MUSIC | African-American Work Songs

LAMENT FOR HARD LABOR:

AFRICAN AMERICAN WORKSONGS

When the body is bent, the mind is the last defense for the soul. 

We cry, we lie, we create to keep unpleasant emotions at bay. Maintaining sanity is instinctual to the human psyche just like pulling your hand away from a hot stove. A subjective state of suffering may result in an individual taking repressive action. 

Same thing applies to groups of individuals. Group based emotions resulting from perceived injustice such as anger, are thought to motivate a collective action in an attempt to nullify the state of unpleasantness and depravity (Zomeren, Postmes, Spears, 2008). And when a certain way of doing things provides a positive response, the value is retained, followed, and perpetuated. 

 

Interestingly for all reasons stated above, african-american work songs as a culture related practice emerge out of necessity. The songs emerge as a product of coping mechanisms. They are a form of expression rather than art. 

The workers sing and chant whenever they can to ease their pain. A singing slave is a happy slave, or so they thought. Traditionally slavers would correlate the perpetual humming on their cotton fields as a sign of productivity and a cloud nine morale. However, the nature of their hard labor was more punishment than a nine-to-five job and they had no HR to turn to when the workplace environment goes south. Consequently the voices became a form of resignation to oppression. 

Naturally, it’s engraved in their culture as a way of communicating between and to outside groups. The quality of an oral tradition to pass down cultural genes is evident in the contents and form. Studying them can be likened as an archeological effort to dissect a mosquito entombed in amber. As evidently seen in “It’s a Long John”, the song suggests a number of facts to be uncovered about the enslaved men and women we can uncover their routines, beliefs, and aspirations. The picked stanzas hints what the song is about, a beacon of hope and freedom and their disposition towards religion. .

REFERENCE

Van Zomeren, M.; Postmes, T.; Spears, R. (2008). "Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives". Psychological Bulletin. 134 (4): 504–535.