In the old days—and sometimes in more recent years—there were characteristic and unforgettable scenes of groups of Negroes singing in the fields. Here was a picture of late afternoon in the cotton field, the friendly setting sun a challenge to reviving energies; rows of cotton clean picked, rivalry and cheerful banter, faster picking to the row’s end, sacks and baskets full for weighing time; group singing, now joyous, then the melancholy tinge of eventide, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Since I Laid My Burden Down or Keep Inchin’ Erlong. Another picture is vivid: A spring morning, a few Negroes following mule and plow, many chopping cotton to the accompaniment of song, all making rhythm of song, movement, and clink of hoe resound in rare harmony, duly interspersed with shouts and laughter. Or the morning yodel or “cornfield holler,” with its penetrating vibrato, Ya-a-ee-ah—oo-a-ee-ou—indescribable either in words, sound, or musical notation.[41] Or wagons lumbering on cold mornings, drivers and workers on the way to field or mill, songs echoing across the hills. And there were the other group scenes: the roustabouts on the levee, the singers around the cabins, the groups in the kitchen. Many of these scenes, of course, in modified form may yet be found and songs of their setting are still to be heard, but they do not constitute the most commonly abounding characteristic workaday songs of the present.

Modern scenes, however different, are no less impressive. Whoever has seen a railroad section gang of five score Negroes working with pick and shovel and hammer and bars and other tools, and has heard them singing together will scarcely question the effectiveness of the scene. Likewise steel drivers and pick-and-shovel men sing down a road that is anything but “lonesome” now. Four pickmen of the road sing, swinging pick up, whirling it now round and round and now down again, movement well punctuated with nasal grunt and swelling song. Another group unloading coal, another asphalt, another lime, or sand, sing unnumbered songs and improvisations. Another group sings as workers rush wheelbarrows loaded with stone or sand or dirt or concrete, or still again line up on the roadside with picks and shovels. And of course there are the songs of the chain gangs already described, but nevertheless gang songs of the first importance. All these singers constitute the great body of workers and singers who sing apparently with unlimited repertoire. The selections in this chapter, as in the others, are representative in that they were taken directly from Negro singers and workers in the South during 1924 and 1925.

Among the most attractive of all the Negro workaday songs are those sometimes called “free labor gang songs,”[42] of which there are many. Some of these are reserved for Chapter VII in which many miscellaneous examples of songs to help with work are given. Other samples have been included in the “Songs of the Lonesome Road.” Examples of the melodies are given in Chapter XV. It will be understood, of course, that other songs such as John Henry, Jerry on the Mountain, Lazarus, are sung in this capacity, although classified primarily in other groups for the sake of better illustration.

The mind of the worker and wanderer is perhaps reflected better in his annals of the day’s work as expressed in his “captain” songs than anywhere else. Some of the “captain” songs have been sung until they are on the verge of folk songs; some approach the haven of the blues, and many more are in the formative stage. The examples immediately following in this chapter are combinations of all three, with the predominating mode that of combination and improvisation. Some of them are clearly songs of the chain gang as well as of free labor construction work. That they are fairly accurate portrayals of the worker and his task, of the captain and his ways, of the thoughts and customs of the worker and singer will be evident to any one who knows the field. To the uninitiated the laborer is merely a laborer, silent, reserved, certainly keeping back from the white man his innermost thoughts, wishes, and feelings. But hear him sing—hear him repeat the formal songs, hear him make new ones.

But after all there are no workaday songs superior to the gang songs, heave-a-horas, steel-driving songs, short pick-and-shovel songs, and the scores of other short specimens which accompany special tasks requiring hard work, team unison, or continuous effort. There is, of course, no attempt here to present even an approach to exhaustive lists. We have so far found no intimation of where the number of such songs will stop. But the examples which follow are adequate to continue the portraiture of the Negro as he works and as he sings.