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Overview

The work song was part of the African culture long before Africans came to the North American continent's shores and remained so for a long time after their arrival. In the community's performance of work songs in West Africa, laborers sang songs that enhanced their ability to work by creating a group consciousness that allowed them to function at a steady, rhythmic pace via the call-and-response pattern (James 1955, 16). Author Tilford Brooks makes note that "…while the practice of singing to accompany one's labor is indigenous to West Africa, it is obvious that working one's own field in his own land is quite different from forced labor in a foreign land. Thus, the references in the songs accompanying the work changed radically" (Brooks 1984, 43).

Be ready to:

Describe the importance of the work song to the African before arriving to North American

Identify how work songs translated into enslaved African work ethic on Southern plantations.

Describe the importance of the work gang singing leader to the creation of a work song.

Identify why a slave master did not like a slave that did not sing.

List the four essential functions of prison work songs.

Describe the type of work songs associated with movement and non-movement.

Describe the African American musical traits found in the work songs "Hammer Ring," "Go Down Old Hannah," "Chopping in the New Ground," and "Mighty Bright Light."

Describe the critical role of the gandy dancer.

Identify the significance of the role of John Henry to the railroad industry.

Articulate the significance of Anansi to the Trickster tale tradition.

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References

Railroad Work Songs: History and Context

Another type of work song that found traction in American work song repertoire annals is railroad songs. These songs constituted a distinct corpus of melodies and texts spanning several conventional genre divisions within North American music, including ballads, blues, and country music. The common denominator is the railroad as the subject.

Railroad Section Gang

The creative peak of railroad songs spans a period from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s. Their creation mirrors the growing penetration of the railroad in people's lives, experiencing its peak when the railroad played a crucial role in opening and developing the West. In an epoch characterized by increasing industrialization, urbanization, and mass migration, the development of the railroad was the catalyst for creating this genre of work song.

After the devastation of the Civil War (1861-5), the steel and railroad industries were at the forefront of a modernization process that brought economic unity to a country still divided politically. Their golden age coincided with building the lines to the western U.S. that gave birth to many towns and cities. Often ephemeral settlements, their population included many people used to a nomadic life-adventurers, gamblers, outlaws, cocottes, and different kinds of show people-as well as recently arrived settlers. In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad link was completed, and African American laborers also played a key role in the development of the railroad, although, occupying the lowest rung of the social scale and often relegated to the most menial duties.

Railroad Work Songs: Gandy Dancers

Now a nationwide phenomenon, the railroad started to appear regularly both in songs transmitted orally and in songwriters' creations. Workers began to create new songs molded on the work rhythm of those who laid the tracks every thirty seconds following the boss's shout or of those who hammered the spikes, taking a long breath and expelling a grunt-like sound to accompany their action. "In railroad lingo, track liners are called gandy dancers. The foreman gives his orders to his straw boss, the singing leader, who relays them to the gandy dancers and then gives them a song and a rhythm to work by" (Courlander 1963, 95). "Gandy dancers were expected to lay new rail, replace rotten crossties, repair tracks damaged by floods, and tightly pack, or tamp, the gravel bed on which the tracks lay. But most of their time was spent straightening sections of track that had been pounded out of alignment by the tremendous and frequent weight of passing trains. Using five-foot lining bars, each weighing over twenty pounds, gangs pulled in unison, inching the track back into line" (Dornfeld 1994, n.p.). These activities were associated with songs that would make the work easier. To better understand the role music played in the process of laying tracks, watch the movie Gandy Dancers (1994), produced by Barry Dornfeld and Maggie Holtzberg-Call. This thirty-minute video will put into context the work songs that accompanied the gandy dancers as they laid the tracks across the United States.

View a short clip revealing the role and function of the Gandy Dancers' work song.

Gandy Dancers [ 00:00-00:00 ]

A notable railroad track lining work song that has come down through the ages is called Linin' Track. This song which is sung by the legendary Huddie William Ledbetter (1888-1949)-stage name Leadbelly-tries to describe by singing outside of the actual work situation the metallic "rattle-dattle" sounds made by the bar against the track. "Whenever a man sings one of these songs outside the actual work setting, he finds the need of filling in with onomatopoeic sounds to represent the shaking. One singer uses 'ratta-datta-datta,' another, 'yakka-yakka-yakka' (Courlander 1963, 96). Also note that in this sung is woven the image of Moses striking the water with a two-by-four.

Lyrics

LININ' TRACK

Ho, boys, is you right?
I done got right
All I hate about linin' track
These ol' bars 'bout to bust my back

Chorus:
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Here we go linin track

If I could I surely would
Stand on the rock where Moses stood
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -tracka lack
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -tracka lack
Here we go linin track

Moses stood on the Red Sea shore
Smotin that water with a two-by-four
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Ho, boys, cancha line 'em -track
Here we go linin track

Traditional

Alternatively, here is a recording of "Linin' Track"♫ performed by Lead Belly.

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.