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Work Songs
As the institution of slavery took hold across the southern United States, enslaved Africans used work songs to contend with long and laborious days. The songs were used to relieve boredom, increase productivity, and coordinate tasks on the field using a call-and-response style. The work leader called out a statement, or verse, and the others would respond with a chorus, often improvising the lyrics. Their words reflected the work they were performing, and tools often served as a counter to the grunts and groans produced by the labor. These songs evolved to communicate encoded messages, express anger, frustration, and the longing to escape.
Work songs continued to be used by African Americans well into the twentieth century through the practice of convict leasing in southern states. Prisoners sang them during railroad and agricultural work to uplift the crew both physically and emotionally.
In the 1930s, folklorist John A. Lomax traveled to southern penitentiaries to take field recordings of prisoners at work. Lomax believed penitentiaries preserved strands of African American folk songs due to the little exposure prisoners had to outside media, exhibiting the closest examples to traditional slave songs. Songs like "Rosie," featured above, heavily incorporated the call-and-response technique. Note the sound of their work tools setting the pace of their work.
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