Work Songs

Songs sung by enslaved African Americans while working on plantations in the South in the period before the Civil War. Enslaved peoples and impoverished working populations all over the world have sung such songs during all periods of history. In the United States, the most familiar type of work songs were those created by enslaved African Americans in the South during the period before the Civil War.

African peoples carried to the Americas in slave ships brought their own cultural heritage of music and dance to the United States, the West Indies, and Central and South America. While working on plantations, these individuals and their descendants generated music that helped transcend the brutal and inhumane conditions of their day-to-day lives.

Slaveowners in the Americas, fearful of rebellions or runaways, forbade enslaved peoples from speaking or singing in native African languages, as well as from dancing or playing instruments. As a result, work songs became a powerful expression of human emotion, physical and mental suffering, and accounts of day-to-day experiences.

The songs were sung a cappella—without instruments—and, depending on the work being done, rhythm was kept by clapping hands or using the tools of the job. For instance, a man required to chop wood could establish a song's rhythm with the axe striking against the wood. Lyrics were improvised and spoke of whatever was on the mind of the singer. A song might tell of the physical weariness of the body or the birth of a new child.

Over time, work songs also became known as “field hollers” because of the association with farming and agricultural toil. As men and women worked in the fields, the songs they “hollered” were called out by a single voice, or, if a group was working together, [Page 895]one individual would sing a line and other workers would repeat it. The rhythm of this “call and response” and the bond of community sustained men and women through their long workdays.

Work songs and field hollers later were incorporated into songs known as spirituals, which some scholars believe contained a complex system of secret communication. The songs became a way to spread news about the whereabouts of a missing slave, plans for revolt, or calls to freedom with the use of lyrics that directed the enslaved African Americans to a meeting place, an underground escape route, or an abolitionist.

In modern times, artists such as Harry Belafonte, whose repertoire includes songs of prison chain gangs and work songs of enslaved African Americans, and John Avery Lomax, a musical folklorist who recorded work songs and spirituals during the 1930s and 1940s, have captured the legacy and history of the work song.