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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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Work Gang Singing Leader

A good singing leader was paramount in the execution of his working environment. Courlander (1963) highlights this when he writes:

The Singing Leader
The singing leader is as essential to the work gang as the singing leader or preacher is in the [Black] church. He must have the feel of the work that is being done, and understanding of the men with whom he is working, and the capacity to evoke both music and motor response. As in the dance, music and motor activity are inseparably joined. Although the prime objective of the gang song is not entertainment, it nevertheless must be more than melody, words, and timing; the song that captures the imagination of the workers, that engages them, will get the work done by keeping the men in a working spirit. For members of work gangs, either on the railroads or in prison battalions, many of the songs they hear are part of an old and familiar repertoire. A good singing leader senses what kind of song is needed at a given time, and how to sing it. Frequently he has a talent for improvisation or new creation. A good many work songs were heard for the first time only a few moments after the events on which they comment took place. Some action of the boss or 'captain,' some overheard conversation, a passing woman, a quarrel, or anything else may be turned into a song if the leader can grasp it and distill it into singing statement. Sometimes a leader can grasp it and distill it into a singing statement. Sometimes a leader improvises on a theme that has personal meaning to him, but in such terms that it can also have personal meaning for the other men in the group. (Courlander 1963, 91)

What Makes a Good Song Leader: An Interview with a Prison Inmate♫

According to Frederick Douglass, slave masters did not like a slave that did not sing. Douglass reported:

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave is not liked by masters or overseers. 'Make a noise' and 'bear a hand,' are the words usually addressed to the slaves when there is silence amongst them. This may account for the almost constant singing heard in the southern states. There was generally, more or less singing among the teamsters, as it was one means of letting the overseer know where they were, and that they were moving on with the work.

(Douglass (1853), 83 quoted in Southern 1997, 161)

The work song sung in Africa can then be established as an important antecedent to what will eventually develop on the Southern plantations on the continent of North America.

With the establishment of the fact that the work song took on a new meaning, in the following sections, we will examine various types of work songs that enslaved Africans and Black laborers in the Antebellum South and beyond would have sung and reworked for their own purposes. Four types of work songs will be explored:

The Dock Worker/Sea Shanty

Prison Songs

Railroad Songs

Trickster Songs and Tales

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.