("Pete Seeger and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by inmates of the Ellis Unit.
Worksongs helped African American prisoners survive the grueling work demanded of them. With mechanization and integration, worksongs like these died out shortly after this film was made.
Bruce Jackson's book Wake Up Dead Man (University of Georgia Press) is a highly recommended study of work songs in Texas prisons.
The large plantations in the U.S. South were based on West African agricultural models and, with one major difference, the black slaves used worksongs in the plantations exactly as they had used them before they had been taken prisoner and sold to the white men. The difference was this: in Africa the songs were used to time body movements and to give poetic voice to things of interest because people wanted to do their work that way; in the plantations there was added a component of survival. If a man were singled out as working too slowly, he would often be brutally punished. The songs kept everyone together, so no one could be singled out as working more slowly than everyone else").
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(Canção-de-Trabalho)
As grandes plantações nos EUA do Sul foram baseadas em modelos agrícolas do oeste Africano mas, com uma grande diferença, os escravizados negros usando worksongs nas plantações exatamente como os tinham usado antes, tinham sido feitos prisioneiros e vendido para os homens brancos. A diferença foi esta: na África as canções foram usadas para os movimentos dos corpos e tempo para dar voz poética de coisas de seu interesse, porque as pessoas queriam fazer o seu trabalho dessa maneira; nas plantações adicionou-se um componente de sobrevivência. Se um homem fosse apontado como trabalhando muito lentamente, ele costumava ser brutalmente punido. As canções mantiveram todos juntos, para que ninguém pudesse ser apontado como trabalhando de forma mais lenta do que todos os outros.
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