Definitions and Categories
Records of work songs are roughly as old as historical records, and anthropological evidence suggests that all agrarian societies tend to have them. 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. 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. Ted Gioia further divided agricultural and pastorals songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of cloth workers, factory workers, seamen, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He also added prisoner songs and modern work songs.
Note that there is also a jazz standard called Work Song, released on the 1960 recording: "Them Dirty Blues (1960)" by alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley.
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