The Rebel Yell: A Cultural History by Craig A. Warren (review)

“My conclusions at times may surprise readers,” writes Craig A. Warren in his monograph on the rebel yell (p. xv). Indeed, I was surprised that someone could sustain over two hundred pages, with perfect citations, about a whoop ass holler that every southerner worth her weight in sweet tea lets rip on occasion. But even more surprising is how enchanting the book is as Warren traces the history of the battle cry of Confederate soldiers and demonstrates how that “free-form screeching” has evolved over time (p. 11). Alternatively using descriptions like the yell, the screech, and the falsetto wailing that creates a “sonic experience” similar to the “rolling wave of sound” audiences produce at sporting events, Warren links the “intrinsically complex vocal phenomenon” that “resulted from bodies of men screeching in unison” to today’s pop culture icons (pp. 113, 10). It is a masterfully researched book about a cultural phenomenon that has transformed from the battle cry of a rebel army to the “beloved anthem of youthful independence and good-natured rebellion” (p. 123).

Warren explores the origins of the rebel yell, and questions whether it was a strategy of war. He concludes that during the Civil War white southerners were looking for something distinct to reflect their new nationhood, and this warbling, high-pitched, “unnerving and uneven scream with no known lineage connecting it to the northern populace” was one way Confederates could begin making that distinction (p. 2). Warren does not believe that the yell originated in memories of Indian war calls or battle cries from the Revolutionary War. He also finds explanations that southerners were imitating hunting calls or harking back to their Scots-Irish heritage implausible. He believes the yell arose organically and spread like wildfire, with each regiment creating a unique screeching wail until it “thrived beyond the battlefield during the war itself” (p. 112). What is distinctive about the rebel yell, Warren claims, is its collective nature; it is a cacophony of voices that shriek and roll in unison.

Warren asks why so little critical work has been done to expose the truths and myths of the legendary battle cry. Because the yell is a historical artifact that cannot be seen or memorialized in a statue or a flag, Warren’s task is difficult. Yet he takes on the mythmakers and slays them with his acute analysis. As a professor of English, Warren naturally turned to the written word, tracing references to the Confederate screech in newspapers, memoirs, poetry, and literature and analyzing how those sources describe the sound. Warren’s sources go back to the armies of the Greeks, Romans, Mongol horsemen, and the Celts, who “‘set up a dreadful din’” during battle, yet he finds “no obvious precursors” to the rebel yell (pp. 15, 16). His brilliant research with the digital tool Audacity allowed him to compare two “real” recordings of rebel yells, and his conclusions will certainly surprise readers. Warren even takes on Shelby Foote, who believed that the real rebel yell had been lost. If one defines the rebel yell as strictly a Civil War battle cry, then that sound died at the end of the war. But Warren demonstrates that the rebel yell is still alive and evolving because “Americans have for generations imbued the yell with cultural meanings having little to do with the storm of combat” (p. 157). To hear a four-minute recording of Confederate veterans performing the yell, readers can visit the website cited in note 51 on page 176: www.smithsonianmag.com/video/what-did-the-rebel-yell-sound-like.html.