a West African circle dance that has influenced jazz, surviving in the Black churches of the southern US
ring shout in American English
noun
a group dance of West African origin introduced into parts of the southern U.S. by black revivalists, performed by shuffling counterclockwise in a circle while answering shouts of a preacher with corresponding shouts, and held to be, in its vigorous antiphonal patterns, a source in the development of jazz
Word origin
[1930–35, Amer.]This word is first recorded in the period 1930–35. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: acoustic phonetics, kickback, logical positivism, saddle stitch, uncertainty principle