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Working for the man. Work songs. Let’s get the week moving with work songs. Songs about work. Or musical artists who have work in their name or the bands name. A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either sung while conducting a task (usually to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song.
Records of work songs are as old as historical records, and anthropological evidence suggests that most agrarian societies tend to have them.[1] Most modern commentators on work songs have included both songs sung while working as well as songs about work, since the two categories are seen as interconnected.[2] Norm Cohen divided collected work songs into domestic, agricultural or pastoral, sea shanties, African-American work songs, songs and chants of direction and street cries.[3] Ted Gioia further divided agricultural and pastoral songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of cloth workers (see Waulking song), factory workers, seamen, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He also added prisoner songs and modern work songs.[1]
