The Story of the Shout

by

The Story of the Shout

By Mason Stewart

In the beginning, there is the beat. A distinctive clapping of the hands and tapping of the feet. As a broomstick joins in and pounds out the rhythm on the hardwood floor, the dancers begin to move. They move to the beat in a slow counter-clockwise manner; shuffling along, their feet never leaving the floor, heels keeping time with bent legs always moving forward, never crossing, circling slowly to the beat. Then a voice is heard. A voice that, although carrying a tune, is not really singing and not really talking either, but speaking to the beat:

“Oh Eve—where is Ad-u-m?”

“Oh Eve—Adam in the garden”

A chorus answers:

“Pinnin’ Leaves. Pinnin’ Leaves.”

“Adam in the garden.”

“Pinnin’ Leaves. Pinnin’ Leaves.”

Thus, begins the ring shout, a unique demonstration of both performance art and living history. Performance art because it is a carefully choregraphed cultural dance performance of the highest caliber. Living history because it is the oldest surviving African-American performance tradition in North America.

The Gullah Geechee language featured in the songs grew out of the isolation of the enslaved Africans who toiled in fields on the plantations scattered amongst the lowlands and barrier islands of the coastal South. However, many of the rhythms and dance steps performed trace their origins even further back into the now long-forgotten past before the middle passage, to the imagined halcyon days of freedom in West Africa. Due to its own unique nature and isolation, this performance art and living history was almost lost forever. Fortunately, thanks to the tireless efforts of a few who grasped its cultural significance and took the time to preserve its history, the authentic performance continues.

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Jason Thrasher, Thrasher Photography

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Paul Meacham @CoastalGATravel

The tempo of the beat increases. As the dancers move, shuffle, and sway to the beat, they fill their aprons with imaginary leaves and the songster sings out:

 “Lord called Adam.”

“Pinnin’ Leaves. Pinnin’ Leaves.”

“Adam wouldn’ answer.”

“Pinnin’ Leaves. Pinnin’ Leaves.”

“Adam Shame’”

Though some of the highly-stylized movements may owe their true origins to older Muslim or African tribal ceremonial traditions, historians assert that the ring shout itself is a completely original African-American art form. It is a unique cultural expression that grew out of an enslaved people’s exposure to the teachings of colonial Christianity. Not the redemptive Christianity that was practiced by their masters, but a Christianity viewed through the eyes of those who--robbed of everything else--yearned for the promised freedom of a joyous hereafter. So, as the performance continues, each ring shout tells its own unique story, ever expanding on those early traditions.

Now the Shouters sing out:

“Come t’ tell you ‘bout Jubilee”

“A-a-ah my Lord!”

“My Mother done gone to Jubilee”

“My soul rock on Jubilee!”

“I got a right in Jubilee”

“I got a right in Jubilee”

This time, they are not just performing a quaint traditional slave song of the Georgia Sea Islands, but are also, on a much deeper level, sharing the soul of an enslaved people. And though the infectious joy of the double-time beat captures the moment and invades the feet, for those who truly listen, the words carry a solemn melancholy plea that also tugs long and hard at the heart.

According to historians, the beginnings of the ring shout as we know it today, probably began as two separate art forms: the shout and ring play. The shout was a purely religious “call and response” technique adopted by African-American preachers to teach and spread the new religion. Being predominantly Protestant, the new religion of the enslaved Africans did not include the sin of dancing, which was officially discouraged. However, secular ring play, which involved both singing and dancing, was also popular at the time and had very strong cultural roots. The rhythmic patterns of ring play fit naturally into the equally rhythmic religious call and response tropes of the day. As long as the content was religious in nature, and the moves did not involve sinful dance steps like toe tapping, crossing of the legs, or fiddle playing, the merging of the two art forms began to arise as an acceptable form of religious expression. And that is likely how the ring shout was born.

One historian noted that, “During slavery, the ring shout was practiced more during the holidays between Christmas and Watch Night [New Year’s Eve]. It was during this week when they had more time to be with family.”  It was a celebration of watching the old year leave and the new one arrive. It was a time filled with thoughts of hope and enlightenment. People would go from house to house and shout. “Sometimes when the shouting got really excited, the floors would fall apart from the beating of the stick and the men would end up repairing them the next day.”

Though performance variations of the ring shout existed among the many isolated plantations throughout the Southeast, the basic elements of the shout were the same. According to Venus McIver of the McIntosh Shouters, “The shout we were taught as children was very specific. Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were very particular. If you didn’t shout correctly, you couldn’t shout with the ‘old folk’ yet. But you could shout with the other children until you got it right.” As such, the ring shout spread as an integral part of the religious and cultural life of the enslaved African-Americans of the coastal South. And many sang a variation of:

“Want t’ go t’ Heaven got t’ plumb de line.”

“You got t’ Shout right.”

“Plumb de line”

“You got t’ Shout right”

“Plumb de line”

“Want t’ go t’ Heaven got t’ plumb de line.”

Although fiddle playing and secular dancing were officially discouraged and technically not part of the pure ring shout tradition, their impact on African-American plantation life was nevertheless significant and lasting. You can see how they ultimately made their way into the performance art seen today in secular songs like:

“Once I went out huntin”

I heard de possum sneeze

“I holler back to Susan

Put on de pot o’ peas”

The obviously non-religious dance step, known as “The Buzzard Lope” is now a popular part of the performance tradition and is often demonstrated by Frankie Quimby of the Georgia Sea Island Singers and Griffin Lotson of the Geechee Gullah Shouters.

Along with secular dancing, some African drum routines, once strictly forbidden, have also reappeared in modern performances. African drums were outlawed on most plantations because the slave owners believed they could be used as secret communication devices by their slaves to plan escape, or even worse, insurrection. In response to the ban, the enslaved African-Americans invented an entirely new rhythm technique called “hamboning” or “Juba Dance,” using foot stomping and hand slapping of the chest, legs, hands, cheeks, etc. to keep time and replicate their earlier forbidden drum rhythms.

“Hambone, Hambone

Where you been?

'Round the corner

And back agin'

Hambone Hambone

Where's your wife?

In the kitchen cookin’ rice"

National recognition of groups that performed slave spirituals, work songs, and ring shouts began after Bessie Jones caught the attention of Smithsonian Institution folklorist Alan Lomax, who had originally seen the Sea Island Singers in 1935 when he was visiting St. Simons Island. In 1959, he returned to the area and was impressed by Bessie Jones’ contribution to the group with her strong vocals. He made field recordings of the Georgia Sea Island Singers in 1959-60. These recordings are now part of the Library of Congress. He also recorded Bessie while working on her biography in New York in 1961. Since that time, the Sea Island Singers with longtime member Frankie Quimby have performed for three presidents, at two Olympic Games, and various other events and festivals throughout the years. In 1990, they received the Governor’s Award in the Humanities. The Georgia Sea Island Singers were one of the most popular groups on the folk circuit in the 1960s and 70s.

Then, as pervasive as this African-American tradition was, it began to slowly disappear. According to ring shout practitioner and historian, Griffin Lotson of the Geechee Gullah Shouters, a major reason was that after the Civil War, the formally isolated African-Americans of the rural South began to interact with the more urban and “sophisticated” communities of the North and began to abandon their traditional Gullah Geechee heritage. The old ways were viewed by many as too provincial or countrified, so the unique traditions and practices that once defined a people fell into disuse and, except for a few isolated areas like around the Sea Islands of the Georgia coast, began to disappear.

“May be the las’ time we shout together”

“May be the las’ time I don’t know”

“May be the las’ time we shout together”

“May be the las’ time I don’t know”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, may be the las’ time, I don’t know”

Just how close did this fundamental African-American art form come to disappearing completely from history? In 1983, Doug and Frankie Quimby, prominent and renowned members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers asked writer, artist, and photographer Fred C. Fussell and Southern Music Scholar, George Mitchell, to help locate new participants for the Georgia Sea Island Festival. According to Mr. Fussell, the only surviving ring shout group they found, “not just on the Georgia/South Carolina coast, but anywhere in the country” was at the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in the small community of Bolden, near Darien, Georgia.

This group, known now as the McIntosh Shouters, somehow managed to resist the cultural eraser that freedom and modernity often brought to so many other formerly enslaved communities. Perhaps it was due to their relative isolation from the assimilation pressures of big cities, or maybe it was also due to the extraordinarily close knit family bonds of the community itself. This may have started with their ancestors, Amie and London Jenkins, who were split up during the Civil War and sent to different plantations. However, once they were told they were free, they set out on foot to reunite with one another. Since then, the family has grown and remained very close; passing down from generation to generation a proud heritage based on a strong tradition of family, faith, and community. For whatever the reason, standing at the center of that special heritage is the ring shout and the traditions carried on for generations by the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church and the McIntosh Shouters.

Today, thanks to a renewed interest in preserving, protecting, and promoting our vanishing cultural history, Southeast Georgia ring shout groups—far from vanishing—have not only survived, but gained national fame and international recognition. The McIntosh County Shouters were the recipients of a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993 and received a Governor’s Award in the Humanities in 2010. Last September, they were given the high honor of being invited by the Smithsonian Institution to perform in celebration of the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. They have also participated in shows at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Library of Congress, and at countless festivals and events throughout the United States. They have been featured in a Georgia Public Television documentary and on a Folkways LP. The “newest” of these groups, the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters, was formed in 1992 with the overall goal of preserving and protecting the unique and precious Gullah Geechee heritage. The reverential and spiritual nature of the shout earned the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters an invitation to perform at the pre-papal Mass during Pope Francis’ 2015 visit to Philadelphia.

So, the next time you hear the clapping of the hands and the tapping of the feet, or the sound of a broom handle pounding out the beat, pause, listen, and then join in with:

“My soul rock on Jubilee!

O-o-oh my Lord!

That Jub!, That Jub! That Jubilee!

My soul rock on Jubilee!”                                                         

And become part of a living history that persevered to provide the cultural foundation for so much of what we call American music today.