Ring Shout ~ Filipino Conjure & Rootwork

This book by Art and Margo Rosenbaum traces the shout's African origins, presents a collection of commentaries and stories by observers and folklorists, and features the shout songs performed by present-day African-American shouters.

Sacred Movement and Spiritual Work

As I continue my studies into the folkways of the American South, I am constantly moved by the "Ring Shout." To many traditional Rootworkers and practitioners in the Gullah-Geechee regions, the Shout is not a mere dance; it is a profound "spiritual work." It is a ritualized vessel for ecstasy, communal healing, and prophetic vision that has survived against all odds.

First described by outside observers on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia during the Civil War, this practice remains a powerful expression of deep and intense emotion.


Members of the Gullah community were doing ring shouts at a local praise house in Georgia circa 1930. (Photo courtesy of Lorenzo Dow Turner Papers, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

Ancient Echoes: The Islamic and Kongo Connection

The Ring Shout carries a rich, multi-layered history that spans across the Atlantic. Some scholars suggest it may have originated from the Islamic ritual of tawaf—the seven-fold circumambulation of the Kaaba performed by pilgrims in Mecca. Enslaved Muslim Africans from ethnic groups such as the Wolof, Mandinka, Fula, Susu, Temne, Mende, and Vai likely brought this memory to the West Indies and the American Lowcountry. In this context, the term "shout" may find its roots in the Afro-Arabic word shawṭ, which refers to running until exhausted.

However, other resources, such as Mojo Workin: The Old African-American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald, suggest that this counterclockwise movement represents the full cycle of life—birth, childhood, adulthood, death, and rebirth—as traced by the Kongo Cosmogram or the yowa.

Resilience Under the Drum Ban

I have learned that while the Ring Shout is a deeply and rhythmic ritual, drums are traditionally not used in the practice. This was a direct response to Article 36 of the Slave Code of South Carolina (1740), which banned the use of drums out of fear that they were being used to signal rebellions.

"It is essential to the safety of this Province, that all due care be taken to restrain Negroes from using or keeping of drums..." — Article 36, Slave Code of 1740.

Faced with this restriction, the Enslaved demonstrated incredible resilience by turning mundane objects into sacred percussion:

Walking sticks and broomsticks were used to maintain the beat.
Farming tools like hoes and shovels provided a metallic rhythm.
Large mortar and pestles served as resonant instruments.

The Movement: "Unholy Dancing" vs. Shouting

The movements of the shout have been handed down through generations, maintaining a strict distinction between secular dance and sacred worship. The practitioners utilize a two-foot shuffle where the feet never cross. It is maintained that crossing the feet would be "unholy dancing," whereas the shuffle is a shout in the service of God.

The Liturgy of Deliverance

The essential elements of these songs—cries, hollers, and call-and-response—mirror the melodic religious ceremonies of the Yoruba, Ibibio, Efik, and Kongo people. One powerful example is the slave shout song "Pharaoh's Host Got Lost," which invokes the wondrous works of God in the lives of the Israelites and African Americans alike.

For the African-American brethren, it served as a rhythmic reminder that God would one day grant the "justice" and "freedom" they sought, just as He delivered Israel from Egypt. Though it evolved through the Great Migration into spirituals, gospel, blues, and jazz, the Ring Shout saw a public resurgence in the 1980s through groups like the McIntosh County Shouters.

PHARAOH'S HOST GOT LOST

by McIntosh County Shouters

Leader:

Moses, Moses, lay your rod

Leader and group:

In that Red Sea--

Leader:

Lay your rod, let the children cross

Leader and group

In that Red Sea

Chorus:

Ol' Pharaoh's hos' got los', los', los',

Ol' Pharaoh's hos' got los'

In that Red Sea

They shout when the hos' got los', los', los',

They shout when the hos' got los'

In that Red Sea

Leader:

Moses, Moses, lay your rod

Leader and group:

In that Red Sea--

Leader:

Lay your rod, let the children cross

Leader and group

In that Red Sea

Chorus:

Ol' Pharaoh's hos' got los', los', los',

Ol' Pharaoh's hos' got los'

In that Red Sea

Leader:

Moses, Moses, lay your rod

Leader and group:

In that Red Sea--

Leader:

Lay your rod, let the children cross

Leader and group

In that Red Sea

Chorus:

Ol' Pharaoh's hos' got los', los', los',

Ol' Pharaoh's hos' got los'

In that Red Sea

Such a weepin' when the hos' got los', los', los',

Such a weepin' when the hos' got los'

In that Red Sea

Comparison of Ritual Elements in the Ring Shout:

Element	Symbolic Meaning	Ancestral/Historical Root
Counterclockwise Circle	The Cycle of Life / Tawaf	Kongo Cosmogram / Islamic Shawṭ
Foot Shuffling	Sacred Movement (not "dancing")	West African Traditional Rites
Stick/Tool Beating	Substituted Percussion	Response to the 1740 Slave Code
Call-and-Response	Community Connection	Yoruba and Kongo Traditions

References & Further Reading:

Hazzard-Donald, Katrina. (2012). Mojo Workin: The Old African-American Hoodoo System.
Thompson, Robert Farris. (1983). Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy.
Rosenbaum, Art. (1998). Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia. University of Georgia Press.
Gomez, Michael A. (1998). Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South. University of North Carolina Press.
Southern, Eileen. (1997). The Music of Black Americans: A History. W. W. Norton & Company.
Slave Code of South Carolina. (1740). Article 36.
Lorenzo Dow Turner Papers. Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

See, What Our Path Is

Being immensely interested in African diaspora religions and Folk Catholicism, we primarily honor our ancestors, Church saints, angels, folk saints, and Afro-Caribbean spirits such as loas and orishas. If we absolutely have to put a label on ourselves, we prefer the label of “Folk Judeo-Christian” as we live according to the customs and traditions of conjure workers and root doctors from the Deep South and syncretic followers of Christ in various nations of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Our spirituality includes West African-based Caribbean-style tradition as well as Esoteric Christianity and Yoruba religion. Generally, we practice Gullah folk magic popularly known in the Deep South as Hoodoo or Lowcountry Voodoo; the ancient wisdom founded by Orunmila in Ile-Ife called Ifa, and a bit of Lihim na Karunungan (Filipino Esotericism or Philippine Mystery Tradition).

Respect, What Hoodoo Is

Despite visible evidence of Central West African, Islamic/Moorish, Native American, Judeo-Christian, European, and even a few East Indian/Hindu, Chinese, and Latino/Caribbean retentions, influences, and admixtures, this does not mean that Hoodoo is an open and unrestricted system of eclectic magic.

Conjure, and Rootwork is rooted in African-American culture and Folk Protestant Christianity. Any practitioners of Hoodoo who did not grow up within African-American culture should still have a fuller understanding and high regard for its origin.

In the beginning, the early conjure doctors were entirely Black. The students were all Black, the elders were Black, the teaching was Black, and they focused only on Blacks as their audience. But other races were accepted when they had also been brought into the Hoodoo community and learned the tradition. Even so, we should still acknowledge that Hoodoo, Conjure, or Rootwork is not ours but only belongs to the Black community. We are just believers who are grafted into their rich yet humble tradition and, by word and deed, embrace genuine African-American folk spirituality and magic. This is all we can do for all the blessings we received from God and our Black ancestors.

Hoodoo's lack of religious structure and hierarchical authority do not mean that any person or group can appropriate or redefine it. If one cannot respect Hoodoo as it is and for what it is, then please, do not play with it.

Learn, How Conjure Is Worked On

Authentic Conjure is not all about blending and selling oils and casting spells online to make money. Hoodoo has its own spiritual philosophy, theology, and a wide range of African-American folkways, customs, and practices which include, but are not limited to, veneration of the ancestors, Holy Ghost shouting, snake reverence, spirit possession, graveyard conjure, nkisi practices, Black hermeneutics, African-American church traditions, the ring shout, the Kongo cosmogram, ritual water immersions, crossroads magic, making conjure canes, animal sacrifices, Jewish scriptural magic, enemy works, Seekin' ritual, magical incorporation of bodily fluids, etc.

Unfortunately, they are currently missing in marketeered or commercial Hoodoo, as they are being removed, disregarded, or ignored by unknowing merchants who simply want to profit from an African-American spiritual tradition, thus reducing Hoodoo to just a plethora of recipes, spells, and tricks.

Tim and I are completely aware that we are not African-Americans, so we are doing our best to retain and preserve the customs and traditions of the slave ancestors to avoid unnecessary conflict with the larger Black-Belt Hoodoo community and prevent them from labeling us inauthentic outsiders and our practice as mere 'cultural misappropriation.'

Accept, Who We Are

The byproduct of eons of slave history, Black supremacists believe that only people with African or African-American blood are real Hoodoo practitioners and are often inclined to consider themselves as the elite of the Hoodoo community; a place in which they believed that Whites, Latinos, Asians or any other races who do not have Black ancestry do not belong. Black supremacists are prone to be very hostile towards both “outsiders” and those accepting of them, fearing that their promotion and acceptance would dilute or even negate the Black identity of Hoodoo.

Although we do understand why some Blacks hold this stance, since a lot of people nowadays are misappropriating many aspects of Hoodoo and teaching the spiritual path even without proper education and training (for purely monetary purposes), we would, however, want to say that not all non-Black Hoodoo practitioners are the same.

WE respect what Hoodoo is, and we never try to change it, claim it as our own, disregard its history, take unfair advantage of it, speak against the people who preserve it, and mix it with other cultures (like our own) and call it Filipino/Pinoy Hoodoo, Gypsy Hoodoo or Wiccan Hoodoo because there are no such things.