Give she a red wun

O'please Geechee family don't leave me hanging on disya wun!   Who remember chilly bears?  Bae bae lookya I bun the chilly bear queen of 'merica street heah!  I loved the red (cherry) wun and the yella (lemonade) wun.  My chilly bear lady stayed in Reed st housing (I may not have the name exactly right), God bless ee heart I can't call her name and I'm shame because many a day she put her futs under our dinner table and broke bread with us.   Anyhow, she would bring a whole carton of 'em soon as she knew I bun home. That bun the best treat ever!  I stayed in the freeza.  Who knew little Dixie cups filled with kool aid would bring a child so much joy.  My cousins and I would destroy a carton full in a day or two.  I'm sure other places in the sowt have something similar but just call them by a different name, but if ya Geechee and from chasstun then you ONLY knoh 'em by chilly bears.  What I would give now to hear Miss Ma'am yell shru mi screen door "chillee beah" and we come a flyin down the stairs.  Then when I/we got old enough we would walk our lil  boonkys right on up the street and get our chillee beahs ourselves. Just another fond memory growing up geechee.

Story by Pentherapee

Ring Shout

Ring Shout

A ring shout is a religious ritual, used by African slaves, to declare a oneness to God, call out to the ancestors, and to speak to each other. It's a counterclockwise dance-like movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion consisting of hand claps, and a stick beating the rhythm on the ground or the floor. 

The ring shout was often performed after the slave owner's Christian service. It is said that the Gullah/Geechee, of Georgia and South Carolina, ring shouters made a circle around the church building. Often times, the slaves went into the woods at night to perform shouts, for hours, until they were exhausted. 

A ring shout is performed when a songster begins or sets a song starting off slow, then speeds up the tempo. The singers, or basers answers the songster in a call-and response. There is a stick-man, who sits next to the songster, will beat a simple rhythm with a wood stick, sometimes a broom, the basers will use hand clapping and foot patting to add rhythm. 

The earliest known records of the ring shout are circa 1840. Today, the shouting that is done in some churches come from the ring shout. 


Below you can watch the McIntosh County Shouters perform a traditional ring shout