When people do physical labor together, especially if they need to cooperate in their activity (as when several people work together using heavy tools), then songs and chants can help with their physical coordination. Basically, the song entrains the workers to each other.

USA. Here is a group of men swinging hammers together - recorded on a prison farm in Mississippi.

Recording by Alan Lomax, 1940s.

The interval between the hammer blows you hear is about 1.5 seconds but only half the men swing each time. The other half are still in midswing, so each swing takes two measures of the song -- about 3 seconds. Hammer blows come on the 3d of each 4 beat cycle.

It seems likely that one function of the song is to divide the long swing period into shorter intervals that can be more accurately timed (and is therefore safer for the workers).

Tanzania. Here is a song by a workcrew of teenagers in Tanzania threshing millet together on a concrete floor using long threshing sticks. The Sukuma compose and perform a great deal of music

Recorded by Frank Gunderson, 1995, in Tanzania.

Again the work strokes are roughly 3 seconds apart and the rhythm of the song divides the interval up into 8 beats. Notice that here the work stroke is on beat 1 (of 8), rather than on beat 3 (of 4) for the Mississippi workers. You also hear younger children horsing around nearby. Notice that the leader (who is far from the microphone) sings a few words late in each 8-beat cycle emphasizing beat 7.

Note: It may be tempting for Western listeners to divide these 8 beats into two measures of 4, but notice that nothing prominent ever occurs on beat 5 (the first beat of the second measure) - even though that should be a prominent beat. So this pattern should probably be interpreted simply as an 8-beat pattern rather than as 2 measures of 4.

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Continue on to explore other worksong-like performances.