performance in 1981, and started focusing on aspects of Gullah culture in 1989.She said she is still learning. Ms Smalls now lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.“We look at the African influence in the world like it is the size of the head of a needle, but it is much much bigger than that,” she said. “Education is most definitely an important part of what we are doing.“Gullah allows us to extend our culture beyond the bounds of slavery. White and black Americans refer to the African from the 1600s to 1800s as ‘a slave’.“When you do that you fail to realise or recognise that he came to this country with his own culture intact. His attitudes towards life and death, and towards religion were all intact.“He was brought here in chains, but that should not diminish his culture prior to this. Gullah not only helps me to define who I am and why I do what I do.“In the freedom of that, I am able to enlighten men and women wherever they may be and encourage them to find out who they are.”She said, unfortunately, this is not really taught in the United States. She said rather than allowing someone else to create her identity for her, she is able to research and find out why she does what she does.“I grew up in the era when black men were depicted as all brawn and no brain,” she said. “It was an era when so much about African Americans was negative.“Gullah helps you to replace all of those negative things, so that our children and all children, can begin to appreciate the many contributions that the African has brought to America and the world.“In doing so when you can appreciate your brother you can appreciate yourself. We can try to live in this world very harmoniously.”Unfortunately, she didn’t think things had changed much since she was young, in terms of the way that African Americans are depicted through the media.“I think there is still a large population of African Americans who have a dislike for themselves,” she said. “We so easily accept anyone as a role model.“Things will get better when the world of academia begins to take an honest approach to the contributions of Africans. It will happen when they begin to implement that in their text books.“They need to be apologetic in their writing and state that it was wrong. They need to make strong and bold statements.“We talk about the dark ages, but slavery in America was a dark age. We need to say that.“In making that statement you declare that man (depicted as a slave) to be a human being, no whatever his choices are in life. You will look at him as a human being as opposed to an animal.“When you take an honest factual approach to the African American you can see that he is human and has the same desires, demons, hopes and aspirations like any other group.“Gullah helps to bring that honesty, that factual approach. Gullah helps to being that to centre, but we are not there yet.”She will be performing at the Bermuda Festival on Friday and Saturday at 8pm at City Hall. Tickets are $25 for students and $65 for adults available at www.bdatix.bm.For more information see the Bermuda Festival website at www.bermudafestival.org . Also see www.marlenasmalls.net.