I’ve lived in Louisiana my entire life but have never been able to figure out exactly what a rebel yell sounds like. The Cajun ‘Aaiiee,’ sure. The more western ‘Yeehaw,’ got that, too. But what is a rebel yell? Judging by the abundance of Confederate flags and rednecks in my area, we should have a plentitude of experts on the subject. But I haven’t met anyone who can quantify the noise for me. Can anyone help me out?
This tells all you’ll ever want to know, but really doesn’t answer your question. 
Thanks, kniz.
Judging by what the author of that site says, that’s about as close as I’ll ever get to hearing the Yell. I’m actually a little let down. Maybe I was hoping it would be a noise I was already familiar with. But quite frankly, I’d rather trust him than search enough to become an expert myself.
In one episode of Ken Burn’s The Civil War, Shelby Foote tells a story about how a CSA veteran was asked at a reunion to do the rebel yell but for various reasons he wouldn’t/couldn’t. Foote then says that nobody knows what it sounded like. But, in a later episode (the last one, I think) they show Union and CSA soldiers at a reunion (at Gettysburg, I think) and as two soldiers are doing something (washing their hands at some temporary sinks or in a food line or something) one of them makes some noises and explains to the other that “that’s the rebel yell.” I can’t describe what it sounded like but it’s plain as day on the video.
There was a fun movie from the 50’s or 60’s about the Basques taking a wagon train to the West. Thunder In The Sun was the title, and I think Susan Hayward and Jeff Chandler were the stars. The Basques had this thing they did with their voices that was sort of a yodel/yell/holler that was very distinctive and chilling. Later I heard somebody try to demonstrate a Rebel Yell and what they did sounded just like the Basque cry.
I’ve never heard any other attempts at the real Rebel Yell, but descriptions I’ve read have made it sound plausible that that’s what the movie was using. That or something very close.
It would raise the hairs on the back of your neck.
The clip mentioned by ALLSHOOKDOWN is at the bottom of the page linked to by KNIZ.
For those of you who may have missed it
“With a rebel yell, we cry ‘More, more, more!’”
-Billy Idol
I think that about answers it.
I don’t think there is any one “real Rebel Yell”.
I just heard the Rebel Yell in that link in kniz’s post. I’ve heard that kind of “woo woo” yell before, but there are other kinds of yells I always considered Rebel Yells.
The most obvious example can often be heard at country music or country-rock concerts. It’s that guttural, drawn-out “OW!” or “yee-OW!” that some likkered-up Lynard Skynyrd fan might be yelling from the back of the auditorium: “yee-OW! … play ‘Free Bird’!”
Listen to Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places”. In the background honky-tonk noises, you’ll hear plenty of Rebel Yells.
Humorist/essayist H. Allen Smith wrote a short book entitled The Rebel Yell. In it, he recurrently takes up the question of just what the yell was supposed to sound like, and gets a lot of different answers from people who are supposed to know. As suggested above, maybe there wasn’t any one true rebel yell. IIRC, Smith seems to hold out the possibility that it varied considerably from place to place.
It’s pretty hard to convey in writing what something like a yell sounds like, isn’t it? I tried to imagine the sounds that the link article was trying to describe.
With that said, the Basque holler/yell in that movie started off not very loud but with a yiyiyiyiyiyiyi very fast alternating thing like a night bug or cricket would make. It would get progressively louder and faster and rise in pitch until it was as loud as the person could make it and then would end with a YAAAAHH_HAAAAAH scream. I think I may have heard Greek people do a similar sound in some of their native dances.
In the movie, the Basques would yell at each other at great distances, almost like smoke signals. Another neat thing they did was to jump down a mountain side from rock to rock like mountain goats. That movie was extra cool in that regard, but the rest of it was hokey.
Thought of another good Rebel Yell example – the yell that Bo & Luke Duke let out when the General Lee jumped over obstacles in the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard.
Zeldar, based on your rough spelling of the Basque yell, it sounds like they end their yells in something approaching one kind of a Rebel Yell. Sounds like the Basque “YAAAAHH_HAAAAAH” is not too far off of a Rebel “YEEEEEEE_HAAAH” or “YEEEEE_OW!”.
That’s quite true, bordelond, with the exception that the Yee-Haw type of thing you’ll hear at square dances and football games and such are much more friendly and cheerful. The yell I heard before that was so much like the Basque yell was nothing like cheerful and friendly. It would scare a sane man to the point of fear. I guess you’ve seen this website where the face jumps out and screams at you? That kind of scared. Primal, shit your pants, scared.
The build-up to the Basque yell rises at such a pitch and volume that by the time you get to the YEEEEEE_HAAAAAWW portion of it, you’re about ready to run in whatever direction is “away.”
I just had to go verify the stuff I said about Thunder In The Sun. You might want to read the user comments. I was amazed at them.