Work Song Types in General
Slaves developed different work songs under numerous working conditions to make the work easier to manage. "They varied in verbal, metric, melodic and choral complexity" (Jackson 2015, n.p.). The lone worker would sing a song when "mending a fence or building a barn or cooking a meal" (Southern 1997, 161). In the lone worker type song there would not be the need for coordinated movements with others. It would just be the plaintive melody of the singer. In contrast, as a song collector pointed out in 1868, fieldwork required movement coordination:
Long ago, when the mowing-machine and reaper were as yet unthought of, it was not uncommon to see, in a Kentucky harvestfield, fifteen or twenty 'cradlers' swinging their brawny arms in unison as they cut the ripened grain, and moving with the regulated cadence of the Leader's song. The scene repeated the poet's picture of ancient oarsmen and the chanter seated high above the rowers, keeping time with staff and voice, blending into one impulse the banks of the trireme.
(Mason Brown (1868) quoted in Southern 1997, 162)
Many other types of work required coordinated movements and therefore coordinated songs, as described in the next few sections.
Dock Worker/Sea Shanty Songs
Another type of work song, those sung by men working on the waters and waterfront and associated with sea life are known as "chantey" or "shanty" (Brooks 1984, 47-48). Professors Burnim and Maultsby mention that:
Along the coast, boat songs were frequently described by travelers and in memoirs by planters' wives and daughters. Crews of four to eight rowed boats in tidal rivers from one plantation to another or to the nearest city. The leader would sing a line, and the rowers would chime in with a refrain. The words were often improvised and were sometimes compliments to the passengers, sometimes merely unconnected words and phrases. Or they could be more somber: there were songs about separation from loved ones, abuse by one's captain, or longing for freedom. A good leader could speed the boat along, no matter how tired the crew might be.
(Burnim & Maultsby 2015, 43)
Sea Shanty
Concerning the construction of these songs, Brooks mentioned that they are "closely related to the songs associated with the labors of Blacks on land, and the method of singing it is practically the same as that followed by the land workers. These songs were extemporized at sea by the chanteyman, who led the singing, and the words and melody were in the vernacular of the seafaring man" (Brooks 1984, 47). A song text example of this on record is the following, heard in the Philadelphia area around 1800:
In 1869, Lafcadio Hearn, a White journalist visiting Cincinnati, realizing that more than two-thirds of the stevedores and longshoremen were Black, decided to capture their roustabout songs. One such work mentioned by Southern was "O Let Her Go By".
O Let Her Go By
I'm going away to New Orleans,
Good-bye, my love, good-bye;
I'm going away to New Orleans,
Good-bye, my love, good-bye;
O let her go by
She's on her way to New Orleans,
Good-bye, my love, good-bye;
She's bound to pass the Robert E. Lee,
Good-bye, my love, good-bye;
O let her go by
I'll make this trip and I'll make no more,
Good-bye, my love, good-bye;
I'll roll these barrels and I'll roll no more,
Good-bye, my love, good-bye;
O let her go by
An' if you are not true to me,
Farewell, my lover, forever
An' if you are not true to me,
Farewell, my lover, forever
(Southern 1997, 149-150)
Due to the fact that not much is mentioned in current scholarship on chantey songs from this period, it is most apropos to quote extensively Southern's thought concerning the significance of the Black sea chantey songs:
Black watermen carried their special worksongs, along with other kinds of Negro folksongs, up and down the rivers-from Wheeling, West Virginia, and Cincinnati on the Ohio River; from Omaha, Nebraska, Kansas City and St. Louis on the Missouri River; to the towns on the Mississippi itself, Cairo, Illinois, Memphis, Tennessee; and finally, to New Orleans. The same songs or similar one could be heard on the Gulf Coast in Mobile, Alabama; and on the Atlantic coast in Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; and in northern ports. The watermen were truly itinerant musicians, and may have been responsible, more than any other single force, for the spread of Negro folksongs from one community to another, White as well as Black.
(Southern 1997, 150)
A group of former aging fishermen who call themselves Northern Neck Chantey Singers are today keeping the tradition of the chantey songs alive. Listen to their story of the importance of this tradition and why they are still keeping it alive.
Frederick Douglass
They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.
Gale P. Jackson
Work songs document the central experience in the lives of most Africans in the early history of the Americas who worked 'from sun up until sundown,' recognized the true extent of their worth, and despite the pervasive and horrific violence, brutality, and trauma of enslavement, drew sustenance from their own strength and accomplishments.