Field holler

Field Holler is a type of vocal musical creation closely related to work songs. It is usually associated with African American music and spirituals from before the American Civil War, but had prevalence among whites in the southern United States too.

Description

A field holler, also called a holler, is an extemporized form of song, sung by southern labourers to accompany their work. It was described by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1853 as a ‘long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto’, a description that would also have fitted examples recorded a century later. It differs from the collective work song in that it was sung solo, though early observers noted that a holler, or ‘cry’, might be echoed by other workers or passed from one to another.

Though commonly associated with cotton cultivation, the field holler was also sung by levee workers, mule-skinners and field hands in rice and sugar plantations. Field hollers are also known as corn-field hollers, water calls, and whoops. Hollers 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.

Some hollers are wordless, like the Field Call by Annie Grace Horn Dodson (1950, Negro Folk Music of Alabama, Folkways); others combine improvised lines concerning the singer’s thoughts, with elaborated syllables and melismas, such as the long example recorded at the Parchman Farm penitentiary in Mississippi in 1947, by ‘Bama’, of a Levee Camp Holler (1947, Negro Prison Songs, Tradition). 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 (1941, Negro Blues and Hollers, Library of Congress). Some street cries might be considered an urban form of holler, though they serve a different function; an example is the call of ‘The Blackberry Woman’, Dora Bliggen, in New Orleans (1954, Been Here and Gone, Folkways).

Influence

It is believed that the holler is the precursor of the blues, though it 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, Black Patti) by the harmonica player Jaybird Coleman, show strong links with the field holler tradition. A white tradition of ‘hollerin’’ may be of similar age, but has not been adequately researched. Since 1969 an annual ‘hollerin’’ contest has been held in Sampson County, North Carolina.

External links

• Recordings from The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip -> Hollers

References

• Charlton, Katherine (2003). Rock Music Styles - a history. Mc Graw-Hill, 4th ed., pp. 3. ISBN 0-07-249555-3. 

• Oxford Music Online: Grove Music

• Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans. 3rd. New York London: Norton, 1997. Print.