The field holler or field call is mostly a historical type of vocal work song sung by field slaves in the United States (and later by

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

forced laborers accused of violating vagrancy laws) to accompany their tasked work, to communicate usefully, or to vent feelings. 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. Though commonly associated with cotton cultivation, the field holler was also sung by

levee A levee ( or ), dike (American English), dyke (British English; see American and British English spelling differences#Miscellaneous spelling differences, spelling differences), embankment, floodbank, or stop bank is an elevated ridge, natural ...

workers, and field hands in rice and sugar plantations. Field hollers are also known as corn-field hollers, water calls, and whoops. An early description is from 1853 and the first recordings are from the 1930s. The holler is closely related to the call and response of

work songs A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either one sung while conducting a task (usually to coordinate timing) or one linked to a task that may be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. An example is " I ...

and arhoolies. The Afro-American music form ultimately influenced strands of African American music, such as the

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

and thereby

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predomina ...

, as well as negro spirituals. There had also been some instances where some white oat farmers in close proximity to black people in the

southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is List of regions of the United States, census regions defined by the United States Cens ...

adopted and employed the field holler.

Description

It was described by Frederick Law Olmsted 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. Some hollers are wordless, like the field call by Annie Grace Horn Dodson. Some have 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. Verbal, improvised lines 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. They described the labor being done (e.g., corn shucking songs, mule-skinning songs) recounted personal experiences or the singer's thoughts, subtly insulted white work attendants, or used folk themes. 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. Call and response arose as sometimes a lone caller would be heard and answered with another laborer's holler from a distant field. Some street cries might be considered an urban form of holler, though they serve a different function (like advertising a seller's product); an example is the call of ‘The Blackberry Woman’, Dora Bliggen, in New Orleans.1954, Been Here and Gone, Folkways

Origins

The field holler has origins in the music of West Africa, where the majority of enslaved African in America originated. The historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik also identify Islamic music as an influence. Diouf notes a striking resemblance between the Islamic call to prayer (originating from Bilal ibn Rabah, an Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century) and 19th-century field holler music, noting that both have similar lyrics praising God, melody, note changes, "words that seem to quiver and shake" in the vocal cords, dramatic changes in

musical scale In music theory, a scale is "any consecutive series of notes that form a progression between one note and its octave", typically by order of pitch or fundamental frequency. The word "scale" originates from the Latin ''scala'', which literal ...

s, and nasal intonation. She attributes the origins of field holler music to African Muslim slaves who accounted for an estimated 30% of African slaves in America. According to Kubik, "the vocal style of many blues singers using melisma, wavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large region of

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

that had been in contact with the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Islamic world The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...

of the

Maghreb The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb al ...

since the seventh and eighth centuries."

Influence

Field hollers, cries and hollers of the

slaves Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

and later sharecroppers working in cotton fields, prison chain gangs, railway gangs ( Gandy dancers) or turpentine camps are seen as the precursor to the call and response of African American spirituals and

gospel music Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music vary according to culture and social context. Gospel music is compo ...

, to jug bands, minstrel shows, stride piano, and ultimately to the blues, to

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

and to African American music in general. The field holler 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, Negro 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 National Hollerin' Contest has been held in Sampson County, North Carolina. The influence can be seen in the humwhistle. A humwhistle, otherwise known as "whistle-hum", creates two tones simultaneously and is a

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...

. The two-tone sound is related to Inuit throat singing, and to a tradition of yodeling that originated in the Central Alps.

References

Sources

*{{cite book, author=Charlton, Katherine, title=Rock Music Styles - a history, publisher=Mc Graw-Hill, 4th ed., pp. 3, year=2003, isbn=0-07-249555-3 *Oxford Music Online: Grove Music *Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans. 3rd. New York London: Norton, 1997. Print.

External links