Prison Music

Blues

The blues developed out of the unique social experience of black people in America, especially in reaction to their lack of freedom after Emancipation. It is said that the blues were born out of disappointment, one of which was most certainly the Southern mass imprisonment practices after Reconstruction that continued to enslave blacks. The “crying” sound, in addition to the major themes of the blues, depict a sadness and loneliness consistent with conditions of incarceration. According to H. Bruce Franklin (1982),

As a result, many of the finest blues musicians were prisoners and exprisoners: Bukka White, Robert Pete Williams, Son House, Lightnin' Hopkins (whose ankles bore the scars of chain gang shackles), Leadbelly, and Billie Holiday.

Work Songs

The work song is perhaps one of the most unique cultural expressions of black Americans. Black prisoners imported this traditional music from slavery to accompany gang work on Southern prison penal farms, plantation prisons, and local chain gangs. The work ranged from cutting trees and picking cotton to hoeing and cutting sugar cane. These songs survived in prisons well into the 1960s because work conditions mirrored those of slavery. Led by a song leader, work songs are sung by a group of men, using a “call and response” pattern. Work songs supply a rhythm to labor by, they help pass the time, and they serve as a vehicle for expressing tension, frustration, and anger. In this sense, they qualify as protest. Bruce Jackson (1972) also suggests work songs allow the cooptation of the work by the prisoners:

In supplying a rhythm for work, the songs not only ensure efficiency by helping everyone to work at the same pace, but they also make labor safer. When a team of inmates is cutting down a tree (crosscutting), for example, the rhythm of the song regulates the swing and strike of the axes and prevents the unregulated swing that could possibly cut a fellow inmate's hand or leg (Jackson, 1972, pp. 31–32). The rhythm also helps some prisoners survive, since those who worked too slowly and lagged behind were singled out for beatings. “By singing together and keeping the strokes together while cutting logs or working with hoes, none could be singled out for being too slow so no one could be punished simply because he was weaker than his fellows” (Jackson, 1972, p. 30). Finally, work songs help men to alleviate tension, frustration, and anger by singing about the intolerable conditions under which they had to live. They could sing about things that they were not allowed to say—“it is as if sung words were not real.”

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