Chapter VI: Songs of Construction Camps and Gangs

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.

[41] The phono-photographic record of such a yodel is given in