African-American Women Work Songs

Origins

A work song is a song sung while doing labor or any kind of work. Usually the song aids in keeping rhythm or is used as a distraction. Work songs can include content focused around the surrounding environment, resistance, or protest. Many different groups throughout history have sung work songs, but enslaved African-American women have a unique history associated with work songs.[1] Because of their particular positionality as African-American enslaved women, their work songs portray their specific standpoint and experiences during the slavery period in the United States. [1]

Work songs are often inspired by traditional African songs. Many work songs are formatted as a call and response. The call and response format showcases the ways in which work songs foster dialogue. The importance of dialogue is illuminated in many African American traditions and continues on to the present day.[2] Particular to the African call and response tradition is the overlapping of the call and response.[3] The leader's part might overlap with the response, thus creating a unique collaborative sound. Similarly, African-American folk and traditional music focuses on polyphony rather than a melody with a harmony.[3] Oftentimes, there will be multiple rhythmic patterns used in the same song "resulting in a counterpoint of rhythms."[3] The focus on polyphony also allows for improvisation, a component that is crucial to African-American work songs.[3] As scholar Tilford Brooks writes, "improvisation is utilized extensively in Black folk songs, and it is an essential element especially in songs that employ the call-and-response pattern."[3] Brooks also notes that oftentimes in a work song, "the leader has license to improvise on the melody in [their] call, while the response usually repeats its basic melody line without change."[3]

Uses

The African-American work song tradition is plentiful and provides a unique look into particular resistance tactics used by enslaved people. Though much information is known regarding African-American enslaved (or incarcerated) men and their specific work song traditions, African-American enslaved women similarly incorporated song into their work and resistance narratives. Work songs provide both a release and the creation of a shared narrative. Many of the songs discuss freedom or coping with the suffering associated with slavery. Particularly, enslaved women sang songs to their children about slavery.[1] African-American enslaved women also sang lullabies to their children. These songs illuminate a certain time period and the struggles many enslaved individuals endured. Work songs and lullabies sung by enslaved women commented on the gendered dynamic of slavery. One song speaks of a family being torn apart by slavery:


"Mammy, is Ol'Massa gwin'er sell us tomorrow?

Yes, my chile.

Whar he gwin'er sell us?

Way down South in Georgia.[4]

Songs sung by enslaved women also deserve recognition as poetry. Often times, the songs are complex and illustrate the lived experience of enslaved women. Scholar Lauri Ramsey situates songs sung by enslaved peoples in the lyric poetry tradition and writes that lyric poetry can be described as "conveying the voices of particular individuals, speaking in their own dictions (or dramatizing those of characters), addressing their own communities, and selecting from a wide range of 'acceptable' forms or prosodic features employed either conventionally or innovatively."[5]

Songs sung by enslaved individuals helped in preserving important cultural traditions while enslaved. Often enslaved peoples were forced to give up their traditions and heritage. Singing songs helped to maintain an important oral tradition. Forced to be ashamed of their African heritage, enslaved women were taught to think of themselves and their culture as inferior.[3] Specifically for enslaved mothers, singing songs and lullabies to their children proved to be an important resistance tactic as it allowed for traditions to be passed on in a somewhat discreet way.

Many owners of plantations and African-American people thought that because there was song in the fields, it meant that the enslaved men and women were happy doing their work. In actuality, enslaved men and women were often singing songs about their sadness or struggle. Thus, the practice of singing work songs was radical because slave owners could not understand the content and therefore did not always ban singing.[6] It allowed for a sense of community, a community space untainted by the presence of their masters. Jacqueline Jones comments on how song helped to create community:

On many plantations, it was the custom to release adult women from fieldwork early on Saturday so that they could do their week's washing. Whether laundering was done in old wooden tubs, iron pots, or a nearby creek with batten sticks, wooden paddles, or washboards, it was a time-consuming and difficult chore. Yet this ancient form of women's work provided opportunities for socializing "whilst de 'omans leaned over de tubs washin' and a-singin' dem old songs." Mary Frances Webb remembered wash day – "a regular picnic" – with some fondness; it was a time for women "to spend the day together," out of the sight and earshot of whites.[7]:251

Scholar Gale Jackson acknowledges the complexity of black women's work songs as says, "African American women's work and play songs utilize characteristically African modalities of storytelling, improvisational 'bantering,' and historical documentation, pairing song and dance in percussive, multi-metered, polyphonic, call and response performance, to engage in circles of ancestry, articulation of journey, acts of witness, transformative pedagogy, and communal art making."[1]:775 Work songs foster a collective, collaborative work environment, one that was made as an act of rebellion and resistance by enslaved women during their forced work.[1]

Examples

Bile the Cabbage Down

Raccoon has a bushy tail Possum's tail is bare

Rabbit's got no tail at all but a little bunch of hair.

Chorus

Bile them cabbage down, down

Bake that hoe cake brown brown

The only song that I can sing is

Bile the cabbage down [1]

Rainbow Round My Shoulder

I got a rainbow Huh!

Round my shoulder Huh!

It ain't gonna rain Huh!

It ain't gonna rain Huh![1]

Come on Mr. Tree

You almost down

Huh!

Come on Mr. Tree

Hit the ground

Huh![1]

Shoo Fly

Shoo, fly don't bother me

Shoo, fly don't bother

Shoo, fly don't bother me

Cause I belong to somebody.

I feel, I feel, I feel

I feel like a morning star

I feel, I feel, I feel

I feel like a morning star.[1]

Old Cotton Old Corn

Old cotton, old corn, see you every morn

Old cotton, old corn, see you since I was born

Old cotton, old corn, hoe you till dawn

Old cotton, old corn, what for you born? [1]

Keep yo' eye on de sun,

See how she run

Don't let her catch you with you work undone,

I'm a trouble, I'm a trouble,

Trouble don' las' alway [7]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Jackson, Gale P. (2015). ""Rosy, Possum, Morning Star: African American Women's Work and Play Songs": An Excerpt From Put Your Hands on Your Hips and Act Like a Woman: Song, Dance, Black History and Poetics in Performance". Journal of Black Studies. 46 (8): 773–796.
  2. ↑ Hill Collins, Patricia (2000). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Brooks, Tilford (1984). America's Black Musical Heritage. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
  4. ↑ Levine, Lawrence W., Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
  5. ↑ Ramey, Lauri, Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 17.
  6. ↑ Courlander, Harold (1976). A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore:The Oral Literature, Traditions, Recollections, Legends, Tales, Songs, Religious Beliefs, Customs, Sayings and Humor of People of African Descent in the Americas. New York: Marlowe & Company.
  7. 1 2 Jones, Jacqueline (1982). "My Mother Was Much of a Woman: Black Women, Work, and the Family under Slavery". Feminist Studies. 8: 235–269.

For more songs and information go to these pages:

The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project.

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