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NEGRO GANG SONGS |
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As he made his work songs, the Negro cleared the land of the South, worked its plantations, built its railroads, raised its levees, and cut its roads. When he worked with a group of his fellows in a situation where a regular work rhythm was possible, he sang simple, highly rhythmic songs, and every ax, pick, or hoe fell on the same beat. When he picked cotton or did some other form of work in which it was not possible to adhere to a regular rhythm, his songs rose and fell with the free and swinging movement of his breathing. The words of these songs were not designed for the ear of the Lord, nor for the ear of the white boss. In them the Negro was likely to speak his free and open mind.
The songs in this section, or songs like them, were formerly sung all over the South, wherever a gang of Negroes was at work. With the coming of machines, however, the work gangs were broken up. The songs then followed group labor into its last retreat, the road gang and the penitentiary. For the state, the most profitable way of handling convicts in the South is to use them for road repair and construction, or to have them pay for their own keep by farming large plantations. These men come together from every section of the state, bringing songs—both the "sinful songs" and the spirituals—current in their communities. Some of them have been singers, migratory workers, wandering guitar pickers in the free world. These make ready recruits for the men who work in groups, and make the work go more easily by adapting its rhythm to the rhythm of a song.
In the penitentiary, therefore, Negro "sinful" music (the term often applied to any secular song) has been concentrated and preserved as nowhere else. The men are lonely and dependent on themselves for amusement and consolation. These conditions in themselves are enough to produce and nurture songs. In our visits to all the large prison camps in the South we have found songs in abundance—blues, ballads, gang songs, hollers—-colored by the melancholy solitude of prison life.
The movement of these songs varies in accord with the fast or slow rhythm of the work and with the moods of the singers. In driving a lazy mule team the song is likely to be mournful, while wood-cutting evokes
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