A lot of secular folk music in the African American tradition evolved out of the practice of singing at work. Two very brief clips on YouTube that illustrate it ...
The first is a French video on the "genesis of jazz" (my translation) that shows still shots of slaves dancing in Congo Square in New Orleans, where they were allowed to gather on Sundays. Elsewhere dancing was banned as a result of Protestant beliefs that dancing is evil, but in originally French "catholique et permissive Louisiane," it wasn't. Listen for the drums in the background.
[For more information on Congo Square and a dance called the bamboula that was set to piano by classical composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, see the description in Sonny Wilson's StreetSwing.com website. A MIDI file of Gottschalk's "Bamboula, Danse des Nègres" (opus 2) is available on the German-language Kunst der Fugue (Art of the Fugue) website. We'll come back to it -- several times -- as we return to New Orleans and the city's profound influence on American music.]
The rest of the video deals with field hollers and work songs that people would sing in the fields. The rhythm of the songs would set the rhythm for a group of laborers swinging hammers, hoes, axes or other tools in unison. People had sung as they worked in Africa, too, and these songs were an important way that African musical traditions were transmitted to America.
The second video was filmed by folksingers Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson at a Texas prison in 1966. The first clip shows inmates swinging axes in time to the singing.
We'll also listen to selections from our textbook, pages 23-27, and music mentioned in the book "Sounds of Slavery" linked below.
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