Ring Shout: Religious Dance of the Slaves PDF

68 THE AFRICAN HERITAGE Religious dancing and shouting were by no means confined to camp meetings. Olmsted remarked on the regular religious wor- ship of the slaves on one plantation: On most of the large rice plantations which I have seen in this vicinity, there is...

68 THE AFRICAN HERITAGE Religious dancing and shouting were by no means confined to camp meetings. Olmsted remarked on the regular religious wor- ship of the slaves on one plantation: On most of the large rice plantations which I have seen in this vicinity, there is a small chapel, which the negroes call their prayer-house. The owner of one of these told me that, having furnished the prayer-house with seats having a back-rail, his negroes petitioned him to remove it, because it did not leave them room enough to pray. It was explained to me that it is their custom, in social worship, to work themselves up to a great pitch of excitement, in which they yell and cry aloud, and, finally shriek and leap up, clapping their hands and danc- ing, as it is done at heathen festivals. The back-rail they found to seriously impede this exercise.59 The religious dance most frequently described was the ring shout of the slaves in the Sea Islands. The ring shout, musicolo- gists agree, is a particularly strong example of African-influenced dance style in the United States. Frazier and others have relegated the ring shout to the Sea Islands, where they admit Africanisms were strong, but there is evidence that the ring shout was a widespread and deeply ingrained practice among slaves in other areas as well. The following passage from A.M.E. Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne's autobiography indicates that he had met with the ring shout in many places a little over a decade after slavery: About this time I attended a "bush meeting"... After the sermon they formed a ring, and with coats off sung, clapped their hands and stamped their feet in a most ridiculous and heathenish way. I requested the pastor to go and stop their dancing. At his request they stopped their dancing and clap- ping of hands, but remained singing and rocking their bodies to and fro. This they did for about fifteen minutes. I then went, and taking their leader by the arm requested him to desist and to sit down and sing in a rational manner. I told him also that it was a heathenish way to worship and disgraceful to themselves, the race, and the Christian name. In that instance they broke up their ring; but would not sit down, and walked sullenly away. After the sermon in the afternoon, having another oppor-  DEATH OF THE GODS 69 tunity of speaking alone to this young leader of the singing and clapping ring, he said: "Sinners won't get converted unless there is a ring." Said I: "You might sing till you fell down dead, and you would fail to convert a single sinner, because nothing but the Spirit of God and the word of God can convert sin- ners." He replied: "The Spirit of God works upon people in different ways. At camp-meeting there must be a ring here, a ring there, a ring over yonder, or sinners will not get con- verted." This was his idea, and it is also that of many others. These "Bands" I have had to encounter in many places... To the most thoughtful... I usually succeeded in making the "Band" disgusting; but by the ignorant masses... it was re- garded as the essence of religion.60 In the exchange between Payne and the "Band" leader it is significant that the latter found the ring shout necessary for con- version and for the working of the Spirit. Payne goes on to describe the "ring" of the "Bands," also known as "Fist and Heel Worshippers." He who could sing loudest and longest led the 'Band,' having his loins girded and a handkerchief in hand with which he kept time, while his feet resounded on the floor like the drum- sticks of a bass drum. In some cases it was the custom to begin these dances after every night service and keep it up till midnight, sometimes singing and dancing alternately—a short prayer and a long dance. Someone has even called it the "Voudoo Dance." I have remonstrated with a number of pas- tors for permitting these practices, which vary somewhat in different localities, but have been invariably met with the re- sponse that he could not succeed in restraining them, and an attempt to compel them to cease would simply drive them away from our Church... And what is more deplorable, some of our most popular and powerful preachers labor system- atically to perpetuate this fanaticism. Such preachers never rest till they create an excitement that consists in shouting, jumping and dancing.61 It seems, then, from Payne's account, as well as those of others, that dancing was a crucial part of worship for some slaves and ex-slaves. The label "Voudoo Dance," which Payne records, was 70 THE AFRICAN HERITAGE not entirely a misnomer. There are close parallels between the style of dancing observed in African and Caribbean cult worship and the style of the American "ring shout." Folklorists John and Alan Lomax who recorded a ring shout in Louisiana in 1934 enumerated the parallels. We have seen "shouts" in Louisiana, in Texas, in Georgia and the Bahamas; we have seen vaudou dancing in Haiti; we have read accounts of similar rites in works upon Negro life in other parts of the Western hemisphere. All share basic simi- larities: (1) the song is "danced" with the whole body, with hands, feet, belly, and hips; (2) the worship is, basically, a dancing-singing phenomenon; (3) the dancers always move counter-clockwise around the ring; (4) the song has the leader-chorus form, with much repetition, with a focus on rhythm rather than on melody, that is, with a form that invites and ultimately enforces cooperative group activity; (5) the song continues to be repeated from sometimes more than an hour, steadily increasing in intensity and gradually accelerat- ing, until a sort of mass hypnosis ensues... This shout pat- tern is demonstrably West African in origin.62 George E. Simpson has described the dancing of the Revivalist cult in Jamaica in terms that bear striking resemblance to the American ring shout. Halfway through the service the leader may begin to circle counterclockwise the altar, or a table inside the church, or the "seal" in the yard outside the church. The officers and leading members of the church, often up to twenty people, fall in behind him as all of them "labor in the spirit"... This "spirit- ual" dancing is believed to increase the religious understand- ing of the participants.63 There are a number of detailed descriptions of the technique of the ring shout in which African style dance patterns can be noted. W. F. Allen reprinted an account of the shout on the Sea Islands from the Nation (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  DEATH OF THE GODS 71 some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than half the population of the planta- tion is gathered together... But the benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over, and old and young men and women... boys... young girls barefooted, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the 'sperichil' is struck, begin first walking and by-and-by shuffling round, 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 si- lently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is also sung by the dancers. But most frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to 'base' the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands together or on the knees. Song and dance alike are extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise- house... It is not unlikely that this remarkable religious cere- mony is a relic of some African dance... Dancing in the usual way is regarded with great horror by the people of Port Royal, but they enter with infinite zest into the movements of the "shout."64 As Harold Courlander wrote: "circular movement, shuffling steps and stamping, postures and gestures, the manner of stand- ing, the way the arms are held out for balance or pressed against the sides, the movements of the shoulder, all are African in con- ception and derivation."65 It has even been suggested by Lorenzo Dow Turner that the very word "shout" derives from saut, a term used by West African Muslims to denote "dancing or moving around the Kaaba."66 The ring form of religious dancing occurred on occasions other than revivals and praise meetings. Funerals, for example, were occasions for dancing and sometimes drumming, at least in the Sea Islands. Rachel Anderson, an elderly Georgia coast resident, recalled: "Use tub alluz beat duh drums at fewnuls. Right attuh 72 THE AFRICAN HERITAGE diih pusson die, dey beat um tuh tell duh uddahs bout duh fewnul... On duh way tuh duh grabe dey beat duh drum as dey is mahchin long. Wen duh body is put in duh grabe, ebrybody shout roun duh grabe in a succle, singin an prayin."67 And another old Georgian, Ben Sullivan, stated: "Dey go in a long pruhcession tuh duh buryin' groun. Den dey dance roun in a ring an dey motion wid duh hans. Dey sing duh body tuh duh grabe and den dey let it down an den dey succle roun in duh dance."68 In the ring shout and allied patterns of ecstatic behavior, the African heritage of dance found expression in the evangelical reli- gion of the American slaves. To be sure, there are significant differences between the kind of spirit possession found in West Africa and in the shouting experience of American revivalism. Different theological meanings are expressed and experienced in each. But similar patterns of response—rhythmic clapping, ring- dancing, styles of singing, all of which result in or from the state- of-possession trance—reveal the slaves' African religious back- ground. The shout is a convincing example of Herskovits' theory of reinterpretation of African traditions; for the situation of the camp-meeting revival, where enthusiastic and ecstatic religious behavior was encouraged, presented a congenial setting for slaves to merge African patterns of response with Christian interpreta- tions of the experience of spirit possession, an experience shared by both blacks and whites. The Protestant revivalist tradition, accepted by the slaves and their descendants in the United States, proved in this instance to be amenable to the influence of African styles of behavior. Despite the prohibition of dancing as heathen- ish and sinful, the slaves were able to reinterpret and "sanctify" their African tradition of dance in the "shout."69 While the North American slaves danced under the impulse of the Spirit of a "new" God, they danced in ways their fathers in Africa would have recognized. Moreover, the argument, mentioned above, between Bishop Payne and the leader of the ring-shout band hints at a deeper level of reinterpretation. If, as Payne claims, the "ignorant masses"  DEATH OF THE GODS 73 (read "less acculturated") regarded the ring shout "as the essence of religion," and if the shout leader's contention that "without a ring sinners won't get converted" was representative of general belief, the "holy dance" of the shout may very well have been a two-way bridge connecting the core of West African religions— possession by the gods—to the core of evangelical Protestanism— experience of conversion. There are also hints that the process of conversion may have been related in the slaves' minds to the African-style period of initiation into the cults of the gods. Slaves customarily spoke of the period of seeking conversion as "mourn- ing" and thought of it as a time when the sinner should go apart, alone, to a quiet place to struggle with his sins. This period and place of retirement resemble the novitiate of West African and Caribbean cults in two details. Fugitive slave Henry Brown re- called that when his sister "became anxious to have her soul con- verted" she "shaved the hair from her head, as many of the slaves thought they could not be converted without doing this," a cus- tom similar to initiation rites in Brazil, Trinidad and West Africa. The other similarity may be noted in Samuel Lawton's descrip- tion of a practice followed in the Sea Islands which resembled the use of cloth bands in the "mourning ground" ceremony of Spirit- ual Baptists in Trinidad: "Seekers may sometimes be identified by a white cloth or string tied around the head. This is a signal that they are seekin' and all others are to 'leave 'em alon.' "70 Ring shouts were also called "running sperichils," a term which suggests a connection with a broader and more inclusive category of religious expression, the Afro-American spirituals. There were several kinds of spirituals—shouts, anthems, and jubilees—serv- ing different occasions and reflecting different moods. Styles ranged from the exciting tempo and rhythmic stamp of the shout to the slow, drawn-out "sorrow songs" which usually come to mind when the spirituals are mentioned. While the lyrics and themes of the spirituals were drawn from Biblical verses and Christian hymns, and although the music and melodies were strongly influenced by the sacred and secular songs of white 74 THE AFRICAN HERITAGE Americans, the style in which the slaves sang the spirituals was African. Frequently, musically literate observers despaired of adequately conveying the style and sounds of the spirituals they had heard. One who tried was Lucy McKim Garrison, who in 1862 wrote of the difficulties involved in her task: It is difficult to express the entire character of these Negro ballads by mere musical notes and signs. The odd turns made in the throat, and the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices chiming in at different irregular intervals, seem almost as impossible to place on the score as the singing of birds or the tones of an AEolian harp.71 A later compiler of spirituals complained of a similar problem: "Tones are frequently employed which we have no musical char- acter to represent. Such, for example, is that which I have indi- cated as nearly as possible by the flat seventh... "72 The singing style of the slaves, which was influenced by their African heritage, was characterized by a strong emphasis on call and response, polyrhythms, syncopation, ornamentation, slides from one note to another, and repetition. Other stylistic features included body movement, hand-clapping, foot-tapping, and heter- ophony. This African style of song performance could not be reduced to musical notations, which explains why printed ver- sions do not capture the peculiar flavor of the slave songs, which were consistently labeled "wild," "strangely fascinating," of "pe- culiar quality," and "barbaric" by white observers. Despite the African style of singing, the spirituals, like the "running spirituals" or ring shout, were performed in praise of the Christian God.73 The names and words of the African gods were replaced by Biblical figures and Christian imagery. African style and European hymnody met and became in the spiritual a new, Afro-American song to express the joys and sorrows of the reli- gion which the slaves had made their own.74 Another area of religious behavior in which European tradi- tions of slaveholders and African traditions of slaves proved conso-  DEATH OF THE GODS 75 nant with one another was that of folk belief, the realm of magic, "hoodoo," and "conjure." Folk Belief: From Vaudou to Conjuring No discussion of Africanisms in the religious life of black Ameri- cans could be complete without reference to voodoo. However, when speaking of voodoo in the United States, as opposed to vaudou in Haiti, an important distinction must be made between voodoo as an organized cult and voodoo as a system of magic. Voodoo as a cult flourished until the late nineteenth century, particularly in New Orleans, though it was not confined to that area. From the early days of French Louisiana, the voodoo cult was associated with slaves imported from the French West Indies. Voodoo originated in the religion of Africans, but the most imme- diate catalyst to the growth of the cult in Louisiana was the emigration of slaves and free blacks from the island of Saint-Do- mingue at the time of the Haitian Revolution. Initially the cult and the magical system of voodoo formed an integral whole, but gradually voodoo as an institutionalized cult of ritual worship disintegrated, while its tradition of "root work" persisted in folk beliefs widespread among slaves and their de- scendants down to the present day. Voodoo priests—and more commonly, priestesses—presided over the cult while building a large clientele for various charms and gris-gris. New Orleans be- came known as the capital of "root work," and voodoo, or hoodoo, came to be a synonym for conjuring and conjurers apart from the cultic context of its African-Haitian origins.75 By all accounts, voodoo in New Orleans was centered upon worship of a snake god. Drumming, dancing, singing, possession, animal sacrifice, eating, and drinking were customary at the cere- monies in Louisiana, as in Haiti and West Africa. In Dahomey the god Damballa (Da) was envisioned as a snake and as the rainbow, principle of fluidity and governor of men's destinies. Particularly in the coastal kingdoms of Arada and Ouidah, conquered by Da-