Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia

1. "Kneebone in the Wilderness": The History of the Shout in America [Image Plates follow pg 52]

The History of the Shout inAmerica Anyone who had slaves they collected them all together and took them to the places called Aladabara and Jufufe to sell them to the Portuguese. Then the Portuguese put them in their ship and left there and went to Jang Jang Bure. When they left there they went right to the slave house to collect the slaves there and take them to the Dutch. Then the Dutch collected them and sent them toAmerica. It is because of this that slaves were plenty inAmerica. They called them AmericanNegroes. —from Toolongjang, sung by West African griot Alhaji Fabala Kanuteh By the late nineteenth century it was too late for African religion—and therefore for African culture—to be contained or reversed because its advocates were practically the entire black population in America. The essential features of the ring shout were present in one form or another, and hardly a state in the Union was without its practitioners following slavery. Moreover, the shout continued to be the principal context in which creativity occurred. —Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture 17 y "Kneebone in the Wildernesss" 1 According to Lawrence McKiver, "every bit of it is an African act. The old people, that's what they tell me. Nobody does it but our kind of people. The shout. . . it's just an African act. Youcan tell by the singing, tell by the song, tell by the beat, it's actually an African beat. I think they come in 1722 when the blacks came over here. It came down through the generations. It used to be real popular one time. But it fall on back, fall on back. I don't think no others got it, that I know of." "They brought it [the shout] here with them. My people," said old Jim Cook. Lawrence McKiver is specific about the song they brought, "Kneebone Bend," and the dancelike movement that went with it: "That's the oldest slave song that ever was sung by black people when they first come over from Africa over here. See, the song would say'kneebone in the wilderness,' you see, they didn't know where they was—so that was going to a place they . . . didn't know nothing about, understand? So they would sing this song, 'kneebone in the wilderness, kneebone in the valley,' they waspraying at the time, that's why they say 'kneebone bend,' they was bending down, they was praying.. . . That's the way my mamatold it to me, and aunts. I had some old ancestors that put out these songs,you know."l This oral testimony brings into focus a poignant image of the very moment of the disembarkment of African slaves in the New World. The act of kneeling has significance in the African tradition as well as in European Christianity.2 The bent-knee posture in African dance and art "signaled the presence of supple life energies."3 In the present day shout, the song text recalling supplication , and the bent-knee posture of the shouters as they move actively around the ring, unites the more receptive supplication and the active expression of life-affirming energy. A history of the African roots of the shout must begin with the earliest reports of African dancing, particularly dancing in the service of religion, contemporaneous with the slave trade. Robert Farris Thompson cited Ten Thyne's account of dancing in southern Africa in 1673: "They take the greatest delight in dancing. . . . If they have the least feeling for religion, it is in the observation of the dance that they must show it ... with their bodies leaning forward, stamp on the ground vigorusly with their feet, lustily chanting in unison . . . and with a fixed expression on their faces."4 Thompson relates this description, particularly as it concerns stance and posture, to a modern description of Bushmen dancing to the Southwest of the Cape in the Kalahari: "the ceremonial dance [is] a religious act, but, although very 18 Shout Because You're Free serious . . . is not piouslysolemn or constrained and it provides occasion for pleasure and aesthetic satisfaction . . . the men dance with knees bent and bodies carried with little motion, leaning forward. The steps are very precise . They are minute in size, advancing only two or three inches, but they are strongly stamped, and ten or twenty dancers stamping together produces a loud thud."5 This last description parallels the movements...