The inspiration that has driven me to take on this challenge of being the first native, born Gullah Geechee to write an entire book that relates to a part of my culture, that has proven history with one of the first direct connection associated with parts of Africa that made its way through the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas or shall I say the United States of America what is now called the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor that is directly connected and so important to the history of America and the world, this cultural ritual of the Ring Shout in the form of dance, music, the entire body movements called the Ring Shout.
This is one of the first book on the Ring shout written in the 21st century by a Gullah Geechee, others may have written small parts of this history in documents and orc news articles, etc. and there is one children's book with part of the subject matter in their sub title, but by far this is the first written book title "Ring Shout" by a person that was Birth into the Gullah Geechee Ring Shout Culture. On the one hand I feel fortunate to have been given the task to write this unique book on a unique subject matter, unfortunately, it's not that many groups that operate on a National Cultural Art performance level, nor performing or teaching the ring shout on a regular basis, for whatever reason it's only about three recognize National groups that perform at this level. Namely, First: The Sea Island Singers, this is the first to bring us to be known culturally to perform the Art Performance side of the Ring Shout.
Secondly: The McIntosh County Shouters Thirdly: the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters. After that they are many other groups learning and perform, but not on a regular basis throughout the USA, other groups that do perform for a multitude of reasons of that we are grateful that at least some have taken on the role of breaking out of just a handful of groups, to hopefully many others will continue to spread the knowledge to a wider audience of participants and practitioners of doing the ring shout and teaching this unique, cultural experience to others within the Gullah Geechee culture and those that do not identify themselves as Gullah Geechee's Everywhere.
It is very important to know:
"It's a big difference in the spiritual connection of doing the Ring Shout, then doing the cultural art performance side of doing the Ring Shout".
And that's where I come in to author this book, from within the Gullah Geechee culture from within, seeing and learning it from my grandfather Nelson Sams, which was birth in the late 1800s and passed away to be with the ancestors when I was a young adult in the early 1970s, now I'm here, in the 21st-century, with a span of knowledge reaching over three different centuries to have touched the flesh and now my flesh touch the flesh of others we trying to transform this ring shout efforts to a larger audience, nationwide and worldwide is our hope, in order to keep it alive. In the beginning, most of the cultural art performance group largely work within their family, entirely cousins and in-laws, I represent a new breed of training and teaching the Ring Shout outside of the family connections, by broadening to others in the Gullah Geechee and beyond,
