Ring Shout 247Once found throughout the slave states, the shout sur-
vived longest along the rice coast stretching from the North
Carolina–South Carolina border to north Florida. Th is was
an area with a greater concentration of African Americans
and one in which a number of the slaves at the time of
emancipation were African-born. It was thought that the
ring shout had completely disappeared in North America
until 1980, when a surviving shout group was discovered
in coastal Georgia. Th is group organized themselves as the
McIntosh County Shouters for festival performances. Th e
McIntosh County Shouters are documented in sound re-
cordings, videos, and a scholarly book.
Slave owners sometimes tolerated but oft en were un-
aware of the shouts. Many clergy, black and white, disap-
proved of this mode of worship that was of such obvious
African origin; they oft en referred to the shout as “hea-
thenish” or “barbaric.” For these reasons, slaves, and later
freed blacks, oft en performed the shout ritual in secrecy.
Th ough syncretized with Christian themes and motifs,
the ring shout stemmed from sacred dance and ritual of
West Africa—its counterpart still to be commonly found
in Jamaican Afro-Christian cults, in Haitian Voodoo, and
throughout the Afro-Caribbean culture area.
Th ere exist a few descriptions of the shout made by
white observers prior to emancipation, but most descrip-
tions of the shout are postbellum, including numerous ones
collected in the Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narra-
tives. According to Dena Epstein, the fi rst known descrip-
tion of the ring shout dates from 1845—Sir Charles Lyell’s
description of slaves in coastal Georgia. Th e earliest use
(1860) of the term “shout” was in an unidentifi ed English-
man’s description from Beaufort, South Carolina. During
Reconstruction, descriptions of the shout appeared more
frequently.
In the 20th century, Robert W. Gordon published im-
portant descriptions of the shout in Georgia (1927) and
South Carolina (1931). New Jersey native Lydia Parrish
collected a number of shout songs in coastal Georgia in
the decades prior to World War II, publishing them with
descriptions and photographs of the shout in Slave Songs
of the Georgia Sea Islands (1942). John and Alan Lomax re-
corded shouts as far west as Louisiana for the Library of
Congress over a period of several decades. Th e Rosenbaums
(Art and Margo Newmark) and Johann Buis published a
study of the McIntosh County ring shout, complete with
song texts, drawings, photographs, an ethnographic studyother and to the world; ragtime communicated ideas about
liberty, freedom, love, community, and family. Its elaborate
melodic and compositional makeup stood as testament to
the ingenuity of African Americans; it stood as a reminder
of eternal African American inner strength, resilience, per-
sistence, and genius.
Ragtime music has endured over the years and most
recently has experienced a renewed scholarly interest with
the African American musical community. Some impor-
tant ragtime compositions include “Harlem Rag,” “Frog
Legs Rag,” “Sunfl ower Slow Drag,” and “Maple Leaf Rag.”
See also: Black Folk Culture; Jazz
Bruce Ormond GrantBibliography
Berlin, Edward A. King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Berlin, Edward A. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1980.
Gracyk, Tim, and Frank Hoff mann. Popular American Recording
Pioneers, 189 5– 19 25. New York: Haworth Press, 2000.
Hasse, John E. “Ragtime from the Top.” In Ragtime: Its History,
Composers and Music, ed. John E. Hasse. New York: Schirmer
Books, 1985.
Jasen, David A., and Jay Tichenor. Rags and Ragtime: A Musical
History. New York: Dover Publications, 1978.
Ring Shout
Th e ring shout is a kind of holy dance in which the par-
ticipants move counterclockwise in a circle, hardly lift ing
their feet from the fl oor, knees bent, leaning slightly for-
ward from the hips, and making movements expressive
of the lyrics sung by a “leader” and “basers,” or chorus,
in call-and-response fashion, propelled by cross-rhythms
produced by foot stomping, hand clapping, and oft en a
“sticker,” a person who beats a broom handle or other stick
on the wood fl oor. Th e shout usually begins slowly and
gradually builds in intensity. Sometimes a shout might last
an hour or more and a shout service for hours. Drums,
common to the ring dances of Africa and elsewhere in
the African Diaspora, were usually absent from the North
American ring shout, their use by slaves having been for-
bidden. Th e persistence and complexity of the African
rhythmic base was maintained through these other per-
cussive techniques.