Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision - March 3, 2024
This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series about the demise and survival of foot stomping cheers.
This pancocojams post presents my opinions about the creation, death, and survival in usually modified forms of the children's (mostly African American girls' informal recreational past time that I refer to as "foot stomping cheers", but some people refer to as "steps" or "cheers".
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/03/some-youtube-videos-of-foot-stomping.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post showcases some examples of foot stomping cheers. That post also presents some examples of stomp and shake cheerleading routines as I believe those routines show some of their derivation from foot stomping movements.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the unknown composer/s of these cheers. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post, the performers who are featured in these videos, and the publishers of these videos on YouTube.
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Most of this post is a revision of a 2021 pancocojams post on foot stomping cheers that I have deleted.
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A DEFINITION AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF FOOT STOMPING CHEERS
"Foot stomping cheers" is a relatively new category of children's recreational play that involves chanting and choreographed foot and hand clapping movements. "Steps" or "cheers" are other referents that have been used for "foot stomping cheers". I coined the term "foot stomping cheer" because the word "steps" appears to only refer to their performance activities and the word "cheers" appears to only refer to the words that are chanted. In contrast, the term "foot stomping cheers" refers to both the words of that are chanted (and the distinctive textual structure of those cheers) as well as the distinctive way that those cheers are supposed to be performed.
Foot stomping cheers are chanted while their performers execute choreographed, syncopated, percussive movement routines that are very similar to African American originated Greek lettered fraternity & sorority stepping (steppin).
Most foot stomping cheers use this beat pattern: "stomp clap/ stomp stomp/ clap". Another beat pattern is "stomp stomp clap/ stomp stomp clap." Those two standard beat patterns appear to be used for all foot stomping cheers. Moderate tempo 4/4 beats created by those foot stomps alternate with the chanters'(individual) hand claps, body pats (especially thigh pats), and less frequently, finger snaps. Because these 4/4 beats are omnipresent in R&B, Hip-Hop, Rock, Gospel, and other forms of music, foot stomping cheer routines are much more a part of African American cultural aesthetics than White American cultural aesthetics.
I've been collecting examples of foot stomping cheers from my direct (face to face) collection in the mid 1980s to around 2008, from the Old Mother Hippletoe, Rural and Urban Children's Songs, from several books on African American children's culture, from online sources including YouTube videos and their discussion threads (when comments to children's videos were allowed).,and from my no longer active cultural website cocojams.com. I also found examples of this subset of children's cheers on other websites and blogs, particularly those which cater/ed to African Americans such as discussion threads where that were dedicated to members of historically Black Greek letter sororities, and lipstick alley.com discussion threads.
It should be noted that this post on foot stomping cheers isn't about "stomp cheers" (also called "stomps"). The textual structure (words) of stomp cheers may be the same as the words for early foot stomping cheers. However, usually stomp cheers' words and movements are slightly or very different from early foot stomping cheers.
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-stomp-cheers-differ-from-foot.html "How Stomp Cheers Differ From Foot Stomping Cheers".
The well known 1977 record "We Will Rock You" by Queen is a very familiar Rock song that could serve as an example of the type of beat that is used for foot stomping routines - (recognizing, of course, that foot stomping chants aren't meant to be performed to recorded music).Click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk&ab_channel=QueenOfficial for a sound file of that song.
Unfortunately, I've only found a few YouTube videos of the performance of foot stomping cheers and those examples are usually labeled as "cheers" or "steps" without any recognition that their movement routines and/or their words represent a certain sub-set of cheers or steps. YouTube video examples of the cheers "Introduce Yourself" and "Shabooya Roll Call" from the Bring It On cheerleader movies provide an exaggerated or modified versions of foot stomping cheers.Furthermore, most of the videos of the performances of foot stomping cheers as I recall observing them from as I recall them from the 1980s, 1990s, and the early 2000s are no longer available. However, I've found a number of word only examples of a foot stomping cheers online. I've compiled those examples in a five part pancocojams series. Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/09/foot-stomping-cheers-alphabetical-list.html "Pancocojams Compilation Of Foot Stomping Cheers (Alphabetical List: Numbers - C)" for Part I of that series entitled . The links to the other posts in that series are given in that post. .
- Your Left
- Cheering Is My Game
- Hollywood Now Swingin' / Dynomite
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Only two of those cheers fit the textual structural description of what I call "foot stomping cheers" - "Cheering Is My Game" and "Hollywood Now Swingin'/Dynomite". I believe that the last recorded cheer is a combination of two independent [stand alone] cheers - "Hollywood Now Swingin'" and "Dynomite". I have directly collected several examples of "Cheering Is My Game" and "Hollywood Now Swinging" cheers from the 1980s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I have found some online examples of "Cheering Is My Name" (with different titles such as "Cheerleader" and "Cheerleader Roll Call") and lots of examples of "Hollywood" (with that title and other titles such as "Hollywood Swinging" and "Hollywood Goes Swinging" from the 1980s and 1990s in multiple African American communities throughout the United States.
While it's not a footstomping cheer, it's interesting to note that the cheer entitled "Your Left" in
the 1978 vinyl record Old Mother Hippletoe: Rural and Urban Children’s Songs is the earliest documented example that I've found of the rhyme/cheer that's now very widely known as "Bang Bang Choo Choo Train". The title "Your Left" points to one of that cheer's sources - the Duckworth Chant military cadence.
Given the racial composition of Washington D.C. in the 1970s, is reasonable to assume that the Washington D.C. school girls were African American. "School girls" usually refers to females who are pre-college/university age (ages 5- 18 years). Given the references to boyfriends in those examples my guess is that those particular school girls were at least 10 years old. My documentation of what I call "foot stomping cheers" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1980-2005), those who performed those cheers were African American girls who usually were between 6 years old and 13 years old.
Kate Rinzler, the collector of the cheers featured in Old Mother Hippletoes also wrote the album's notes. In those notes, Rinzler refers to these examples as "neighborhood cheers" and wrote:
"Unlike the more communal games, neighborhood cheerleading as performed by girls in Washington, D.C., requires rehearsal and is often dominated by a single dynamic girl who solicits recruits and kicks out slackers. Girls practice by themselves, best friends cheer together, groups proliferate, and everyone who wants to gets into the act.
In 1973-75, fieldwork for the Festival of American Folklife revealed cheerleading girls taking turns doing a dance step or a simple gymnastic trick. In 1976, perhaps because of the popularity on television of the Olympic Games, there was a sudden citywide interest in gymnastic pyrotechnics: complete frontward and sideward splits, forward and backward flips,
and cartwheels ending in jumped splits.
The texts of the cheers suit the girls' growing sense of attractiveness, group solidarity, and allegiance to school and boyfriend. They also attest to their knowledge and misinformation about forbidden subjects —inebriation, aggression, sexuality—and to their interest in the heroes and heroines of movies that exploit these subjects."
-end of quote-
Notice that these cheer examples were documented as being part of the recreational play of girls pretending to be cheerleaders. This is in contrast to cheers that actual school cheerleaders performed using foot stomping and hand clap motions as early as 2000. These cheerleading movements and their accompanying chants are similar but not the same as the recreational activity that I refer to as foot stomping cheers.
Although those album notes make no reference to this, it's reasonable to assume that, like other recreational play, and like the foot stomping cheers that I observed my daughter and her friends perform in the 1980s, and other children perform since then, there is usually no formal audience for foot stomping cheers. The girls pretending to be cheerleaders perform in front of pretend audiences. They perform in groups of two or in a small group to learn the words to specific cheers and to master the specific cheer routines that they have choreographed.
My direct experiences with foot stomping cheers are largely from my observations of my daughter and her friends performing foot stomping cheers in the mid 1980s, and from other African American girls performing those cheers in Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania and some other surrouding communities from the mid 1980s to around 2007. These girls referred to cheer performances as "doing cheers" or "doing steps". (The word "steps" is most closely associated with the movement art of steppin/g that is performed by historically Black (African American) Greek letter fraternities and sororities. That movement art became more widely known in the 1970s around the same time that foot stomping cheers became known.
My position is that "foot stomping cheer movements -but not the textual (word) structure of foot stomping cheers- developed from historical Black Greek letter fraternity and sorority stepping. The textual structure of historically Black Greek letter fraternity and sorority chants is different from the textual structure of foot stomping cheers.
Stomp and shake cheerleading also appears to have developed in the late 1970s. That African American originated style of cheerleading is an offshoot of "mainstream" cheerleading. I believe that Stomp and Shake cheerleading and foot stomping cheers were greatly influenced by Washington D.C. based go go music and by funk music of the late 1970s.
Kate Rinzler wrote that the girls she recorded in 1976 doing those "neighborhood cheers" did back flips and splits. She might have been referring to the other cheers that she collected during that session- Read my earlier comments. In my observations (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and surrounding communities) no back flips, splits, or other gymnastic moves were done during foot stomping cheer performances. Instead, for the solo portions, girls did moves from currently popular R&B/Hip Hop dances.
Foot stomping cheers are part of children's recreational play, and therefore have no known composers or choreographers. For that reason, they belong to no one and anyone can chant or perform them. This is very different from the social disapproval that is attached to people chanting or performing fraternity/sorority step chants and/or chanting and/or performing certain stomp and shake cheers. In those performance arts, certain chants/cheers and certain movements are signature cultural products of those groups and non-members are socially prohibited from using them, unless-particularly in the case of stomp and shake cheers- they receive direct permission from the cheer squads which composed and choreographed those cheers.
Here's information about the structure, themes, and words of foot stomping cheers as indicated by the examples given in the Old Mother Hippletoe album suggests, and as I have documented from my direct collecting from 1980s to 2010, and my online collecting to date:
1. Foot stomping cheers are composed using a variant form of call & response that I've termed "group/consecutive soloists".
Usually the group voice (often without the first soloist) is heard first. The soloist then responds to the group.
This pattern continues, and usually the soloist then has a short solo portion. The group may or may not chant again before the cheer begins again from the beginning with a new soloist. This pattern continues until every member of the group has had one equal (same amount of time) turn as the soloist. My experience is that the order of soloist is determined before the cheer begins, often with girls trying to be the first to call out "first", "second", "third" etc.
2. I believe the earliest formation for these cheers was a circle with the soloist in the middle. That circle formation changed to semi-circles or a line or lines (usually a horizontal line) when foot stomping cheers began to be performed in front of actual audiences and not casual onlookers or imagined audiences.
My experiences of foot stomping cheers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was with girls standing in semi-circles or in horizontal lines (or two vertical lines which merged into one while performing a particular introduction cheer.). It wasn't until those cheers were performed on stage as part of a game song group that I founded that I observed the soloist stepping up (performing stepping moves) to the front of the other girls and then, still facing forward, moving back to a place in the line while the new soloist stepped to the front of the other girls.
3. Unlike folk songs, these cheers feature only a limited amount of improvisation and choices of what words to say. My experience is that some cheers had "fixed" words, including the soloists' words. In other cheers, a certain amount of line choices and/or improvisation was expected in the soloists' portion. It appeared to me that girls memorized key lines and used them in those cheers that allowed for improvisation, as long as those lines fit the same theme as the cheer, and as long as those lines fit the same beat as the cheer. However, it was easy to fit lines with the beat, since, in my experience there were only two beat patterns used for foot stomping cheers.
4. Drama (role playing) is supposed to be an important part of chanting insult/bragging foot stomping cheers. These cheer performances fail if the stompers/chanters don't have "attitude" (i.e. How they say the cheer (intonation), their facial expressions, their moves and body gestures are supposed to support and reinforce the word of the cheer. For instance, in confrontational (insult, bragging) cheers the girls are pretending to have disdain for and aggressive stance toward their (imaginary, unnamed) opponent.
5. The following beat patterns were (are?) standard for foot stomping cheers: "stomp clap stomp stomp clap" or ""stomp stomp clap, stomp stomp clap". The beat of the cheer's tune determined which of these beat pattern was used. Judging from my direct observation in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area from the mid 1980s to around 2007, "stomp clap; stomp stomp clap" appears to have been the most often used foot stomping cheers. Either one or the other beat patterns is used for a particular cheer. They aren't combined.
The "stomp" portion of this pattern is made by hitting the foot hard on the ground to make a bass sound. The "clap" portion of the cheer was made by girls clapping their own hands (individual hand claps). In some cheers, girls alternated body pats with stomps. Hands could be clapped in front of a girl, between her legs, or less often - as I have observed, over her head.
While the words to foot stomping cheers are important, the most important thing in the performance of foot stomping cheers is keeping the beat. Foot stomping is performed in a metronome like manner throughout the entire cheer. Once the beat starts, with very few exceptions, the exact same beat continues until the end of the cheer.
The idea of a metronome beat can best be demonstrated by the Pop group Queen's 1977 hit song "We Will Rock You". Click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk&ab_channel=QueenOfficial for the official video of that record.
The "We will we will rock you" words of that song are used in a number of mainstream cheerleader cheers.
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THE DEMISE OF FOOT STOMPING CHEERS AS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN GIRLS' GROUP ACTIVITY
I began collecting mostly African American children's rhymes, singing games, and cheers in the mid-1980s both face to face and online. Around 2009 I stopped collecting children's rhymes and cheers offline (through observation and directly asking children about their recreational activities). I still search online for these cheers, but haven't come across any examples after 2009 or so.
It also seems to mean that the spirit and sassy attitudes of confrontational foot stomping cheers are largely missing from performances that I've watched online of these surviving cheers (with usually have modified textual structures and movement routines).
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THE SURVIVAL OF AT LEAST ONE FOOT STOMPING CHEER (WITHOUT ITS FOOT STOMPING MOVEMENT) - 'JUMP IN JUMP OUT (AND TURN YOURSELF AROUND"
A few foot stomping cheers have survived as "camp songs" and/or as "brain break" activities in some (usually) elementary schools . In most cases, these cheers/musical activities are taught to children by adults rather and children rarely self-initiate them as was previously done before 2009 or so when the custom of foot stomping "died out".
Jump In Jump Out
Dan Weir, Dec 24, 2008
First song for campers and staff to sing at Camp Sizanani
"Jump In
Jump Out
Turn yourself around
Jump In
Jump Out
Introduce yourself!"
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From Sizanani from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Sizanani
"...hOperating in the Magaliesburg area in North West Province, South Africa, Camp Sizanani offers multiple camp sessions throughout the year for children aged twelve through nineteen whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS."...
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The words that are given in that video's summary are only a partial transcription of the cheer that the teenagers say. It doesn't include the call and response portion in which a soloist says "My name is __" and the group responds "Yeah" and the soloist says "I like to ___ [says what he or she likes to do] and the group says "Yeah" and then the soloist says "I like to __ for the rest of my life". At that point the group and the soloist perform that same movement/dance while saying "for the rest of her [or his] life".
There at least two White adults in the circle that is formed for this game. Given the summary statement that is included with this video, it's likely that those White adults (and/or possibly other adults) taught those teens that "camp song".
These South African teenagers don't perform that cheer the way I recall watching my daughter and her girl friends performed it in the mid 1980s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I watched them doing choreographed, percussive foot stomps combined with individual hand claps to the beat of the chant as well jumping to the front and to the back and then turning around when they said those words. The soloist also did a brief dance when it was her or his turn. In this video the only movements for this cheer that the African teens perform are the movements corresponding to the cheer's words and the individual dance that the soloist does. That may be because the White students who taught those African teens that rhyme didn't know how to do the choreographic percussive foot stomping cheer motions.
That cheer is exactly the same as this cheer that my daughter collected from African American school age girls at a Pittsburgh area summer camp when she was a counselor at that camp the mid 1980s.
JUMP IN JUMP OUT (Version#1)
All: Jump in, Jump out.
And turn yourself about.
Jump in, Jump out.
And turn yourself about.
Soloist #1: My name is Kadiyah.
Group (except soloist): Yeah.
Soloist #1: I like to dance, dance.
I want to be a dancer all the rest of my life.
Group: All the rest of her life.
All: Jump in, Jump out.
And turn yourself about.
Jump in, Jump out.
And turn yourself about.
Soloist #1: My name is Michaela.
Group: Yeah.
Soloist #1: I like to cheer, cheer.
I want to be a cheerleader for the rest of my life.
Group: For the rest of her life.
Repeat the cheer from the beginning with the next soloist and continue until every member of the group has had one turn as soloist.
-African American girls ages 9-11 years from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Lillian Taylor Camp; collected by Tazi M.(Powell) Hughes in the late 1980s or 1991, transcribed from a cassette tape by Azizi Powell in1996
-end of quote-
Here's another foot stomping cheer example of "Jump In Jump Out"
JUMP IN JUMP OUT (Version #2)
I remember this from a show i watched:
jump in jump out turn yourself around. jump in jump out
introduce yourself my name is keisysha. what. i'm nine
huh. and i'm so fine everyday of my life. everyday of her
life. and you go on until everyone gets a turn. and don't forget to rhyme.
have fun. but i wish i new more but i'm only 12. bye and keep sending chants.
-db, 3/08/2006, cocojams.com
-snip-
My guess is that the television show that this contributor referred to was a 1998 version of Gullah Gullah Island.
Cocojams.com was the name of my cultural website. That website was online from January 2001 to November 2014 when I voluntarily de-activated it, in part to concentrate on this pancocojams blog. Cocojams had an easy to use page where visitors could submit rhyme and cheer examples without including their emails. Many of those rhyme and cheer examples were from self-identified children and pre-teens.
https://cocojams2.blogspot.com is pancocojams' "sister blog" which includes a lot of the examples of rhymes that were found on cocojams.com.
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/09/foot-stomping-cheers-alphabetical-list_6.html for five examples of the "Jump In Jump Out" foot stomping cheer that are included in my pancocojams collection of foot stomping cheers (not including that Camp Sizanani example).
I plan to publish a pancocojams post about "Jump In Jump Out" cheers/musical activities in the very near future. I'll add the link to that post here.
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This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams series.
Visitor comments are welcome.
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