Field holler

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Chain gang singing in South Carolina

The field holler or field call is mostly a historical type of

negro spirituals.[2]

There had also been some instances where some white oat farmers in close proximity to black people in the southern United States adopted and employed the field holler.[3]

Description

It was described by

Parchman Farm penitentiary in Mississippi in 1947, by "Bama", of a Levee Camp Holler.[5]

Verbal, improvised lines were used as cries for water and food and cries about what was happening in their daily lives, as expressions of religious devotion, a source of motivation in repetitive work, and a way of presenting oneself over across the fields. They described the labor being done (e.g., corn shucking songs, mule-skinning songs) recounted personal experiences or the singer's thoughts, subtly insulted white work attendants, or used folk themes. An unidentified singer of a Camp Holler was urged on with shouts and comments by his friends, suggesting that the holler could also have a social role.[6] Call and response arose as sometimes a lone caller would be heard and answered with another laborer's holler from a distant field. Some street cries might be considered an urban form of holler, though they serve a different function (like advertising a seller's product); an example is the call of ‘The Blackberry Woman’, Dora Bliggen, in New Orleans.[7]

Origins

The field holler has origins in the

Islamic world of the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries."[8]

Influence

Picking cotton in a cotton field

Field hollers, cries and hollers of the

African American music in general.[2]

The field holler may in turn have been influenced by blues recordings. No recorded examples of hollers exist from before the mid-1930s, but some blues recordings, such as Mistreatin' Mama (1927, Negro Patti) by the harmonica player Jaybird Coleman, show strong links with the field holler tradition.[9][10]

A white tradition of "hollerin'" may be of similar age, but has not been adequately researched. Since 1969 an annual

]

See also

References

  1. ^ Maultsby, Portia. "A History of African American Music". Carnegie Hall. Archived from the original on 2012-07-14. Retrieved 2012-08-14.
  2. ^ .
  3. .
  4. ^ 1950, Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Folkways
  5. ^ 1947, Negro Prison Songs, Tradition
  6. ^ 1941, Negro Blues and Hollers, Library of Congress
  7. ^ 1954, Been Here and Gone, Folkways
  8. ^ a b Curiel, Jonathan (August 15, 2004). "Muslim Roots of the Blues". SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on September 5, 2005. Retrieved August 24, 2005.
  9. .
  10. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Jaybird Coleman:Biography". allmusic.com. Retrieved 2008-07-20.

Sources

External links