A group of kids gather to play a game of football.

The quarterback throws the ball and his teammate catches it, running for the end zone and scoring a touchdown. He throws the football down and raises his hands for numerous high-fives. Without knowing it, the kids imitate an old Kongo ritual.

“Kongo has had a vital artistic civilization for centuries, and I’m going to be looking at the way it has influenced African American art and aesthetic creativity on this side of the water. The impact of Kongo on our culture is interesting, and it goes right into the Super Bowl,” says Robert Farris Thompson, a professor at Yale University who will be visiting Iowa State to discuss the impact of the culture of Kongo, a kingdom in southwest Africa that was dissolved in the late 19th century.

One aspect of the Kongo influence on American culture is the high-five, Thompson says. In Kongo there is a woman’s ritual in which one woman jumps into the air with her right hand extended and slaps the hand of another woman.

High-fives aren’t the only Kongo influence found at a football game, Thompson says. Cheerleaders are also a reflection of Kongo culture. The position the cheerleaders begin with retains a deeper meaning in Kongo.

“When they’re on the sidelines, check them out,” Thompson says. “They will have their left hand on hip, right hand out with a baton. That’s not an accident. In Kongo, when men were leaving for athletic contests or to go to war, women would stand on the sidelines, left hand on hip, right hand out and urge them on.

“That’s the most powerful gesture in Kongo; it starts things, and it ends things. It augments things like sports.”

Kongo influence, however, has deeper impact on American culture than just sports. It influences a large percentage of the black race, Thompson says.

“Forty percent of all the blacks abstracted from Africa between 1550 and 1850 came from Kongo, Angola,” he says. “Every third or fourth black person you talk to in Iowa, Chicago, wherever – chances are that every third or fourth person has Kongo blood.”

Thompson says he became interested in Kongo culture from being an avid listener of Afro-Cuban jazz. Becoming involved with Kongo culture was inevitable, he says.

“Anyone who digs Latin music as intensely as I do, it’s inevitable, because every Latin dance is really a Kongo American dance,” Thompson says.

Many Latin dance names are actually Kongo words, Thompson says. Samba means “May I have this dance?” in Kongo, and Rumba means “work out.”

Tango comes from many origins, but one is the Kongo word for sun, which has influenced many dances.

“You may ask yourself, ‘Well, what the blazes does the sun have to do with dancing?’ Answer: everything,” Thompson says, “The path of the sun is a circle, and the path of the Conga line is a circle. They believe when you get in the line with your brothers and sisters and move that you’re taking the role of the sun, and you’re brilliant and will live longer than if you did nothing.”