"This May Be My Last Time" (also known as "This May Be The Last Time") African American Gospel Song & Ring Shout)

KATHY PHELPS, Nov 11, 2010

Mt Ramah Primitive Baptist Association 2010 Beauty Grove P.B. Church, Thomaston, GA
-snip-
The word "primitive" in that Christian denomination's name means "first" or earliest formed".
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/09/down-home-old-school-black-african.html for the pancocojams post "Down Home, Old School, Black (African American) Primitive Baptist Church Singing (video, information, & comments)."

****
Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube video of the African American composed Gospel song "This May Be My Last Time". This old school Southern African American Gospel song is also known as "This May Be The Last Time".

This post also includes the song lyrics of this rendition of "This May Be My Last Time" and a few selected comments from that video's discussion thread.

The content of this post is presented for religious, historical, socio-cultural, and aesthetic purposes.

I'm interested in documenting not just what is sung but how the call & response way the song is sung and how the pastor and the congregation moved while singing this song.  

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the unknown composer/s of this song. Thanks to all those who are shown in this video and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
-snip-
This video has been added to this 2012 pancocojams post: African American Ring Shouts (Origins & Video Examples) https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/african-american-ring-shouts-origins.html

****
LYRICS - THIS MAY BE MY LAST TIME
(unknown composer/s

This transcriptions is as the sung was sung by Mt Ramah Primitive Baptist Association in the video that is shown above)

Refrain: (sung by the Leader and the Congregation)

This may be my last time
This may be my last time
This may be my last time
Well, This may be the last time
I don't know.

(Repeat entire refrain several times)

VERSES*
These lyrics aren't sung in any particular order. 

Leader:
"This may be the last time. It may be the last."

"This may be the last time you treat me wrong."

"I just don't know I just don't know."

"This may be the last time you me hear me crying."

"This may be the last time you shake my hand."

Congregation:
"This may be my last time. I don't know."

*Example:
Leader: This may be the last time. It may be the last 
Congregation- It may be the last time. I don't know.
Leader: This may be the last time. It may be the last 
Congregation- It may be the last time. I don't know.
Leader: (Well) This may be the last time. It may be the last 
Congregation- It may be the last time. I don't know.

OR
The Leader may sing more than one of these lines in a verse before the Leader and the Congregation return to the refrain. The rendition can last for an unspecified time and verses can be introduced by the Leader or by a new Leader. However, the song always ends with the refrain.

****
SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THIS VIDEO'S DISCUSSION THREAD
Numbers are added for referencing purposes only.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMuEWqraMTw

1.@realjag67, 2014
"Oh how wonderful to hear this song. Got me through many a bad times!"

**
2. @LillieFuseWilliams, 2015
"Isn't it great that they don't just stand and watch as entertainment.  Everybody men, women, young, old, participate and enjoy!!"

**
Reply
3. @PatsBooks, 2015
"It's called the ring shout.  Research it.  See how James Brown took this sacred song a nd
secularize it.  He on YouTube singing it."

**
Reply
4. @lydiaboyd7629, 2022
"The point is that the ring shout is a very important and historical way are ancestors would praise God. Deep spiritual roots, originating in Africa."

**
5. @Aunty_Yo, 2015
"Anyone know why they circle in the front?"

**
Reply
6. @cottonmaxwell8, 2015
"they go around in a circle rocking"

**
Reply
7. @PatsBooks, 2015
"It's the ring shout."

**
Reply
8. @mssmmns, 2019
"This form of praise in a circle is prevalent in many West African, Caribbean, and South Carolina Gullah religious ceremonies. This our roots, sis!"

**
9. @LillieFuseWilliams, 2015
"Sometime it's good to back home.  Cause it may be the last time.  The circle and rock could be a way of being in the number and become a part of the praise. As today's waving . A church back  then could ROCK!"

**
Reply
10. @carimerriweather1190, 2018
"Love it!!!"

**
Reply
11. @Tboyd-4, 2021
"Yes, the macon rock as my mom calls it. She's from macon. Ga"

**
12. @maryoyewole4993, 2016
"unfortunately some of the youngsters are changing this old time Primitive Baptist to what they call "Progressive" with their drums, guitars, pianos, the noise that clouds, this real authentic sound. All these folks had a hardwood floor, the clapping hands"

**
13. @resah18
"Ashé!!!  May the ancestors be praised!  May God be glorified!"

**
Reply
14. @edloniaconner4069, 2022
"This is the singing I grew up with oh my goodness that's singing"

**
15.@CatchTheFishy93, 2018
"I know this song in creek. Didnt realize it was a song in English too!"
-snip-
"Creek"= a Native American (Indian) language. Several commenters wrote in this discussion thread that their relatives were Native American and/or they also were part of the infamous "Trail Of  Tears" when Native Americans from the South were forced to relocate to Oklahoma.  

**
16.@v.dargain1678, 2019
"A Cappella . The best way to sing a hymn ."

**
17. @pawilliams6725, 2020
"This is called having church. The spirit of the Lord is in the house. Today's worship service is not like this"

**
18. @missbritt288, 2020
"The song is a very old baptist hymn it is sung by both black baptist and also White Appalachians , there a song with the same melody common in Appalachian folklore called "Oh Death" It shows how far reaching African spirituality is within the heart of American worship life ,and its a true common denominator - This is American roots music as pure as you can get"

**
19. @cynthiahoward9615, 2020
"Yes Yes Yes indeed and I don't know!!! I remembered this ole time religion singing and dancing 😂😂😂 my grandma's,moma auntee's use to hymn sing have good church seem like it was all day and then it was time to eat that good ole fashion home cooked 😋 food.i didn't understand back then but by God grace and mercy today wooow 😯 it's a pleasure to think back and a blessing to go far back in to time like That 😂😊😊... County Times!!! #Thatswussup??? My my my Lord"

**
20. @kimmimeekins9334, 2021
"Oh my…. This brings back so many good memories of my childhood years, in my Baptist church…. All  A cappella singing. Such down  home soulful songs..good old fashioned Baptist churches didn’t need music….glory to GOD! Hallelujah!🙏🏾"

**
21. @joandmims5538, 2021
"Love it. I remember the deacons singing this in church."

**
22. @flaboi9523, 2022
"This song popped in my head today and had to search...this reminds me of my early days at church in Pensacola Florida...Mars hills Baptist Church..the older people use to kill it!..no instruments, just good ol clapping,feet stomping and "sanging"...miss this!!!!..."

**
23. @living2liveagain1, 2023
"I miss my youthful days at Shady Grove AME Zion, where my Aunt Molly on the piano belting out hymnals like this. FOOT STOMPING, HAND CLAPPING JOY"

**
24. @Martin-e1j, 2023
"That baptist stomp"

**
25. @JasperRuffin, 2023
"Back in the 80s, We sang like this at my dad's church when the organist had other obligations and couldn't make it to service.

We may have sounded like we were on the plantation try'na get away from massa, but MAAN, you could sho nuff feel the spirit.

I miss those days!!

**
26. @ReginaRoss-rh5to,2023
"I REMEMBER THOSE DAYS IN CHURCH.... I MISS THAT..."

**
27. @jackieborden5041, 2023
"Oh yes I am seventy give years old and I remember this song from down I Louisiana and Arkansas. It will never get old."

**
28. @MsJeanette46, 2023
"This is my type of church old school no musicians"

**
29. @Magnolia5, 2023
"Hallelujah💜For me this will never be old.  Reminds me of my early childhood and young adult days.  My beginnings was in a Primitive Baptist Church.  I reminisce now a lot about those days, singing in A cappella , washing feet and prayer meetings.  So many traditions that are now absent from church worship.  Prayer was constant!!!"

**
30. @christiansgrandma6812, 2023
"Where is this church located? I need to get there 🏃‍♀️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️ 🏃‍♂️ We used to March around like that during testimonial midweek service. Miss those days. I'm so so grateful for that time. We kids enjoyed going to service. We were tucked in the back with the other kids with the olddest ursher lady,coloring and getting in trouble. Yet when they began to sing and stump, we were right there, singing, clapping and jumping.😊"
-snip-
Several commenters wrote that this church is located in Georgia (which is located in the southern region of the United States.)

**
31. @mystaco, 2024
"I can hear the ladies’ heels hitting the wood floor & the pews bending from the rocking.  I’m 45 years old but this is how Devotion and testimony service would start.   Pastor would come out of the study and sit beside the deacons just smiling."

**
32. @lillianwilliams5510, 2024
"We sang this as civil rights movement .

College students marching  and knowing we could possibly beaten, but surely going to jail."

**
33. @earnestinereagan7490, 2024
"Don't let the young people change this song. I really like it."

**
34. @moniquecooper1423, 2024
"Can someone  post the words to the sing please"

**
Reply
35. @lillianwilliams5510, 2024
"If you listen.  It may be my last time.  It is FREEDOM Movement song.

Students and older people marching for civil rights.

 

GOOGLE  slave songs and Black Heritage songs.

Mostly sung in the South but also  in many city churches "

**
36. @seikojones1491, 2025
"This is the type of gospel I love listening too."

**
37. @BigSteve90473, 2025
"I’m 50 years old. This was a regular song during devotion. I was baptized at age 4 under Rev. Dr. S.W. Williams, New Zion Missionary Baptist Church. Buffalo, NY"

**
Reply
38. @deeerv4905, 2025
"I didnt know yall got down like that up there in NY.  Praise God!!!"

**
39.@marqj2781, 2025
"That synchronized dip they all doing , good country church"

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Southeastern American Indian Stomp Dances (with a focus on similarities between the counter-clockwise circle movements & call & response chanting found in African American ring shouts)

Hugh Foley, Jan 2, 2011

The "stomp dance" is the traditional dance and song of the original people of the Southeastern United States, such as the Euchee, Cherokee, Seminole, and Muscogee (Creek). While this dance and song occurs traditionally around the fire, at night, and during the ceremonial season in the summer, some traditional people will go inside for social and demonstration dances for educational, commemorative, celebratory, or other fellowship purposes. Several types of "stomp dance" songs exist, depending on their place in the ceremonial cycle. One explanation details the songs as prayers by the leader, which are then carried up to the creator by the smoke from the sacred fire; other songs commemorate the peoples' reverence for nature and its blessings; some songs' meanings have been lost over time, but are carried on in the ceremonial context in what one Keetoowah Cherokee elder "the original language of God".

**** Edited by Azizi Powell This pancocojams post showcases two videos of Southeastern American Indian stomp dances with particular attention to that stomp dance's counter-clockwise movements and the call & response patterns of its chants. In addition, this pancocojams post presents my editorial note about the positions some commenters have given for the similarities between these stomp dances and early African American counter-clockwise dances and call & response chants. A YouTube video of an African American ring shout is also included in this post. This post also presents an excerpt of Barbara S. Tracy's 2009 University of Nebraska's dissertation entitled " Transcultural  Transformation: African American and Native American Relations."
The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, religious, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners. Thanks to all those who are featured in these videos and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to the producers and publishers of these posts on YouTube. **** CONFLICTING POSITIONS ABOUT THE REASONS WHY ELEMENTS OF THESE STOMP DANCES ARE SIMILAR OR THE SAME AS SOME EARLY AFRICAN AMERICAN DANCES AND CALL & RESPONSE CHANTS This post posits that these Native American stomp dances have elements that are similar or the same as some African American dances (such as the ring shout) and the African American call & response communication patterns. A few commenters in some of the discussion threads of YouTube videos on these stomp dances that I have read and/or in other YouTube discussion threads have shared conflicting positions about how and/or why these dance and chanting forms are the same or similar. One position from some self-identified Southeastern Indians is that the stomp dances and chanting for those dances are proof that Southeastern Indians are the actual originators of the music forms that are now credited to African Americans. Another position about this subject comes from individuals who -if I understand them correctly-call themselves the true (real) American Indians and who consider Native Americans to be "fake" Indians or the descendants of people who came to the Americas after their ancestors (the true American Indians) did. I believe that these people represent a population who are a very small but since the 2015 or so are an increasingly vocal online percentage of people who I would call "African Americans" but who reject that referent for themselves, (This population rejects the self-referent and group referent "African American" for themselves because on of their core positions is that their ancestors didn't come from Africa. These commenters take the opposite position that was given above, indicating that these stomp dances document and prove that their ancestors were the creators of these dances. A third position is that the way that the stomp dances and their songs were/are performed represents a blending of the cultures of Southeastern American Indian (as that referent is generally used) and African American cultures (as that term is generally used). That blending came about because of the long biological and cultural intermingling and interaction between these populations. This is the position that I accept at this point in time. That position is reflected in the dissertation that is excerpted in this post. The other two positions are reflected in a few comments that are added to the comment section of this pancocojams post. But there is also another position-one that I also believe-that the Southeastern American Indians, the Africans, and the African Americans held similar or the same religious and cultural beliefs which resulted in the formation of similar or the same cultural expressions such as counter-clockwise circle shuffling/stomping dances and call & response chanting.

**** SHOWCASE VIDEO #2 - Muscogee Creek Festival - 3 Stomp Dancing

SmithsonianNMAI, Dec 17, 2014

Mvskoke Etvlwv: Muscogee Creek Festival is a celebration by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma of its tribal history, heritage and culture. This segment has the second demonstration of the Stomp Dance for the day. The Stomp Dance is a set of traditional social and religious dances brought across the Trail of Tears from the Muscogee (Creek) ancestral homelands in Georgia and Alabama. The festival was webcast and recorded in the Potomac Atrium of the National Museum of the American Indian on November 15, 2014.

**** SHOWCASE VIDEO #3 - McIntosh County Shouters - "Jubilee" [Behind The Scenes Documentary]

Smithsonian Folkways, Feb 14, 2017

Producer Art Rosenbaum, and Freddie Palmer and Brenton Jordan of the McIntosh County Shouters talk about the triumphant meaning behind "Jubilee", a song that was sung and shouted at the Emancipation. This track is featured on 'Spirituals and Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast,' out on Smithsonian Folkways.

****

DISSERTATION EXCERPT

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=englishdiss

 "Transcultural  Transformation: African American and Native American Relations

A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska

In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Major: English

Under the Supervision of Professor Frances W. Kaye

Lincoln, Nebraska

November, 2009

The intersected lives of African Americans and Native Americans result not only in Black Indians, but also in a shared culture that is evidenced by music, call and response, and story. These intersected lives create a dynamic of shared and diverging pathways that speak to each other. It is a crossroads of both anguish and joy that comes together and apart again like the tradition of call and response. There is a syncopation of two cultures becoming greater than their parts, a representation of losses that are reclaimed by a greater degree. In the tradition of call and response, by denying one or the other something is lost. Claiming the relationship turns transcultural transformation into a powerful response. Working from Henry Gates‟ explanation of signifying combined with Houston Baker‟s description of blues literature, I examine signifying, call and response, and blues/jazz elements in the work of three writers to discover the collective lives of African Americans, Native Americans, and Black Indians. In the writing of Black Cherokee Alice Walker, I look for the call and response of both African and Native American story-ways. I find these same elements in the writing of Spokane/Coeur d‟Alene writer Sherman Alexie, in his blues writings and  his revision of Robert Johnson‟s and other stories. In the work of Creek/Cherokee Craig Womack, I examine a Creek/Cherokee perspective of Black Creeks and Freemen. In all of these works, I find that the shared African American and Native American experience plainly takes place in these works in a variety of ways in which the authors call upon oral and written story, song, and dance, and create a response that clearly signifies the combined power of these shared experiences. This is a fusion of shared traditions with differences that demonstrate the blending of voices and culture between two peoples who have been improvising together for a long time. 

[…]

Introduction

Speaking of Things Yet Unspoken: Native Americans, African Americans, and Black Indians

“No outsider knows where Africa ends or America begins” (Silko Almanac of the Dead 421).

“Africans and Americans1 must now be studied together without their relations always having to be obscured by the separations established through the work of scholars focusing essentially upon some aspect of European expansion and colonialism” (Jack D. Forbes Africans and Native Americans 1).

The intersected lives of African Americans and Native Americans result in Black Indians and a shared culture of music, call and response, and story in forms of what Henry Louis Gates identifies as signifying. These intersected lives create a dynamic of shared and diverging pathways that speak to each other. It is a crossroads of both anguish and joy that comes together and apart again like the tradition of call and response. Two cultures become greater than their parts, representing losses that are reclaimed by a greater degree. In the tradition of call and response, the lack of one or the other leaves

1

Forbes uses the word American for American Indian in the colonial period and African or Black African for sub-Saharan Africans to avoid the “ambiguous Indian and Negro.”

[…]

4

[…]

In most of our grammar school educations, we learned a little bit about minorities and a whole lot about Euro Americans. I‟m about certain that in our grammar school years, little if anything was mentioned of Black Indians, Chinese Africans, Filipino Africans, Mexican Asians, et all, much less about any other mixed bloods. The erasure of these identities impacts everyone, especially members of these communities

[…]

5

[…]

Jack Forbes, in introducing Africans and Native Americans states:
Thousand of volumes have been written about the historical and social relations existing between Europeans and the Native Peoples of the Americans and between Europeans and Africans, but relations between Native American and Africans have been sadly neglected. The entire Afro-Native American cultural exchange and contact experience is a fascinating and significant subject, but one largely obscured by a focus upon European activity and European colonial relations with „peripheral‟ subject peoples (1).

How little has been written or not written about contact between Native Americans and African American does not negate the fact that indeed contact occurred in the forms of alliances, slavery, and family. In discussing the significance of contact, Forbes writes, “In many parts of Europe, along the coasts of Africa, and throughout the Americas the slave trade and European imperialism in general produced a vast number of contacts between Black Africans and Native Americans. As a result a great deal of intermixture took place” (60). In fact the history of Black Indians, when and where their relationships may have begun and what they are today is itself a rich topic for further research.

6

African Native American historical studies emerging since the early 1900s include such works as Ivan Van Sertima‟s They came before Columbus in which he argues that Native Americans and Africans had contact prior to Columbus. Berry Brewton‟s Almost White explores origins and social conditions of various mixed race peoples. Jack Forbes has written several articles and books, most notably Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples, in which he carefully examines the language used to categorize African Americans, Native Americans, Black Indians, and other mixed bloods. He finds ambiguous terms, which overlap and lose specificity, such as colored and mulatto, which in one instance might mean Black, another Indian, and in some anyone of unclear ethnic identity. Daniel F. Littlefield‟s books Africans and Creeks, The Cherokee Freedmen, and Africans and Seminoles all examine the history of each tribe and their relationship with Africans, slaves, and Freedmen.

Additional studies include Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society by Theda Perdue, who examines Cherokee ownership of Black slaves, and their shared exploitation by Europeans. William Loren Katz‟s Black Indians contains historical photographs and an overview of slavery, runaway slaves, and Black/Indian marriages in early American history. Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian discovers the connection between the Creek Graysons and their Black Creek kin. Patrick Minges wrote Black Indians in which he researched the archives of the Federal Writer‟s Project and collected twenty-seven narratives which include discussion of relations between Native Americans and African Americans. In 1998, a special edition of American Indian Quarterly featured writings from anthropologists and historians such as James Brooks Tracy

7

and Circe Sturm. Many of the essays were later collected by Brooks in Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America. Sturm has since expanded and published her study of Black Cherokees in Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Sturm examines the national identity, contradictions of race, and the Cherokee Freedmen in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Issues of identity, nationhood, even the naming of identities become foggy throughout these works, but the significance in relationships between Native Americans and African Americans grows.

Less has been written to date about African Native American writers or African American and Native American relations in literature, despite the noted presence of African Native American writers such as Paul Cuffe (African Wampanoag) whose ship logs and letters tell much about the number of Black Indians employed on his ship.

While much is written about William Apess (African Pequot), one of the earliest Native American writers, little is said of his African ancestry. Discussions of Olivia Bush-Banks (African Montauk), Langston Hughes (African Cherokee), Alice Walker (African Cherokee), Clarence Major (African Cherokee) primarily focus on their African American identity, even while their writing reveals their self identity as also Indian.

Several Native American or African American writings contain Black Indians or other evidence of the exchange of culture apparent in their novels or poetry such as that of Toni Morrison (African American), Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d‟Alene), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo/Mexican), Nettie Jones (African American), Francine Washburn (Lakota), Joy Harjo (Muskogee Creek), or Craig Womack (Muskogee 

8

Creek/Cherokee), yet literary criticism seldom examines these works as speaking to relationships between African Americans and Native Americans.

[…]

9

[…]

A balanced reading of African Native American literature or African American and Native American relations means looking at both tribal perspectives, which may include story-ways, call and response, music, and other shared culture. Womack‟s suggestion that we include tribally specific voices in writing about Native American literature and Brennan‟s plea to examine multi-cultured authors from all of their identities should mean that a reading of Alice Walker, for example, would examine the Cherokee and African American responses found in her work through a study of both Cherokee and African American sources. Although Alexie is not a Black Indian, the influence of Robert Johnson, Legba, and the blues on Alexie‟s writing, requires study of African/African American relationships to Native Americans and the blues. Craig Womack also is not a Black Indian; however, Black Creeks and Creek Freedmen in his writing as well as the influence of jazz and blues, requires a study of these elements of Creek culture.

[…]

13

[…]

In examining traditional story-ways found in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, Henry Louis Gates finds the presence of the Yoruba Esu-Elegbara (also known as Legba) and the Signifying Monkey. In these figures lie a tradition and system of interpretation that the enslaved Africans brought with them to America. No doubt given the shared lives of Africans and Indigenous Americans, we can see similar elements of this system in the story-ways of Native Americans and African Native Americans such as Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby. Gates explains: The Black tradition is double-voiced. The trope of the Talking Book, of double-voiced texts that talk to other texts, is the unifying metaphor . . . Signifyin(g) is the figure of the double-voiced, epitomized by Esu‟s depiction in sculpture as possessing two mouths” (xxv). Gates explores four types of signifying: “Tropological Revision,” “The Speakerly Text,” “Talking Texts,” and “Rewriting the Speakerly.” The first is a “manner in which a specific trope is repeated, with differences, between two or more texts” (xxv). This type of Signifyin(g) occurs in many Native American works as well, where we can see that the book (Talking Book) is a double-voiced text in which it locates the call of another text or oral story and speaks back to it in both a form of repetition and difference.

14

For example, in Alice Walker‟s reading of Black Elk Speaks, she hears the call and responds not only from her experience as a Black Woman but also from her knowledge as a Cherokee of the Selu and Wild Child stories. Tropological Revision is also a means by which the colonized and the enslaved can look into each other‟s culture or take European tropes and revise them fitting one‟s own culture. In Reservation Blues Sherman Alexie answers the call of several texts, films, and songs with a response that turns the original into a difference through his blues writing. Blues are also a means of signifying. In typical twelve bar blues, the first four bars express the topic or problem, and bars five through eight repeat the first four, sometimes with some slight variation. The last four bars eight through twelve, put a twist or a difference on the topic or problem. For example: “Going to the riverside, take a chair and set down. Going to the river take a chair and set down. If I get worried I‟ll jump over board and drown” (Dorsey and Jones). The blues is also a form of signifying or call and response, and use tropological revision through mnemonics, metaphor, and irony, playing with the meaning of words. Alexie‟s writing demonstrates a deep interest in the blues, particularly in Jimi Hendrix and Robert Johnson. There is a history of blues singers in the Coeur d‟Alene with Mildred Bailey and Al Rinker. Because of his own and other Native American participation in the blues, he recognizes this kind of shared signifying and naturally uses it in his blues novel.”….

****
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The Easter Rock Tradition (a very old Louisiana Black American religious ritual) videos & information

National Endowment for the Arts, Nov 18, 2021

This tribute to Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble was released in November 2021 as part of “The Culture of America: A Cross-Country Visit with the 2021 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows.
-snip-
Here are two comments from this video's discussion thread:
1. @KyndraJoi, 2022
"This is very similar to the ring shout of us, the Gullah Geechee from the Carolina's.  This is just a reminder that we are one."

**
2. @susankenny8209, 2022
"Wow! What a blessing. I’m from south Louisiana and never knew about this tradition.

****
Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases two videos of the Winnsboro (Louisiana) Easter Rock Ensemble and presents information about that very old Black American tradition.

This post also includes brief information about the Jamaican revivalist tradition of "thanksgiving tables" that reminded me of the Winnsboro Easter Rock tradition.

The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, religious, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble for continuing this tradition and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to the producers and publishers of these videos on YouTube.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/04/folkloric-article-excerpt-about-easter.html for Part I of a two part 2019 pancocojams series on the Winnsboro Easter Rock tradition. That post is entitled "Folkloric Article Excerpt About Easter Rock Ceremonies, A Little Known & Seldom Performed African American Religious Tradition In Louisiana (USA)".

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/04/video-examples-of-winnsboro-easter-rock.html for Part II of that 2019 pancocojams series for a post entitled "Four Video Examples Of Winnsboro Easter Rock ceremonies (A little known African American religious tradition)."

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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE ABOUT JAMAICA REVIVALISM'S THANKSGIVING TABLES
I happened upon some videos of Easter Rock while "surfing YouTube" for African American Easter celebrations and I realized that they reminded me of YouTube videos I had watched about Jamaican Revivalism "thanksgiving tables"*. 

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/04/general-information-about-jamaicas.html for a pancocojams post about Jamaican Revivalism "thanksgiving tables". 

*Jamaican Revivalism's "thanksgiving tables" aren't associated in any way to the annual Thanksgiving holiday that is celebrated in the United States and elsewhere.

Here's a short video of singing and moving around a Jamaican Revivalism Thanksgiving Table:

Babsy Grange at #Revival Table in Tawes Pen

Andre Grange, Feb 21, 2013

****
DISCLAIMER
I don't know if there is any connection between Winnsboro Easter Rock ceremonies and Jamaican Revivalism's thanksgiving tables or any other aspect of Jamaican Revivalism. If any folklorists have considered this possibility, I'd love to know about their research.

****
INFORMATION ABOUT THE EASTER ROCK TRADITION
Online excerpt #1
From https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/winnsboro-easter-rock-ensemble
" Bio

The Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble, under the direction of Hattie Addison Burkhalter, maintains a rare women-led African American traditional spiritual ritual, rooted in both Christian worship and West African ring shout tradition. Documented only in the Northeast Louisiana Delta region and first practiced by enslaved Africans during the antebellum period, Easter Rock was held from Lake Providence to Ferriday, Louisiana, typically in the Baptist church. Today, this Franklin Parish group appears to be the last practitioners of this once thriving tradition.

Easter Rock, held on Easter Eve to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, offers a visual, musical, culinary, and spiritual feast, filled with Christian and West African symbolism. The lighted lamps in the darkened sanctuary create an otherworldly, hypnotic atmosphere as the streamers of the banner representing Christ’s cross sweep back and forth around the white table representing Christ’s sepulcher. Moving counter-clockwise around the table, the Easter Rockers sing spirituals accompanied by the syncopated beat of their feet hitting the wooden floor of the Delta plantation church, echoing their ancestral drums and call-and-response improvisational singing."...

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Online Excerpt #2
From http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/easterrock.html " "Everyone Rockin' Together: Continuity and Creativity In The Louisiana Delta Easter Rock" by Susan Roach (no publishing date cited, the latest year mentioned is 2013)

In Memory of Ellen Addison

"One of the most spectacular folk traditions documented for the Delta Folklife Project, Easter Rock, an Easter eve vigil ceremony, commemorates the death and resurrection of Christ.2 Easter Rock belongs to the category of traditional events called "rocks" associated with the old plantation churches (usually Baptist) in the Mississippi Delta floodplain of north Louisiana and has much in common with other African American religious ring shout traditions, according to Janet Sturman (1993: 24) and Joyce Jackson (2006).3 While the tradition is said to reach back to the antebellum period in Louisiana, today only one group appears to be continuing this Louisiana Delta tradition: the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble, as the group named itself for performances of the tradition in state and national folklife festivals. Various factors including modernity, losses of group members and performance venues, and the effects of public presentation have threatened the continuity of the Winnsboro Easter Rock's performance of the tradition, but the group's creative responses have maintained the tradition and heightened its visibility in the Winnsboro community and beyond. A look at the Winnsboro Easter Rock service and public performances, including the context, the participants, and the sequence of acts and how these have developed over the past eighteen years, will shed light on the continuity and creativity in the tradition.

Easter Rock History and Scholarly Documentation
The contemporary Winnsboro Easter Rock is surprisingly similar to the early rocks described by scholars. Easter Rock's origins are not clear, and scholarship is scanty, with only three major scholarly articles devoted to the subject and one more article including it among several other Africanisms. The first scholarly publication by Mariana and Lea Seale in the Journal of American Folklore (1942) notes that participants remember the tradition as pre-dating the Civil War; therefore, the ritual probably has its origins in the customs of enslaved Africans.4 The Seales' observed three Easter Rock services: two at St. John the Baptist Church, at Dunbarton Plantation, near Clayton in Concordia Parish and another at the Baptist Church on Lemarque Plantation, next to Dunbarton. In the 1942 description, the rocks began with brief testimonial service (called a "cul'n" for covenant), which could be similar to the contemporary service's "devotional," followed by musical performances and an offering (Seale and Seale 1942: 212). Then the pews were turned to face the middle aisle, and a table with a white cloth was placed in the aisle. Interestingly, the Seales' description of the opening of the rock itself prefigures the Winnsboro rock held in the 21st century:

Precisely, at midnight by the deacon's watch, the deacon orders the congregation to "come quiet." Shortly thereafter, the voices of many women and a single man rise in the song, "When the Sancts [sic] Go Marchin' In," and a procession moves into the church through a door at the rear.

At the head of the procession is a Negro man carrying what is called "the banner." The banner is a barrel hoop attached to one end of a six-foot stick. The hoop has, stretched across its area in drumhead fashion, a covering of white crepe paper, and to its circumference is attached tasseled crepe of various bright colors. (1942: 213)

In many ways, the event as described by the Seales is similar to the Easter Rocks documented by subsequent scholars. In 1956, folklorist/musicologist Harry Oster recorded Easter Rock at one of the same churches. Evidently, Easter Rock occurred as far north as Lake Providence and south as Ferriday, according to anthropologist H .F. Gregory, who in 1962 recounted the typical rocks he witnessed growing up in Ferriday. He writes that the basic form of the rock was "exactly the same," from the "Primitive African Baptist Church near Waterproof . . . to the Pittsfield Plantation Church near Ferriday" (1962:18). However, instead of the 12 women bearing 12 lamps and 12 cakes noted by the Seales, these rocks featured 7 women carrying 7 lamps, and 7 cakes. While the Seales had found elders who recalled the symbolism of the objects, Gregory did not find explanations of the symbols (1962:18). From the 1960s until the 1990s, no documentation appears to have been done; however, at Gregory's suggestion, ethnomusicologist Janet Sturman located and documented the ceremony at the Springfield Baptist Church, also in Clayton in 1991.

According to organizer Martha Daniels' presentation for that 1991 Easter Rock, church records at the Springfield Baptist Church in Clayton, show that the church mothers of the St. Paul Baptist Church in Wisner held Easter Rock in 1930, when one of the Springfield Baptist Church deacons saw the ritual and decided to bring it to the Clayton church in 1932 (Sturman 1993: 26-27). Martha Daniels relates that Easter Rock was held sporadically there until the 1990s when the wood structure church was replaced with a brick one.

[...]

Before Lionel Wilson moved to Georgia, he often served as the spokesperson on narrative stages. His presentations sometimes included information that was undoubtedly learned from the presenters. For example, in 2003 Wilson uses the scholarly term "Call and Response" (a term I had used initially) to describe the performance of the "Oh, David" spiritual and to explain the symbolism of ritual and its circular banner:

The Easter Rock is a call and response. You have a caller who will call out to the crowd and to the other rockers and they will respond. In the rock today you will notice that there will be a song that will be sang and it is a call and response. It is a song of David who was the victor over the giant Goliath and so therefore since David was a victor we sang a song of victory because Jesus Christ had victory over the grave on the third day morning and that's why we rock to a risen savior. You will notice that as we come around to the table you will see different items being placed on the table. One of them will be cakes, there will be 12 cakes placed on the table which represents the 12 disciples. You will have 12 lanterns on the table which represents the 12 tribes of Israel. You will also notice that there will be some red punch on the table, it used to be red wine but now we serve red punch instead of wine, and that represents the blood of Jesus Christ. The white that we see here symbolized purity, the eggs on the table behind me represent the grave and the breaking of the grave when Jesus rose from the grave with all power in his hand. You will notice that there will be a person in the front carrying a banner, the banner represents the cross. The banner will not be a cross, but it will be a circle, which represents the continuation of life. The circle is covered with different colors to add just a little symbolism to Easter and during the time of Easter. (2003) ⁶

His discussion of the origin and meaning of the circle and the banner echoes Joyce Jackson's 1997 narrative stage introduction:

A circular ritual in the church, . . . [Easter Rock] is a carry over from the African Diaspora, and you can see that they are using a round banner which symbolized a cross. Well, that is not so foreign either, although you don't see round crosses normally in Baptist Churches, but if you look at the literature and you look at traditional African religions and those in the Caribbean, you find that the circle is very important, not only in the way that they move around the church and around the table but also in the worship and in the life cycle. If you look at life, it's like a circle and this circle was very instrumental in the way that they worshipped and looked at life, or the worldview. When you are born it's like you are at the 12 o'clock position and as you go through life you move around that circle, or the circle of life. And so the circle is very important in African traditions and so again it's sort of a carry over in this rocking tradition.

Wilson's eloquent remarks in this 2003 presentation are similar to his earlier 2001 presentation (below) which also discusses the symbolism of the Rock; a comparison of these illustrates the formulaic nature of his presentations:

The Easter Rock is a tradition that we perform in Winnsboro, Louisiana at the original True Life Baptist Church located on Highway 4 in Winnsboro. It is done the Saturday before Easter. It is a circular dance that we do in the black church; it's a rhythmic rock from side-to-side as the caller is singing a song talking about "Oh David." The song "Oh David" is a victory song, it tells the story of David and Goliath, when David went out on the battle field and slew the mighty giant Goliath. He was victorious in that battle and that is why we use the song "Oh David" because Jesus we know he was victorious over the grave for he died and he rose again. Here this afternoon, well this evening, what you will see will be a table that is dressed in white and on the table you will notice that there will be 12 cakes placed on the table which represents the 12 disciples. And you will notice that there will be 12 lanterns which represent the 12 tribes of Israel, you will also notice that there will be some punch placed on the table, some red punch, which symbolized the blood of Jesus. Before the punch was introduced into the scene they had real wine that they would drink after the Easter Rock but now we use regular punch of the color red to symbolize the blood of Jesus. Also on the table you will see the basket which represents the grave, the eggs which represents the breaking of the grave when Jesus rose on the third day morning. You will also notice we are dressed in white which symbolizes purity. You will notice that there will be a banner carried by the first person that is leading the rock. That person is carrying the banner as Jesus carried the cross. The banner is in a circular diagonal form and the reason for is there is no ending to a circle and it represents Jesus' life because there is no ending to Jesus for we know that he lives now and forever more. (2001)"....

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Visitor comments are welcome.

McIntosh County Shouters "Jubilee" ("Jubilee In The Morning") Black American ring shout: videos, information, & lyrics)

McIntosh County Shouters - Topic, May 30, 2015

Provided to YouTube by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

 Jubilee · The McIntosh County Shouters

 Slave Shout Songs from the Coast of Georgia

 ℗ 2004 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings / 1984 Folkways Records

 Released on: 1984-01-01
-snip-
This sound file begins with a man saying "We're gonna sing one of the slave songs that they like to sing just after they come out of slave. They sing this song "Jubilee In The Morning"
-snip-
The lyrics for this song are in the NPR transcript that is given below.  

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Edited by Azizi Powell

Latest revision - April 20, 2026

This pancocojams post showcases three YouTube examples of the McIntosh County Shouters performing the Spiritual and ring shout "Jubilee" ("Jubilee In The Morning").

An excerpt of a 2019 NPR program about the power of communal song in African American history is also included in this post. That excerpt in this post focuses on the ring shout and includes lyrics for the Spiritual "Jubilee".

The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, educational, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all past and present members of the McIntosh County Shouters. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of this video on YouTube.
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I've designated this post as Part I of a 2026 pancocojams series on the word "jubilee". Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2023/07/mcintosh-county-shouters-jubilee-black.html "McIntosh County Shouters "Jubilee" ("Jubilee In The Morning") Black American ring shout: videos, information, & lyrics)." The links to the other posts in that series are given in that post.  

Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/african-american-ring-shouts-origins.html for a 2013 pancocojams post entitled "African American Ring Shouts (Origins & Video Examples)".

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SHOWCASE VIDEO #2: McIntosh County Shouters - "Jubilee" [Behind The Scenes Documentary]

Smithsonian Folkways, Feb 14, 2017

Producer Art Rosenbaum, and Freddie Palmer and Brenton Jordan of the McIntosh County Shouters talk about the triumphant meaning behind "Jubilee", a song that was sung and shouted at the Emancipation. This track is featured on 'Spirituals and Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast,' out on Smithsonian Folkways.

'Spirituals and Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast' is available on CD and Digital.

...Acclaimed upholders of the African American ring shout, the McIntosh County Shouters keep the faith, form, and fervor of the generations-old tradition rooted in their small community of coastal Georgia. Companion songs to the shuffle-step devotional movement called “shouting” have resisted slavery, strengthened spirit, and left us a cultural keystone for the future. Through their classic shout songs and spirituals, the Shouters beckon us to remember the past while envisioning the future of the African American cultural legacy.

The collection is part of the African American Legacy Series, co-presented with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture....

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SHOWCASE VIDEO #3: McIntosh County Shouters "Jubilee"

Africana Digital Ethnography Project, Jun 27, 2023

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EXCERPT OF A 2019 NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO (NPR) TRANSCRIPT  
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/711806804 "Wade In The Water Ep. 5: The Power Of Communal Song", June 20, 2019 9:23 AM ET
…."BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON, HOST:

The Power of Communal Song. From National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institution, I'm Bernice Johnson Reagon, and this is WADE IN THE WATER.

...JOHNSON REAGON: When Black people come together to sing in a group, you have a communal experience that you can feel and hear. Congregational singing is a musical vocal expression of collective power and spirit, an experience of great beauty that came to America with the Africans by way of the Middle Passage. There are different traditions of congregational singing that have evolved as Black people made their way through the American journey. One of the oldest is a continuation of African singing, a company with sacred dancing known as the ring shout tradition.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUBILEE")

MCINTOSH COUNTY SHOUTERS: Yeah. We're the McIntosh County Shouters. We sing the songs that our old ancestors have sang years ago. We don't have a piano. They didn't have them. That's why we ain't got near one (ph). We don't have a drum. (Unintelligible). We get our rhythm from the patting of the stick and the clapping of our hands, and then we sing the song.

(Singing) Come on, children. Gather round. Oh, my Lord. Help me sing this little song. My Lord, jubilee. Jubilee, jubilee. Oh, my Lord. Jubilee in the morning. My Lord, jubilee. Jubilee, jubilee. Oh, my Lord. Jubilee in the evening. My Lord, jubilee. (Unintelligible). Oh, my Lord. (Unintelligible). My Lord, jubilee. Now, my children, you are free. Oh, my Lord. My Lord brought you liberty. My Lord, jubilee. Jubilee, jubilee. Oh, my Lord. Jubilee in the evening. My Lord, jubilee. Call me a Sunday Christian. Oh, my Lord. Call me a Monday devil. My Lord, jubilee. Don't care what you call me. Oh, my Lord. I know Jesus love me. My Lord, jubilee.

JOHNSON REAGON: "Jubilee," performed by the McIntosh County Shouters from southeast Georgia. This is one of the rare groups who continue to sing the songs and move along with the singing in a ring counterclockwise fashion, creating the ritual called the ring shout. Black people during slavery often had their drums banned, but because Black people needed the drumming in order to worship, they created the rhythms in the clapping, in the stomping of the feet, in the beating of the stick. And the McIntosh County Shouters are excellent examples of the survival of this African tradition.

[…]

JOHNSON REAGON: The ring shout performed by the McIntosh County Shouters is the same ritual described by Lucy McKim Garrison in her introduction to the slave songs of the United States. It was the first publication that was a collection of Black songs that appeared in 1867.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1, BYLINE: (Reading) The most peculiar and interesting of their customs is the shout, an excellent description of which we are permitted to copy from the New York Nation of May 30, 1867. The true shout takes place on Sundays or on praise nights through the week and either in the praise house or in some cabin. The benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over. And old and young, men and women, all stand up in the middle of the floor and, when the spiritual is struck up, begin first walking and by and by shuffling around, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion which agitates the entire shouter and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently. Sometimes as they shuffle, they sing the chorus of the spiritual.

[…]

JOHNSON REAGON: The practice of shouting - that is, any kind of sacred movement with the singing - met resistance from Christian missionaries. These leaders of the church wrote critically about what they felt were extremes in worship practices evolving within African American communities during the 18th and 19th centuries. Because of the opposition, they sometimes had to conduct their services where they shouted in secret. By the latter part of the 19th century, there were strong efforts to stamp out all vestiges of the ring shout, and these efforts were led by white and Black leaders of the Protestant church.

STERLING STUCKEY: In 1878, roughly 13 years after the cessation of the Civil War, Bishop Daniel Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was visiting Philadelphia and saw a group of Blacks - this is after slavery - saw a group of Blacks doing the ring shout and went over to these Blacks and said to the young minister, have your people sit down and worship in a rational manner.

JOHNSON REAGON: Historian Sterling Stuckey.

STUCKEY: And the young minister responded by saying that people worship God in various ways. Unless there's a ring here, a ring there and a ring over yonder, sinners won't get converted. In other words, the act of conversion itself had a much better chance of occurring after slavery as during slavery if Blacks were permitted to be converted within the circle of the ring shout."...
-snip-
I added italics to highlight the lyrics that were given for "Jubilee".

That NPR website includes a 58 minute audio feature of this radio program. In addition to lyrics for "Jubilee", this transcript also includes some lyrics for these Spirituals or other religious songs used for ring shouts: "Wade In The Water", "Sign Of The Judgement", "Satan Is Here", "Daniel", "Good Time In Zion, I Believe", and "I Want To Go Where Jesus Is". That radio program also includes sound bites for and some lyrics for the following labor union songs and/or civil rights songs: Roll The Union On" and "Lord, Hold My Hand While I Run This Race", "This Little Light Of Mine", "I Want My Freedom Now", "Oh Freedom", and "We'll Never Turn Back". In addition, that transcript includes some lyrics for and soundbites of the songs "Go Tell It On The Mountain", "I'm On My Way", "Got On My Traveling Shoes", "Eyes On The Prize", and" We Shall Overcome". 

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Excerpts About How Some Traditional West African And Central African Music & Dance Patterns Helped Shape The Afro-Caribbean & The Black American Ring Shout

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides four excerpts that provide information about how some traditional West African and Central African music and dance patterns helped shape the development of the Afro-Caribbean and the Black American ring shout. 

With regard to those African music and dance patterns that are described in these excerpts, I'm particularly interested in the use of circular formations and circling movements, the use of drums and/or other percussion instruments including hand clapping,  the use of repetitive singing, and the use of repetitive dance movements as ways of evoking the spirit/s.  

These excerpts are quoted without the citations that they included.

The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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This post is part of pancocojams' ongoing series on the ring shout and on Afro-Caribbean religions. Click the tags below for more posts in these series.

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EXCERPT #1 

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1131054976&disposition=inline

“Shabach Hallelujah!: The Continuity Of The Ring Shout Tradition As A Site Of Music And Dance In Black American Worship

Erica Lanice Washington

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music

December 2005

[...]

[page] 11

"A primary purpose of each African worship experience is to communicate with the divine. The most universal acts of worship among sub-Saharan Africans are sacrifices and offerings. These expressions are fashioned in order to secure help for the community in regards to daily life. Prayerful offerings are made to God, to the living-dead, and to other spirits in time of need and sometimes accompany acts of worship. Music historian Samuel A. Floyd observes, “the African religious faith was utilitarian, practical, and spiritual.”31 The gods and men communicate with each other through sacrifice, divination, and spirit possession. 32

[...]

[page] 12

Music and Dance Patterns in African Religions

 Africans make contact with spirits through music. According to Raboteau, “dancing, drumming, and singing play a constant and integral part in the worship of gods and the ancestors.”34 Indeed, they work together. Gods mount – that is, possess – their devotees through dance, the physical expression of the musical elements. The relationship of dance, song, and drum in African-based worship is evidenced in the possession dance Akem performed in the Akan tradition:

The priest whirls round and round after he has first marked spots with powder and delimited both his dancing ring and important positions. As many rounds of this piece are played as the priest desires, while the singers call to God, the creator of the firmament (Oboonyame). One of the important gestures the priest has to make in this opening dance is to point his dancing sword to the sky and then downwards towards the earth.

When enough rounds of the music for the opening dance have been played, the drummers begin the next piece, called adaban. Instead of using swift turns, the priest moves forward along a circular track while the singers sing songs of invocation. 

After the adaban the drummers play the music of abofoe, imitative of the hunters’ dance, while the singers praise the prowess of the divinity who, like the hunter, hunts down evil and protects his child from evil men and spirits. A similar piece entitled abefotia is played as a sequel to this, followed by the remaining eight pieces.

When the spirit so moves him, the priest may change the order around by asking for any songs or drum pieces he likes. He never stands still. When he is not dancing, he will walk about, do short runs, dash in and out of the crowd, impersonate various creatures, invite people into the ring by throwing a fly whisk or cowtail switch which he holds in his left hand to them, or shake hands with people along the dancing ring.35

Although dance, song, and drum are described separately in the Akem dance, they work together to form a single expressive entity. The priest, drummers, and singers can signal the

[page] 13

ending, beginning, or function of a music/dance section. The rhythms of the drums are heard through singing and seen through dancing.

Melva Wilson Costen's notion of an exchange between divine and human responses in African American Christian worship is seen as a confluence in the Akan Akem example. God’s divine initiative is first seen in the obedience of the devotees to worship God through other deities. It is also seen in the act of the priest clearing the space for worship of the gods through dance and accompanying music (drum). The next activities fall under the category of human responses in which the priest and devotees praise and invoke the presence of gods through dancing and singing. Prayers are also offered up through this dancing-singing phenomenon.

Lastly, there is music (drum), dance, and song to aid the devotee to reach spirit possession by the god or gods. This is a plan to allow practitioners to receive a message from a particular god. 

Ethnomusicologist Portia Maultsby, in her study of Africanisms in African Music suggests that …”black people consciously use their entire bodies in musical expression, and music and movement are conceived as a single unit.”36

This intersection of music and dance supports my concept that dance, drum, and song constitute the whole of the musical elements in African-based worship. It is important to note that all three components – dance, drum, and speech – communicate through language-like features. Many music traditions are associated with each religion. 37 Folklorist Alan Lomax, cited by Floyd, found parallels in the
…”extraordinary homogeneity of African song style….When most Africans sing they are non-tense, vocally; quite repetitious, textually; rather slurred in enunciation; lacking in embellishment and free rhythm; low on exclusive leadership; high on antiphony, chorally; especially high on overlapped antiphony; high on one-phrase melodies, on litany form; very cohesive, tonally and rhythmically in chorus; high on 

[page] 14

choral integration or part-singing; high on relaxed vocalizing; and highest on polyrhythmic (or hot) accompaniments.

This relaxed, cohesive, multileveled, yet leader-oriented style, is distinctly African. It dominates African song from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar and west into the American colonies, and is the source and symbol of African cultural homogeneity.” 38

Music of African Americans includes several characteristics of African music. For example, the whole body is used in musical experiences; call-and-response form is present, which allows for repetition; there is community participation in a musical event; change of leadership roles; and variation and sameness in rhythms. Ritual is always contextualized with music.39 

In West Africa, according to Hounnongan Agbegbe Guendehou of the Thron temple in Cotonou, Benin, “each ceremony has a specific music. Every ceremony has a specific dance. It is not the same dance and music for all ceremony. ”40

Two factors determine the music that is used during worship. On the one hand, the African gods are important as there are specific styles of music and instruments that are associated with the worship of a particular deity. On the other hand, the goals and cultural patterns of worshippers likewise contribute to the organization of music due to society’s perception of the divine, characteristic musical practices, and the summoning of the divine for the welfare of the whole community.

Clearly, there is a connection between African cosmologies and African American Christian worship. Within both religious practices, there is a strong belief in the supernatural and spirits; frequent contact with divinity as well as different methods of communicating with the divine”…

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EXCERPT #2

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Wade_in_the_Water/ogqfmZF3dJgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ring+shout+altered+state+of+consciousness&pg=PA76&printsec=frontcover

Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals https://books.google.com › books

Arthur C. Jones · 2005 ·

[page 76]

City called Heaven
…In their singing and praying worshippers embraced selectively those aspects of Christianity that were in harmony with their intuitive African frame of reference: even when they lost knowledge of specific tribal beliefs and ceremonies, they maintained a basic African world view, which was difficult to eradicate.  One of the principal features of this world view was the necessity for direct communication with the divine spirit, often in the frenzy of spirit possession. Singing and dancing in the ring shout, participants entered into an altered state, much like their West African ancestors. Historian Margaret Washington Creel has described this phenomenon as it was experienced among the Gullah slave communities of South Carolina:
“The Gullah ring shout…involved an altered state of consciousness and had the attributes of “possession”. It represented either an unusual behavior, inspired and controlled by an outside agent, in this case the Holy Spirit, or the outside agent displaced the individual’s personality and acted in its stead. The background of the Gullah ring shout, a manifestation of possession trance, was West African in origin.”

The singing of spirituals in the sacred circle of the ring shout provided an ideal setting for the emergence of spirit possession.”…

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EXCERPT #3 

https://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3ringshout.htm 
" Early in the United States the Baptist Church prohibited drumming and dancing which ruled out most of the religious dances of African decent. Dancing was defined by many things by the Baptist Church, primarily the crossing of ones feet (was considered unholy dancing.) Since the Ring Shout didn't generally use any musical instruments only a percussion of clapping and stomping or sometime a stick beating down on the floor and a "call and response' type of singing (shouting) all the while using counterclockwise dance-like movement. The Ring Shout usually occurred in a church after the formal worship, in "praise houses", Barns, or thanking God(Africans deity was Yoruba god Elegba, which later when converted to Christian slaves became Jesus) at the end of the day in the bush arbors or field. These generally lasted until a spiritual possession of "God" or "beloved ancestor"(a Sasa period) would be felt. Most Christian's frowned on this practice as heathen, but allowed it for various reasons.

The ring shout was first described in detail during the Civil War by outside observers in coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. The Shout was very popular in South Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Louisiana and its practice continued in those areas well into the twentieth century which eventually some say gave birth to a secular parody of the Ring Shout called the 'Walk-Around' in Minstrel Shows (Pattin' Juba dance is also connected to the Ring Shout). With a fresh arrival of slaves to the new world on a weekly basis, the slaves would be able to keep ties with their spiritual connections, dances and music, even if outlawed.

Up to 20% of the Africans brought to America were Muslims. Islam had established a presence along the West African coast long before the Portuguese introduced Christianity there... this leads us to the word shout which refers to the dance, not shouting verbally and is believed to be derived from the Afro-Arabic saut, referring to the counter-clockwise movement around the Kabaa in Mecca.

The Ring Shout utilizes the whole body (feet, arms, legs, Hips, belly, head, hands etc.) with the main focus being rhythms. The dancers begin by first walking in a 'congo pose' and one by one, sliding their feet as they move, shuffling round, one after the other in a ring (circle). The song is danced with a kinda shuffle step, while the hips would wiggle and sway while the shoulders were held stiff and various heel tapping and stamping, each doing their own improvisations. At the end of each stanza of the song the dancers stop short with a slight stamp on the last note, an then, putting the other foot forward, proceed through the next verse all with a style and grace, occasionally a dancer would enter the center of the ring. Due to many contrary movements in the dance there was a sort of jerking motion which agitated the entire shouter.

Birth Place: West Africa

Creation Date: 1700s?

Creator: None

Dance Type: Religious Dance"
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There is some disagreement as whether the word "shout" in ring shout actually derived from the Arabic word "saut" and what that Arabic word means.   

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EXCERPT #4

http://dancercitizen.org/issue-6/tamara-williams/ "Reviving Culture Through Ring Shout" by Tamara Williams [no date given; retrieved October 14, 2021]
"The Ring Shout.  What is it? It is an African American spiritual tradition many regarded as long lost and forgotten, but that manifests today in the black Baptist Church, and in a spirit that has been carried along through Methodist and other Protestant churches and praise houses—all of these bear the history evolved from the very first Ring Shouts. The ancestors brought to the United States during the Transatlantic Slave Trade used dance and music as a coping mechanism:  the original Ring Shouts were a mix of rich cultures, traditions, songs, and dances from various communities, a mix designed to create a new community within the violent New World. In Cuba, Trinidad, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and Jamaica, these traditions are closely identified with the Orishas (divine spirits of nature)

[…]

The spirit of Ring Shout is not only in the gospel churches of the United States’ south, but the same energy and culture can be found in the Shouting communities of Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, and more.  The memory holds thick.

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I grew up a young girl in the Bible Belt of the United States attending church with my mother and grandmother. My grandmother's church was an old white building with wood floors and benches in the back woods of South Carolina. I recall every Sunday going and hearing the women’s feet patting on the wooden floor to the old hymns.

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When I traveled to Trinidad, I realized how similar the movement vocabulary and patterns were to the “Holy Ghost” dancing that I observed as a young girl in my grandmother's church. The Shouting that occurs in Trinidad is closely aligned to the Yoruba Orisa (divine spirits) lineages and also has influences of Christianity.

Ring Shout is the earliest form of resistance that African Americans embraced in the United States. It is an African diaspora dance form, meaning that it is a dance and cultural form that was developed away from the continent of Africa, but created by the descendants of African people, with significant African influences. The African influences include polyrhythms, syncopation, movement aesthetics, songs, and artistic cultural practices. The Ring Shout is an amalgamation of traditions from the Yoruba, Akan, Bantu (Congo), Angola, Ewe and Fon people of West Africa and Central Africa. The Ring Shout’s resistance was applied to the inflictions of the state. The Ring Shout was practiced in the back woods, barns or cabins on the plantations, or in the slave quarters in urban areas, by the enslaved people. The tradition was practiced in the late evening/night hours to maintain its secrecy. In an era when the enslaved people received no time to properly mourn and/or bury the deceased, the Ring Shouts were performed as a ritual to honor the ancestors. The Ring Shout provided the suffering enslaved people unification and cultural fortification.

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Practitioners of the Ring Shout sing and move around in a counterclockwise circle with movement gestures relating to the songs and rhythms present. The circle represents life energy and its infinite cycle, which may change in quality but is never broken. The counterclockwise direction in Ring Shout tradition honors the ancestors, since this direction specifically connects beings to the ancestral realm. This may be viewed by some as a way of reversing or traversing time in order to unite with spirits. This type of connectivity to divine spirits is rarely found within the linearity of western spiritual practices.

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Since the drums were abolished during the majority of the Ring Shout era of slavery, wooden sticks played on wooden boards acted like the drum rhythm and call.6  The drum is the heartbeat. It has its own power of ase. The drum speaks and it calls upon the spirits. The drum itself is a powerful spirit. The ancestors hear the call of the drum and respond. Movements together as a congregation are key to reaching spiritual transcendence; whether in the form of rocking, swaying, or other movements. The counterclockwise circle of Ring Shout is a characteristic of African dance ceremonies that honored the deceased. The belief carried on into the Ring Shout tradition is that “The grave is the most sacred point upon which a person can take an oath or affirm that ‘life is a shared process with the dead below the river or the sea.’ ‘Drawing or singing a point’ on the ground summons the power of God and the ancestors.7 ” This summoning of power occurs in the movement of Ring Shout; it is in the feet. The shuffling of the feet on the ground and the movement of the torso above provides direct connection with the ancestors below. The energy that is generated from the friction of shuffling feet with the earth creates the foundation to directly communicate with God. Once the energy of the circle builds, the presence of Divine Spirits and the ancestors can be felt by the practitioners in the circle. The movers burst into sudden moments of trance, which can be signified by the movements of the person affected: these may include a dropping of the knees and torso, spinning, bouncing of the knees, shoulders and other parts of the body. Such movements would occur as the circle continued around the person in trance. “Iron pots were placed in the center of the circle, turned upside down to absorb the sounds of the dancing, singing and rhythms allowing the practioners to continue their ritual in secrecy.”  “The pots also focused the ancestral energy to the center of the circle and acted as a conduit to connect with those spirits.8 ” This aspect of the “shout” was removed later in the practice. It is my speculation that the increased presence of Christianity amongst the African Americans contributed to this change."....

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