Field holler

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

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]

It was described by

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]

The field holler has origins in the

Field hollers, cries and hollers of the

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

• An African Song or Chant from Barbados
• Blue note
• Twelve-bar blues
• Blues ballad
• Holler Blues
• Kulning
• Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison, a 1966 documentary film