Hi, Azizi - I picked up my version of the Telephone Song from some children in an inner London (that's UK) primary school. It was played as a sitting down game, sometimes in a circle, but there was no hand clapping involved. The children in the group who taught me the song came from a mixture of backgrounds, with the majority probably British/Afro-Caribbean and a sprinkling of all kinds of other ethnicities. Fairly sure I learnt it in the early 1980's.
I suspect the children had learnt it from another teacher at some stage. In that sense, the oral tradition continues, as I use it in classes now myself, and so it goes on.

Anne