The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #81350   Message #3301460
Posted By: Azizi
03-Feb-12 - 10:26 AM
Thread Name: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
Subject: RE: I'm Rubber . You're Glue: Children's Rhymes
Greetings, Jennifer Martin.

I rarely post on this forum anymore, but I want to share with you (and others) that my guess is that the game song that you remember is a pre-foot stomping cheer. Your entire description of how you remember "Check it Out" being performed conforms with the description of foot stomping cheers, except that you didn't describe the girls doing any percussive steppin' like foot stomping routines while they chanted those words (in between watching the "soloists doing their dance).Furthermore, I've collected other examples of foot stomping cheers that include the line "check it out". But that's not surprising since "check it out" was and still is a rather commonly used African American verncaular phrase.

"Foot stomping cheers" is a term that I coined for a certain type of composition that has a distinctive lyrical structure & performance activity. I consider foot stomping cheers to be a sub-category of children's/youth's dance style cheerleader cheers. I also consider those cheers to be a part of both the larger category of children's singing games, and the larger category of raps (in the pre-hip-hop sense of that word).

Traditionally (that is since 1976 when these cheers are first documented), foot stomping cheers are performed as an informal, leisure time activity, mostly by girls ages 6-12 years old.

Your example further confirms the documentation of these cheers originating with and being most often performed by African American girls. That said, the 2006 cheerleader movie Bring It On: All Or Nothing introduced much of the world to two examples of foot stomping cheers: "Shabooya Roll Call" and "Introduce Yourself".*

* It should be noted that the same textual structure and refrain found in the 2006 Bring It On movie was also used in Spike Lee's 1996 movie Get On The Bus. Also, in 1997 I collected an example of "Introduce Yourself" that is very similar to that used in that Bring It On movie, and I collected an earlier mid to late 1980s example of that same cheer, though with different words than that used in the 1990s example.

Click http://cocojams.com/content/foot-stomping-cheers-0 for more information on foot stomping cheers and for additional links to other related subjects.

Best wishes,

Azizi Powell