Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post compares Anna R. Beresin's description of "steps" and her conclusions about the cultural meaning of that recreational activity from her 2010 book Recess Battle: Playing, Fighting, and Storytelling (University of Mississippi, Jackson)and my descriptions of and conclusions about this same recreational activity which I refer to as "foot stomping cheers".
The content of this post is presented for folkloric and socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Anna R. Beresin for her research and writing about this subject, and thanks to the girls who shared examples of steps with her and thanks to those who shared examples of this recreational activity with me.
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This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series on foot stomping cheers. Click that tag to find more pancocojams post in that series. Also, click the tag "values foot stomping cheer" for a series of posts that explore the values that are expressed in particular foot stomping cheers.
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Part I: Excerpt from Anna R. Beresin's book Recess Battles....
Anna R. Beresin's 2010 book Recess Battle: Playing, Fighting, and Storytelling (University of Mississippi, Jackson) provides commentary about and examples of children's recreational rhymes from African American girls in Mills School (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) in 1991, 1992, 1999, and 2004, particularly girls' double dutch rhymes, hand clap rhymes, and steps.
Anna R. Beresin's description of and statements about "steps" are found in Chapter 6 (pages 104-106) of Recess Battles.... Most of that sub-section is quoted in this pancocojams post: https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/08/excerpt-about-steps-foot-stomping.html. Here's the portion of that sub-section that I respond to in this post:
[page] 105
“Stepping is the African American polyrhythmic hand clapping and foot stomping that is a circle or line game, often with call-and-response singing and turn taking. A proud tradition at many predominately African American schools and among African American groups at predominately white institutions, steps are akin to cheerleading and a cousin to both hand clapping and marching. [13] The steps performed in the Mill School yard exclusively concerned the body, skill, and the complex role of being an attractive young woman. They involved singing, clapping, stamping feet, and improvising with other steppers. Although professional or competitive steppers are both male and female, only girls engaged in stepping on the playground. The rhythms are complex and syncopated, and the formation is typically a small circle. In most cases, each stepper is introduced by name and given a chance to perform a solo move.
Unlike rope rhymes, step lyrics tend to be overtly sexual. Steps were taken much more seriously than hand-clapping games, which usually ended in laughter. [14]. Some traditional step themes involve ritual insults: poverty, physical ugliness, stupidity, and promiscuity. [15]. Rarely recorded
[page] 106
among females, especially young females, ritual insults are a way of practicing coolheadedness about the body in an insulting world. [16]. Originally expurgated from collections of children’s lore, taboo rhymes such as these have been recorded for what they are: honest reflections of the issues with which real children wrestle.
The girls who did double-dutch jump rope also did steps, which were exclusively the domain of African American working-class girls at the Mill School, those who traveled by bus from less affluent neighborhoods. It was a secret repertoire of the body, sometimes labeled “nasty” by the girls themselves. But when they were assured they would not get in trouble for singing to me, they sang louder than they did for “Big Mac” or any rope rhyme. Stepping offered the girls a chance to improvise and “show your motions”.
...the Mill School children considered steps special and rare...”
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Ms. Beresin included these description of the basic movements for "steps": "step, step clap, rock, clap"; "scissor feet, clap"; and "in pairs, in two lines, retreating, right rocks back, left in place, right in place, pause, clap
repeat until the end".
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Part II- Comparisons between her description of steps and my observations/conclusions about "foot stomping cheers"
A. My background "credentials" on this subject
"Steps" is a name for the girls' recreational activity that I call "foot stomping cheers".In addition to reading published books of and about African American children's rhymes and cheers such as Kyra D. Gaunt's The Games Black Girls Play:Learning The Ropes From Double-Dutch To Hip-Hop, I have been studying and collecting examples of foot stomping cheers ("steps") since 1985. I have done so as a voluntary self-described community folklorist who is an African American woman and mother of a daughter who performed some of these cheers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the mid 1980s. I have also directly collected some examples of cheers since 1985, but particularly since 1999, from African American girls in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from African American girls and women who attended my cultural programming (African storytelling; children's game song groups) in a number of mostly African American neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and surrounding communities. In addition to those direct collection activities, in the 1990s I collected several cheer examples via an informal written survey of children's rhymes and cheers from employees of the health care/social service agency where I worked. My daughter also helped me collect some cheers during her work at a Pittsburgh area summer camp in the 1990s and in her role as a Pitsburgh elementary school teacher and in her role of co-leader of an after-school cultural group ("Alafia Children's Ensemble) that I founded in 1999 and co-lead until 2006. And since 2000s, I collected examples of foot stomping cheers from people who submitted examples of those cheers to my no longer active cultural website "cocojams.com", and from other online websites, including YouTube.
In 2013 I published https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-overview-of-foot-stomping-cheers.html. That post is Part I of a two part series on foot stomping cheers. Part I dates the earliest examples of that cheer that I've found to 1976 and provides a general overview of the textual structure and performance of foot stomping cheers. Part I also includes my theories about the sources of this children's recreational activity. Part II of that series - http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/11/an-overview-of-foot-stomping-cheers.html provides examples of foot stomping cheers from four different categories of those cheers.
I've also published a five part alphabetical listing of foot stomping cheers on this pancocojams blog and have updated that compilation to include the examples of "steps" from Ann R. Beresin's Recess Battles... book. https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/09/foot-stomping-cheers-alphabetical-list.html "Foot Stomping Cheers Alphabetical List (Numbers - C)" is the first post in that series. The links for the other posts in that series are given in that post and in all other posts in that series.
I've provided this information to document that I have more than a casual interest in the subject of "steps" (foot stomping cheers) and also to explain why I was (and still am) excited to find descriptions, opinions, and examples of this recreational activity in Ann R. Beresin's 2010 book Recess Battle: Playing, Fighting, and Storytelling. The fact that these examples are from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the same time period as some of the examples of cheers that I collected is a bonus as that it enables me (and others) to compare this recreational activity in two major cities in Pennsylvania (which are 4 1/2 hours apart by car).
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Part B
I've numbered these comments as a means of presenting them in a more reader friendly format than sentences:
1. I agree with Ann R. Beresin that steps (foot stomping cheers) are an "African American polyrhythmic hand clapping and foot stomping [activity].
Beresin also wrote that "Although professional or competitive steppers are both male and female, only girls engaged in stepping on the playground".
I agree that foot stomping cheers are almost always performed by girls, but I believe that Beresin conflates what she calls "steps" and I call "foot stomping cheers" with historically Black Greek letter fraternity and sorority stepping. I'm not sure which step groups are professional, but I agree that step shows are usually competitive, and those competitions have evolved to often include substantial monetary awards. Unlike other activities, Greek letter fraternities and sororities that receive monetary awards for step show competitions (or for the closely related movement art of "strolling") do not become "professionals" and can still compete in other step shows/stroll events.
My position is that fraternity and sorority stepping is one of the main sources of foot stomping cheers (what Beresin calls "steps"). However, the performance movement fraternity and sorority stepping is not the same as the performance movement girls' foot stomping cheers. While some fraternity and sorority chants have a call and response structure, foot stomping cheers have a distinctively different group voice, consecutive soloists call & response textual structure. I describe foot stomping cheers' textual structure in some detail in the "Overview of foot stomping cheers" post whose link is given above. To contrast that textual structure and read more about historically Black Greek letter fraternity and sorority chants, click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/an-overview-of-black-greek-letter.html for Part I of a three part series.
2. I agree with Beresin that steps (foot stomping cheers) are largely an African American working class girls' activity.
3. I agree with Beresin that steps (foot stomping cheers) are favored by the girls who perform them over hand clap rhymes or jump roping. The Pittsburgh area girls that I spoke to about their preferences, indicated that hand clapping was a younger girls' activity while "doing cheers" was something for older girls (the oldest girls that I observed doing cheers were around 12 years old), because you needed more skill to do these than to do hand clap rhymes.)
4. Beresin writes that "The rhythms [of steps, meaning what I call "foot stomping cheers"] are complex and syncopated, and the formation is typically a small circle. In most cases, each stepper is introduced by name and given a chance to perform a solo move.
I agree that the girls doing these cheers give their names or nicknames and that these cheers continue until everyone in the group has had one equal length chance of being the soloist.
Although I have learned that cheers were/are performed in circle formation in Beresin's book and via some examples that I collected online from people submitting cheers to my no longer active cocojams.com website and otherwise, neither my daughter or I ever observed any foot stomping cheers in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area that were performed in a circle formation. The most often formation that we observed for most foot stomping cheers was girls standing in a horizontal line or semi-circle. However, certain cheers were always performed in a vertical line or in two or more horizontal lines. In the case of the horizontal line or semi-circle, girls stood in these lines in random order, not in numerical order (1- 5, for example, according of their turns as soloist.)
Later in my direct collection- around 2004- I noticed that as cheers began to be performed in programs on stages and elsewhere, that girls most often stood in a semi-circle (for the cheers which they had previously done while standing in a horizontal line). I believe that this change was made so that the performers could be seen by their audience (It should be noted that "traditionally" foot stomping cheers" were performed by girls who had "pretend audiences".) My observation is that during these later (around 2004 +) performances of foot stomping cheers (on a stage on off of a stage) girls still stood in random soloist order but would move in front of their space in line to do their solo portion. When their solo portion ended, the girls would (still facing forward) step back to their place in line.
5. All of the basic movements that Anna R. Beresin gave for "steps"* (foot stomping cheers) are very similar if not the same as the basic patterns that I've observed and gathered from other sources. Beresin also writes or implies that these movements are repeated until the end of the "step". I emphasize the fact that foot stomping cheers are syncopated choreographed routines that alternate bass sounding foot stomps with hand claps (or less often, body pats). These synchronized patterns continue without any stopping (and usually without any pattern changes) thoughout the entire foot stomping cheer. If anyone "messes up the beat", the cheer has to begin again from the beginning.
*from Beresin's sub-chapter on step, the basic movements for "steps" were: "step, step clap, rock, clap"; "scissor feet, clap"; and "in pairs, in two lines, retreating, right rocks back, left in place, right in place, pause, clap
repeat until the end".
According to my observations, the standard beat patterns for foot stomping cheers are "stomp clap, stomp stomp clap" or "stomp stomp clap, stomp stomp clap".
6. I agree with Beresin that "Stepping [doing foot stomping cheers] offered the girls a chance to improvise and “show your motions”. For some cheers, girls are expected to improvise, within a relatively limited cluster of set (such as names of popular dances) or within a relatively fixed set of rhyming verses (such as using a word that rhyme with a particular word- as in the rhyme "Hollywood"- "my name is [give name or nickname], I'm number one/ my reputation is having fun"... "my name is [give name or nickname], I'm number two/ kickin it with Scooby Doo".) "Kickin it means relaxing with". Note that these two numbers don't need to be given in order, but the soloist is supposed to recite a rhyme for a number that hasn't already been recited.
In contrast, the text of some of these cheers is relatively set and allows for little improvising except for the substitution of personalized information such as the girl's name or nickname, her astrological sign, and her favorite activity.
7. I take friendly exception to Beresin's phrasing of the traditional themes of steps (foot stomping cheers) as "involving ritual insults: poverty, physical ugliness, stupidity, and promiscuity" and her sentence that honest reflections of the issues with which real children wrestle". I agree that some of these cheers are "nasty", but some hand clap rhymes and other children's rhymes are also "nasty".
I also agree that these reflect the world around the girls and are parts of the girls' socialization for their roles as women. As such, these examples express the twin high values in urban poor and working class communities of self-confidence/toughness and physical attractiveness/sexiness/"being fly' (hip, cool, up to date with the latest street culture/styles). As such, these cheers echo many Black song/chant traditions of self-bragging and insult (dissing) opponents or competitors.
However, some foot stomping cheers ("steps") have no sexual, or insulting, or confrontational/threatening, or insults. Instead these cheers are just an excuse for girls to show of their ability to "step" (do foot stomping routines) and do still popular or old school popular dances.
It's my position that "self-confidence" is the overarching value for all foot stomping cheers. In order to survive and flourish in often difficult and dangerous African American urban communities, girls (and boys) need to learn how to confidently assert and defend themselves. Excelling in such recreational activities as hand clap routines, performing cheers (steps) and also jumping double dutch (in communities where that recreational activity is still found) provide opportunities for girls in these neighborhoods to develop and reinforce self-esteem and, as a result, to gain status.
While I believe that these cheers reflect life around the girls, I also believe that these cheers are dramatizations, meaning (for instance) that the girls aren't really feeling confrontation when they chant the confrontational lines for these cheers. They are role playing. Yet, I believe that it's important to document, study, and reflect on the way these cheers echo certain topics, for instance, the way these cheers refer to romantic love.
Subsequent pancocojams posts on foot stomping cheers ("steps") will further explore values that are expressed in these cheers. Click the "values foot stomping cheers" for posts in that series.
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