ABSTRACT
Stepping, or blocking, is a dynamic and popular performance tradition among African-American fraternities and sororities. Approximately 5,000 individual chapters with half a million members throughout the USA participate in stepping. This complex performance event and ritual involves various combinations of dancing, singing, chanting, and speaking, and draws on African-American folk traditions and communication patterns as well as material from popular culture, such as advertising jingles, television theme songs, and top-40 hits.
