Work song
Encyclopedia
A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a specific form of work, either sung while conducting a task (often to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrative
, description, or protest song
.
, African American (gang) worksongs, songs and chants of direction and street cries
. Ted Gioia further divided agricultural and pastorals songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of cloth workers
, factory
workers, seamen, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He also added prisoner
songs and modern work songs.
Note that there is also a jazz standard called Work Song, released on the 1990 recording: Work Song: Live at Sweet Basil [live] (Peter Pan) by trumpeter Nat Adderley
, brother of the jazz alto saxophonist Julian Adderley, aka Cannonball Adderley. Lyrics to Work Song were added later by Oscar Brown, Jr..
of the Congo, often incorporated distinctive whistles and yodels so that hunters could identity each others locations and those of their prey.
song
s sung by people working on a physical and often repetitive task. The songs were probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom. Rhythms of work songs can serve to synchronize physical movement in a group or gang, as they are in parts of Africa with drums as accompaniment to coordinate sowing and hoeing. Frequently, the usage of verses in work songs are often improvised and sung differently each time. The improvisation provided the singers with a sometimes subversive form of expression: improvised verses sung by slaves had verses about escaping; improvised verses sung by sailors had verses complaining about the captain and the work conditions. Work songs also help to create a feeling of familiarity and connection between the workers.
, Charles Pickard Ware
, Lucy McKim Garrison
. Many had their origins in African song traditions, and may have been sung to remind the Africans of home, while others were instituted by the captors to raise morale and keep Africans working in rhythm. They have also been seen as a means of withstanding hardship and expressing anger and frustration through creativity or covert verbal opposition.
A common feature of African American songs was the call-and-response format, where a leader would sing a verse or verses and the others would respond with a chorus. This came from African traditions of agricultural work song and found its way into the spirituals that developed once Africans in bondage began to convert to Christianity and from there to both gospel
music and the blues
. Also evident were field hollers, shouts, and moans, which may have been originally designed for different bands or individuals to locate each other and narrative songs that used folk tales and folk motifs, often making use of homemade instruments. In early African captivity drums were used to provide rhythm, but they were banned in later years because of the fear that Africans would use them to communicate in a rebellion; nevertheless, Africans managed to generate percussion and percussive sounds, using other instruments or their own bodies. Perhaps surprisingly, there are very few examples of work songs linked to cotton picking.
Corn, however, was a very common subject of work songs on a typical plantation. Because the crop was the main component of most Africans diet, they would often sing about it regardless of whether it was being harvested. Often, communities in the south would hold “corn-shucking jubilees,” during which an entire community of planters would gather on one plantation. The planters would bring their harvests, as well as their slaves, and work such as shucking corn, rolling logs, or threshing rice would be done, accompanied by the singing of Africans doing work. The following is an example of a song Africans would sing as they approached one of these festivals. It is from ex bonded African William Wells Brown
’s memoir “ My Southern Home.”
Work songs were used by African American railroad work crews in the southern United States before modern machinery became available in the 1960's. Anne Kimzey of the Alabama Center For Traditional Culture writes: "All-black gandy dancer
crews used songs and chants as tools to help accomplish specific tasks and to send coded messages to each other so as not to be understood by the foreman and others. The lead singer, or caller, would chant to his crew, for example, to realign a rail to a certain position. His purpose was to uplift his crew, both physically and emotionally, while seeing to the coordination of the work at hand. It took a skilled, sensitive caller to raise the right chant to fit the task at hand and the mood of the men. Using tonal boundaries and melodic style typical of the blues, each caller had his own signature. The effectiveness of a caller to move his men has been likened to how a preacher can move a congregation."
Another common type of African American work song was the “boat song.” Sung by slaves who had the job of rowing, this type of work song is characterized by “plaintive, melancholy singing.” These songs were not somber because the work was more troublesome than the work of harvesting crops. Rather, they were low-spirited so that they could maintain the slow, steady tempo needed for rowing. In this way, work songs followed the African tradition, emphasizing the importance of activities being accompanied by the appropriate song.
, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the nineteenth century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together. Because many cultures used slaves to row, some of these songs might also be considered slave songs. These songs were performed with and without the aid of a drum.
and boredom
that characterised cowboy
life and western
life in general. Such songs were often accompanied on mobile instruments of guitars, fiddles, concertina
and harmonica
. In the nineteenth century cowboy bands developed and cowboy songs began to be collected and published from the early twentieth century with books like John Lomax
's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910). As cowboys were romanticised in the mid-twentieth century they became extremely popular and played a part in the development of country and western music.
, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries. As other nations industrialised their folk song underwent a similar process of change, as can be seen for example in France, where Saint-Simon
noted the as the rise of 'Chansons Industriale' among cloth workers in the early nineteenth century, and in the USA where industrialisation expanded rapidly after the Civil War
. A.L. Lloyd defined the industrial work song as 'the kind of vernacular songs made by workers themselves directly out of their own experiences, expressing their own interest and aspirations...'. Lloyd also pointed to various types of song, including chants of labour, love and erotic occupational songs and industrial protest songs, which included narratives of disasters (particularly among miners), laments for conditions, as well as overtly political strike ballads. He also noted the existence of songs about heroic and mythical figures of industrial work, like the coal miners the 'Big Hewer' or 'Big Isaac' Lewis. This tendency was even more marked in early American industrial songs, where representative heroes like Casey Jones
and John Henry
were eulogised in blues ballads from the nineteenth century. Industrial folk songs were largely ignored by early folk song collectors, but gained attention in the second folk revival in the twentieth century, being noted and recorded by figures such as George Korson
, Pete Seeger
and Woody Guthrie
in the USA and A. L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl
and Peggy Seeger
in Britain. The genre declined in popularity with new forms of music and de-industrialisation in the twentieth century, but has continued to influence performers like Billy Bragg
and Bruce Springsteen
.
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
, description, or protest song
Protest song
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change and hence part of the broader category of topical songs . It may be folk, classical, or commercial in genre...
.
Definitions and categories
Records of work songs are roughly as old as historical records, and anthropological evidence suggests that all agrarian societies tend to have them. Most modern commentators on work songs have included both songs sung while working as well as songs about work, since the two categories are seen as interconnected. Norm Cohen divided collected work songs into domestic, agricultural or pastoral, sea shantiesSea Shanties
Sea Shanties is the debut album of Progressive Rock band High Tide. The cover artwork was drawn by Paul Whitehead.-Production:Denny Gerrard produced Sea Shanties in return for High Tide acting as the backing band on his solo album Sinister Morning...
, African American (gang) worksongs, songs and chants of direction and street cries
Street cries
Street cries are the short lyrical calls of merchants hawking their products and services in open-air markets. The custom of hawking led many vendors to create custom melodic phrases...
. Ted Gioia further divided agricultural and pastorals songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of cloth workers
Textile industry
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the production of yarn, and cloth and the subsequent design or manufacture of clothing and their distribution. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry....
, factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
workers, seamen, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He also added prisoner
Convict
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...
songs and modern work songs.
Note that there is also a jazz standard called Work Song, released on the 1990 recording: Work Song: Live at Sweet Basil [live] (Peter Pan) by trumpeter Nat Adderley
Nat Adderley
Nathaniel Adderley was an American jazz cornet and trumpet player who played in the hard bop and soul jazz genres. He was the brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley....
, brother of the jazz alto saxophonist Julian Adderley, aka Cannonball Adderley. Lyrics to Work Song were added later by Oscar Brown, Jr..
Hunting and pastoral songs
In societies without mechanical time keeping, songs of mobilisation, calling members of a community together for a collective task, were extremely important. Both hunting and the keeping of livestock tended to involve small groups or individuals, usually boys and young men, away from the centres of settlement and with long hours to pass. As a result it had been noted that tended to produce long narrative songs, often sung individually, which might dwell on the themes of pastoral activity or animals, designed to pass the time in the tedium of work. Hunting songs, like those of the MbutiMbuti
Mbuti or Bambuti are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages belong to the Central Sudanic and also to Bantu languages.-Overview:...
of the Congo, often incorporated distinctive whistles and yodels so that hunters could identity each others locations and those of their prey.
Agricultural work songs
Most agricultural work songs are rhythmic a cappellaA cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...
song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s sung by people working on a physical and often repetitive task. The songs were probably intended to increase productivity while reducing feelings of boredom. Rhythms of work songs can serve to synchronize physical movement in a group or gang, as they are in parts of Africa with drums as accompaniment to coordinate sowing and hoeing. Frequently, the usage of verses in work songs are often improvised and sung differently each time. The improvisation provided the singers with a sometimes subversive form of expression: improvised verses sung by slaves had verses about escaping; improvised verses sung by sailors had verses complaining about the captain and the work conditions. Work songs also help to create a feeling of familiarity and connection between the workers.
African American work songs
African American work songs originally developed in the era of captivity, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Because they were part of an almost entirely oral culture they had no fixed form and only began to be recorded as the era of slavery came to an end after 1865. The first collection of African American 'slave songs' was published in 1867 by William Francis AllenWilliam Francis Allen
William Francis Allen was an American classical scholar and an editor of the first book of American slave songs....
, Charles Pickard Ware
Charles Pickard Ware
Charles Pickard Ware , was an American educator and music transcriber. An abolitionist, he served as a civilian administrator in the Union Army, where he was a supervisor of freedmen on plantations at Port Royal, South Carolina during the Civil War...
, Lucy McKim Garrison
Lucy McKim Garrison
Lucy McKim Garrison was an American song collector, contributor to Slave Songs of the United States. Her work in Port Royal, South Carolina constitutes the first attempt systematically describe the characteristics of African American spirituals.-Notes:...
. Many had their origins in African song traditions, and may have been sung to remind the Africans of home, while others were instituted by the captors to raise morale and keep Africans working in rhythm. They have also been seen as a means of withstanding hardship and expressing anger and frustration through creativity or covert verbal opposition.
A common feature of African American songs was the call-and-response format, where a leader would sing a verse or verses and the others would respond with a chorus. This came from African traditions of agricultural work song and found its way into the spirituals that developed once Africans in bondage began to convert to Christianity and from there to both gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
music and the blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
. Also evident were field hollers, shouts, and moans, which may have been originally designed for different bands or individuals to locate each other and narrative songs that used folk tales and folk motifs, often making use of homemade instruments. In early African captivity drums were used to provide rhythm, but they were banned in later years because of the fear that Africans would use them to communicate in a rebellion; nevertheless, Africans managed to generate percussion and percussive sounds, using other instruments or their own bodies. Perhaps surprisingly, there are very few examples of work songs linked to cotton picking.
Corn, however, was a very common subject of work songs on a typical plantation. Because the crop was the main component of most Africans diet, they would often sing about it regardless of whether it was being harvested. Often, communities in the south would hold “corn-shucking jubilees,” during which an entire community of planters would gather on one plantation. The planters would bring their harvests, as well as their slaves, and work such as shucking corn, rolling logs, or threshing rice would be done, accompanied by the singing of Africans doing work. The following is an example of a song Africans would sing as they approached one of these festivals. It is from ex bonded African William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North in 1834, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer...
’s memoir “ My Southern Home.”
All them pretty gals will be there,
Shuck that corn before you eat;
They will fix it for us rare,
Shuck that corn before you eat.
I know that supper will be big,
Shuck that corn before you eat;
I think I smell a fine roast pig,
Shuck that corn before you eat.
Work songs were used by African American railroad work crews in the southern United States before modern machinery became available in the 1960's. Anne Kimzey of the Alabama Center For Traditional Culture writes: "All-black gandy dancer
Gandy dancer
Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines....
crews used songs and chants as tools to help accomplish specific tasks and to send coded messages to each other so as not to be understood by the foreman and others. The lead singer, or caller, would chant to his crew, for example, to realign a rail to a certain position. His purpose was to uplift his crew, both physically and emotionally, while seeing to the coordination of the work at hand. It took a skilled, sensitive caller to raise the right chant to fit the task at hand and the mood of the men. Using tonal boundaries and melodic style typical of the blues, each caller had his own signature. The effectiveness of a caller to move his men has been likened to how a preacher can move a congregation."
Another common type of African American work song was the “boat song.” Sung by slaves who had the job of rowing, this type of work song is characterized by “plaintive, melancholy singing.” These songs were not somber because the work was more troublesome than the work of harvesting crops. Rather, they were low-spirited so that they could maintain the slow, steady tempo needed for rowing. In this way, work songs followed the African tradition, emphasizing the importance of activities being accompanied by the appropriate song.
Sea shanties
Work songs sung by sailors between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries are known as sea shanties. These songs were typically performed while adjusting the riggingRigging
Rigging is the apparatus through which the force of the wind is used to propel sailboats and sailing ships forward. This includes masts, yards, sails, and cordage.-Terms and classifications:...
, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the nineteenth century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together. Because many cultures used slaves to row, some of these songs might also be considered slave songs. These songs were performed with and without the aid of a drum.
Cowboy songs
Western music was directly influenced by the folk music traditions of immigrants in the nineteenth century as they moved west. They reflected the realities of the range and ranch houses where the music originated, played a major part in combating the lonelinessLoneliness
Loneliness is an unpleasant feeling in which a person feels a strong sense of emptiness and solitude resulting from inadequate levels of social relationships. However, it is a subjective experience...
and boredom
Boredom
Boredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is without any activity or is not interested in their surroundings. The first recorded use of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, in which it appears six times, although the expression to be a...
that characterised cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
life and western
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
life in general. Such songs were often accompanied on mobile instruments of guitars, fiddles, concertina
Concertina
A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It has a bellows and buttons typically on both ends of it. When pressed, the buttons travel in the same direction as the bellows, unlike accordion buttons which travel perpendicularly to it...
and harmonica
Harmonica
The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
. In the nineteenth century cowboy bands developed and cowboy songs began to be collected and published from the early twentieth century with books like John Lomax
John Lomax
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk songs...
's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910). As cowboys were romanticised in the mid-twentieth century they became extremely popular and played a part in the development of country and western music.
Industrial folk song
Industrial folk song emerged in Britain in the eighteenth century, as workers took the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapted them to their new experiences and circumstances. Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry. As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in textile productionTextile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
The industrial revolution changed the nature of work and society. Opinion varies as to the exact date, but it is estimated that the First Industrial Revolution took place between 1750 and 1850, and the second phase or Second Industrial Revolution between 1860 and 1900. The three key drivers in...
, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries. As other nations industrialised their folk song underwent a similar process of change, as can be seen for example in France, where Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...
noted the as the rise of 'Chansons Industriale' among cloth workers in the early nineteenth century, and in the USA where industrialisation expanded rapidly after the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. A.L. Lloyd defined the industrial work song as 'the kind of vernacular songs made by workers themselves directly out of their own experiences, expressing their own interest and aspirations...'. Lloyd also pointed to various types of song, including chants of labour, love and erotic occupational songs and industrial protest songs, which included narratives of disasters (particularly among miners), laments for conditions, as well as overtly political strike ballads. He also noted the existence of songs about heroic and mythical figures of industrial work, like the coal miners the 'Big Hewer' or 'Big Isaac' Lewis. This tendency was even more marked in early American industrial songs, where representative heroes like Casey Jones
The Ballad of Casey Jones
"The Ballad of Casey Jones" is a traditional song about railroad engineer Casey Jones and his death at the controls of the train he was driving. It tells of how Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time, but discovered another train ahead of them on the line,...
and John Henry
John Henry (folklore)
John Henry is an American folk hero and tall tale. Henry worked as a "steel-driver"—a man tasked with hammering and chiseling rock in the construction of tunnels for railroad tracks. In the legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam powered hammer,...
were eulogised in blues ballads from the nineteenth century. Industrial folk songs were largely ignored by early folk song collectors, but gained attention in the second folk revival in the twentieth century, being noted and recorded by figures such as George Korson
George Korson
George Korson was a folklorist, journalist, and labor historian....
, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
and Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
in the USA and A. L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl
Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...
and Peggy Seeger
Peggy Seeger
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.- The first American period :...
in Britain. The genre declined in popularity with new forms of music and de-industrialisation in the twentieth century, but has continued to influence performers like Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...
and Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
.
See also
- Military cadenceMilitary cadenceIn the armed services, a military cadence or cadence call is a traditional call-and-response work song sung by military personnel while running or marching...
- Waulking songWaulking songWaulking songs are Scottish folk songs, traditionally sung in the Gaelic language by women while waulking cloth. This practice involved a group of people beating newly woven tweed rhythmically against a table or similar surface to soften it...
- Venezuelan work songsVenezuelan work songs- Songs of milking : The milking songs are those associate to the milking of cows with the purpose of tranquilizing the animal during the task. It is custom in Venezuela to give name him to the cows. The milk man flame to the cow by its name and improvises verses of eight syllables in which...
- The Volga Boatmen's SongThe Volga Boatmen's SongThe "Song of the Volga Boatmen" is a well-known traditional Russian song collected by Mily Balakirev, and published in his book of folk songs in 1866. It is a genuine shanty sung by burlaks, or barge-haulers, on the Volga River. Balakirev published it with only one verse . The other two verses...
- Gandydancer
External links
- LeadbellyLeadbellyHuddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....
's rendition of Pick A Bail Of Cotton.