In the continuing struggle to expand America's definition of art to embrace African American modes of expression, today's Hip-Hop/rap artists have, in many respects, returned to their West African and early African American roots. In his examination of the religious aspects of popular music, Robin Sylvan suggests that, "What is especially distinctive about rap music's continuities with West African and African American musical principles is the rap itself and its prominent foregrounding of an oral mode of expression."
The music/poetry commonly known as rap grew out of the severely depressed South Bronx neighborhood of New York City in the late 1970s. Rap is firmly rooted in the call-and-response structure of the spirituals, as well as that of a type of work song known as the "field holler." The field holler employs a single, repeated musical verse which sounds like a kind of yell or cry. An answering shout or holler would then come from another field far away. Slaves often sang hollers as they worked in the vast tobacco and cotton fields of the South. Hollers were also a way of communicating, and sometimes contained coded information, such as the time and location for the next secret meeting where a ring shout might be performed.
Similarly, in rap, leaders referred to as "MCs" will call out to the audience, "Everybody say wo!" and the audience will respond, or the MCs will instruct them to "put your hands in the air," and be rewarded with the audience's waiving hands. Throughout the song, rappers will "lay down a rhyme" to the beat of the music, communicating with the audiences their feelings of anger, frustration, tenderness, love, lust, and social commentary.