248 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentfunerals and on secular occasions such as corn shuckings
and post-harvest celebrations, and the lyrics were not al-
ways on sacred topics, but rather sometimes on demonstra-
bly secular topics. To apply the premises of Euro-American
religious thought to African American practice forces the
latter into a false dichotomy of the sacred and secular that
does not exist in traditional African and African Diasporan
culture. Th e ring as symbol of community and respect for
the ancestors is of many dimensions, refl ecting both sacred
and profane aspects of life.
Johann S. Buis identifi es the underlying rhythm of the
shout as the 3+3+2 pattern—the African rhythmic pattern
that is the basis of African American music, from the blues,
gospel, and jazz to all that followed. Th e tools of Western
musical analysis are insuffi cient not only to study the rhyth-
mic sophistication of African and African-derived music
but also to study its characteristic nuance of tone. It is in
these two dimensions that the ancestral spirituality of Af-
rica survives in the ring shout and in its musical progeny:
the popular music of black America.
In New Orleans, the ring shout was used in burial ritu-
als, and the ring was straightened out to become the second
line of jazz funerals. Th ere is also evidence of the shout’s
infl uence in bop jazz and rhythm and blues hits, such as
Paul Williams’s “Th e Hucklebuck.” Th e emergence of funk
in mid-20th century was nothing less than a full-blown re-
vival of the ring in modern garb.
Th e shout has also survived in secular dance. A num-
ber of observers have mentioned the shout’s infl uence on
the minstrel shows’ “walk around” and “cake walk,” as well
as it adaptation into the Charleston. Floyd adds to these the
breakdown, buzzard lope, and slow drag of the late 19th
century on through the 20th century’s black bottom and
lindy hop, to the line dances of the late 20th century.
See also: Kongo Cosmogram; Slave Culture; Slave ReligionFred J. HayBibliography
Epstein, Dena J. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1977.
Floyd, Samuel A. Th e Power of Black Music. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Floyd, Samuel A. “Ring Shout! Black Music, Black Literary Th eory,
and Black Historical Studies.” BMRJ 11, no.2 (1991):267–89.
Gordon, Robert Winslow. “Negro ‘Shouts’ from Georgia.” 1927.
Reprint in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings
in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore. Ed. Alan
Dundes, 445–51. New York: Garland, 1981.of the shouters, and a biographic profi le of their leader,
Lawrence McKiver, in their essential work, Shout Because
You’re Free: Th e African American Ring Shout Tradition in
Coastal Georgia (1998). Th e Rosenbaum’s book includes the
most detailed and complete historical overview of the shout
tradition and the most extensive Bibliography.
Th e shout should be understood as community dance
and ritual rather than in terms of the English word “shout.”
Of undoubted African origin, the shout as practiced by Af-
rican Americans along the rice coast in the 20th century
did not include actual vocalized shouting. Earlier accounts
of the shout sometimes describe participants becoming
possessed, shouting, and “falling out” of the circle. Rosen-
baum suggested that this spirit possession was due to the
infl uence of the Great Revival, but these instances are more
likely reinterpretations of African spirit possession as is still
found in the circular dancing of Afro- Caribbean religion.
Th e term “shout” itself may have come from Africa: linguist
Lorenzo Dow Turner suggested the word’s origin could be
found in the Arabic word saut—a term used to denote cir-
cular ritual movement as practiced in parts of Islamic west-
ern Africa. Rosenbaum and other 20th-century observers
discovered a separate category of mostly religious-themed
songs for the shout, “shout songs” or “running spirituals.”
Historians such as Sterling Stuckey who have exam-
ined the shout primarily through the historical literature
argue that spirituality was central to the ring dance. Th e
ring shout has a connection to many diff erent ring dances
throughout West and West-Central Africa and can be found
throughout the African Diaspora. Perhaps the most com-
pelling spiritual connection is the ring shout’s similarity to
the Kongo cosmogram, which symbolizes the four major
phases of the lifecycle—birth, adolescence, adulthood, and
the aft erlife. Th us, both the ring shout and the cosmogram
were important symbols in African American culture that
refl ected the belief in the connection between the living and
the ancestral worlds.
Because the ring shout had a distinctly African spiritual
origin, the shout was typically held apart from the regular
Christian worship service as a distinct activity, either aft er
regular worship had concluded or as specially scheduled
events. Participants were careful to never cross their legs be-
cause it was believed that to do so was dancing rather than
shouting, of Satan rather than of God. Th ose who crossed
their legs or danced too lasciviously were removed from the
ring if not the building. Th e shout was also performed at