Chapter 23, African American Popular Styles: One Long Ring Shout

Chapter 23, African American Popular Styles: One Long Ring Shout

In order to understand the continuity between traditional tribal music in Africa and the genres that were innovated in the US it is important to cite the most prominent aspect of group music making; the Ring Shout. For anyone who doesn't know what a Ring Shout is, it is the result of the banning of drums in the American south by slave owners and conservative religious groups. Nowhere was this more prominent than in New Orleans which was by every definition, an international community. In place of drums, the African American slaves would stand in a circle, shout and clap hands, at various intervals, individuals would enter the ring and contribute dance, a new shout or an additional rhythm. This is something that Henry Martin and Keith Waters discuss in the text Essential Jazz - The First 100 Years in which they write: "The shouters, formed in a ring, men and women alternating, their bodies close together, moved round and round on shuffling feet that never left the floor." (Martin/Waters p. 25) The video below is a modern recreation of the style of Ring Shout in which the eastern US slaves would be participating.




Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrDJ0aIBu7k


Now, let us examine a video of traditional African drumming. This is a commercial for a music program but it contains many clips of well-researched music and its not hard to see the relationship it bares to the Ring Shout. Look how the emphasis is a combination between the individual dancers or performers and their accompanying community of musicians playing poly-rhythms.



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpe2Rk9I3bk


From there it is very easy to see how this general philosophy translated into the world of Jazz and Blues. In the Jazz tradition we can see the individual contribute in the practice of solo improvisation (such as in the video below)Jean Ferris, in the text Music, The Art of Listening notes that "Jazz developed from a combination of black and white music traditions, but was predominantly influenced by the rhythms and performance practices of [early] African Americans." (Ferris p. 307)



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_55RJopDEIc

The Blues tradition is a little different however, we have to see Blues as essentially one long song that continues even after an individual interpretation is finished. Here we encounter our first real long-term contributions to a single work. Therefore; it isn't that blues song-writers weren't capable of writing other chord progressions, its just that they were lending their unique voice to a musical tradition.



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM

You can hear that both examples above are a single chord progression even though they are two very different characters of pieces, thereby giving the individual artists an oppurtunity to contribute to the long Blues tradition.


So, how does the ring shout continue? Lets end with one of the most modern interpretations of individual contribution to a group style in the form of hip-hop club music. Often this type of rap is really just a set of lyrics that state “dance like this... now dance like that” but the emphasis is on the unique interpretation of the specific dance, as an example of this I give to you Soulja Boy's “Superman,” examine the cuts to individuals dancing to show off their own personality in the song. Universal Records doesn't allow embedding of video, so you have to go to YouTube to see this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpocrqvP2Yg

Works Cited:

Martin, Henry. Essential Jazz - The First 100 Years. Thompson Schirmer. Belmount: 2005

Ferris, Jean. Music, The Art of Listening. McGraw-Hill. Boston: 1999