Ring shout

Common card · No. 418448

The ring shout is a distinctive African American ritual dance originating with enslaved Africans in the southern United States where worshippers move in a counterclockwise circle while hand-clapping, foot-patting and shuffling, stick-beating to foreground the rhythm, and call-and-response singing. It is an oral tradition passed down in African American families since the era of slavery. Elders and religious leaders pass down songs and shouts to the younger generation. The practice of sacred circle dancing combines spirituals and rhythmic music, reflecting its Christian and African spiritual and cultural importance. Most scholars agree it is a "Black holy dance" that developed in the living quarters of enslaved African practitioners and Black Christian "praise houses" through a fusion of Central and West African spiritual traditions (like counterclockwise circle dances, polyrhythms, and ancestor veneration), and revivalistic Christian practices in either the eighteenth or nineteenth century...

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