come from Arabic shawṭ, meaning "a single run", such as a single circumambulation of the Kaaba, or an open space of ground for running. According to musicologist Robert Palmer, the first written accounts of the ring shout date from the 1840s. The stamping and clapping in a circle was described as a kind of "drumming," and 19th-century observers associated it with the conversion of slaves to Christianity. Influence Sterling Stuckey in his book, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory & the Foundations of Black America (1987, ) argues that ring shout was a unifying element of Africans in American colonies, from which field hollers, work songs, and spirituals evolved, followed by blues and jazz. In his article, "Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black Music Inquiry", Samuel A. Floyd Jr. argues that many of the stylistic elements observed during the ring shout later laid the foundations of various black music styles developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to Floyd, "...all of the defining elements of black music are present in the ring...". These basic elements of ring shouts included calls, cries, and hollers; blue notes; call-and-response; and various rhythmic aspects. Examples of black music that would evolve from the ring include, but are not limited to, Afro-American burial music of New Orleans, the Blues, the Afro-American Symphony, as well as the music that has accompanied various dance forms also present in Afro-American culture. The ring shout has developed into the modern "shout" (or "praise break") tradition now seen across the globe. Though augmented and interracialized by the Pentecostal tradition in the early 1900s and spreading to various denominations and churches thereafter, it is still primarily practiced among Christians of West African descent. The ring shout continues today in Georgia with the McIntosh County Shouters. Footnotes References Diouf, Sylviane. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Floyd Jr., Samuel A. "Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black Music Inquiry." Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 22 (2002): 49-70. Parrish Lydia. Slave Songs of the Georgia Islands. 1942. Reprint, Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Turner, Lorenzo Dow. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. 1949. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1969. External links McIntosh County Shouters in New Georgia Encyclopedia "Run Old Jeremiah": Echoes of the Ring Shout African-American cultural history African Americans and religion Caribbean culture Gullah mythology Circle dances African-American