Ring Shout- Let The Circle Be Unbroken

Olubayo Jackson is an independent filmmaker, dancer, researcher, and educator. She teaches dance to over five hundred elementary students in New York City. Olubayo came to film through her need to develop culturally relevant curriculum and educational videos that expressed multiple perspectives for her students. She utilizes film and the arts to help young people and adults learn about underrepresented cultural traditions and historical connections between Africa and the diaspora.

Olubayo has studied African dance for more than 20 years and has traveled extensively to Ghana, Gambia, Dominica, Belize, New Orleans, the Georgia Sea Islands, Brazil and South Africa to research African retention in dance and to document historical connections. Olubayo holds a Master’s degree in Education and Curriculum Development from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in International and African Studies .She studied filmmaking at Manhattan Media Network in New York City. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities “Gullah Voices” fellow as well as a Smithsonian “Middle Passage Institute” fellow. Olubayo Jackson was awarded the Cultural Warrior’s Award at the Fanike Black History Gala. Her films have screened at the Panafest Colloquium Ghana (2019), Fanike Black History Screening (2018), Geechee Kunda Gathering (2017), MCNY (Metropolitan College Of New York) Short film festival (2017) and Manhattan Media Network Short Film Festival (2017).

Olubayo was awarded a year-long research sabbatical which she utilized to create a multimedia dance curriculum and a short documentary called “ Akwaaba Dance.” The work in progress documentary traces her journey to connect hip hop, and other diasporic styles of dance such as Bele and Sensei masquerade dance from Dominica, Punta and John Canoe dance from the Garifuna in Central America and the Second line and Black Indian traditions of New Orleans to cultural inspirations in West Africa. Olubayo created a short documentary called “Geechee Kunda: Sustaining Our Culture, Telling Our Story.” This short film explores her family’s Gullah Geechee Museum and the center’s late founder, Jim Bacote’s Gullah Preservation legacy. Her most recent documentary “Ring Shout: Let The Circle Be Unbroken”, is about African American praise worship through movement and Gullah Geechee culture.