Purchase
The Long, Hard History of the Work Song
Duke University Press
February 2006
On Sale: February 4, 2006
352 pages ISBN: 0822337266 EAN: 9780822337263 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Historical | Non-Fiction
All societies have relied on music to transform the
experience of work. Song accompanied the farmer’s labors,
calmed the herder’s flock, and set in motion the spinner’s
wheel. Today this tradition continues. Music blares on the
shop floor; song accompanies transactions in the retail
store; the radio keeps the trucker going on the
long-distance haul. Now Ted Gioia, author of several acclaimed books on the
history of jazz, tells the story of work songs from
prehistoric times to the present. Vocation by vocation,
Gioia focuses attention on the rhythms and melodies that
have attended tasks such as the cultivation of crops, the
raising and lowering of sails, the swinging of hammers, the
felling of trees. In an engaging, conversational writing
style, he synthesizes a breathtaking amount of material, not
only from songbooks and recordings but also from travel
literature, historical accounts, slave narratives, folklore,
labor union writings, and more. He draws on all of these to
describe how workers in societies around the world have used
music to increase efficiency, measure time, relay commands,
maintain focus, and alleviate drudgery. At the same time, Gioia emphasizes how work songs often soar
beyond utilitarian functions. The heart-wringing laments of
the prison chain gang, the sailor’s shanties, the
lumberjack’s ballads, the field hollers and corn-shucking
songs of the American South, the pearl-diving songs of the
Persian Gulf, the rich mbube a cappella singing of South
African miners: Who can listen to these and other songs
borne of toil and hard labor without feeling their sweep and
power? Ultimately, Work Songs, like its companion volume
Healing Songs, is an impassioned tribute to the
extraordinary capacity of music to enter into day-to-day
lives, to address humanity’s deepest concerns and most
heartfelt needs.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|