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Piece of music closely connected to a form of work

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've Been Working on the Railroad".

Records of work songs are as old as historical records, and anthropological evidence suggests that most agrarian societies tend to have them. Norm Cohen divided collected work songs into the following categories: domestic, agricultural or pastoral, sea shanties, African American work songs, songs and chants of direction, and street cries. Ted Gioia built on these categories by dividing agricultural and pastoral songs into subsections: hunting, cultivation and herding songs. Goia also highlighted the industrial or proto industrial songs of cloth workers (see Waulking song), factory workers, seamen, longshoremen, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, lumberjacks, cowboys and miners. He also added prisoner songs and modern work songs.

In societies without mechanical timekeeping, songs for mobilisation–calling members of a community together for a collective task–were extremely important. Rhythms of work songs, similar to an African drum beat, served to synchronize physical movement in groups, coordinating sowing, hoeing, and harvesting.

Industrial folk song emerged in Britain in the eighteenth century, as workers took the forms of music with which they were familiar, including ballads and agricultural work songs, and adapted them to their new experiences and circumstances. Unlike agricultural work songs, it was often unnecessary to use music to synchronise actions between workers, as the pace would be increasingly determined by water, steam, chemical and eventually electric power, and frequently impossible because of the noise of early industry. As a result, industrial folk songs tended to be descriptive of work, circumstances, or political in nature, making them amongst the earliest protest songs and were sung between work shifts or in leisure hours, rather than during work. This pattern can be seen in textile production, mining and eventually steel, shipbuilding, rail working and other industries. As other nations industrialised their folk song underwent a similar process of change, as can be seen for example in France, where Saint Simon noted the rise of 'Chansons Industriale' among cloth workers in the early nineteenth century, and in the USA where industrialisation expanded rapidly after the Civil War. A. L. Lloyd defined the industrial work song as 'the kind of vernacular songs made by workers themselves directly out of their own experiences, expressing their own interest and aspirations '.

In the 1930s, Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) was recorded in prison by the folklorist Alan Lomax. Lead Belly knew hundreds of work hollers and traditional songs from the cotton fields, railroads and prison gangs. In the 1940s he toured widely on college campuses and folk music venues, popularising songs including "Take This Hammer", "John Henry" "Boll Weevil" and "Midnight Special". His repertoire was a major influence on the Folk Revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Mining songs written in the late 1940s by country artists Merle Travis ("Sixteen Tons" and "Dark as a Dungeon") and Billy Edd Wheeler ("Coal Tattoo") also became fireside standards. The working class was glorified in Marxist theory and practice, and a strong link between work songs and activism developed in the USA and elsewhere. The "dustbowl balladeer" Woody Guthrie wrote and performed work related songs such as "Deportee" and "Talking Hard Work" in the 1940s and 1950s. Guthrie and other politically active performers, especially the Weavers with Pete Seeger, continued the Union Songs movement that had begun with Joe Hill in the early 1900s. From that time, most topical and activist singers including Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs performed work related songs. Rock performers with working class leanings such as Bruce Springsteen have also been influenced by the genre. In Britain, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger produced hundreds of albums of political and traditional songs, writing many songs referring to industrial and working conditions. Folk or folk rock performers including Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, The Watersons, Dick Gaughan, Capercaillie, Billy Bragg, James Fagan and Nancy Kerr have featured work songs in their performances. In Australia, shearing songs and droving songs featured strongly in the first traditional songs to be collected in the field in the 1950s. Merv Lilley and Dorothy Hewett wrote work poems that were set to music during the early 1960s folk revival and became standards, such as the call and reply canecutting song "Cane Killed Abel" and one of the first songs about the social and environmental damage caused by industrialisation, "Weevils in the Flour". Alternative rock bands like Midnight Oil and Goanna passed the tradition to a broader audience. With the end of the folk boom in the 1970s and the rise of the introspective singer songwriter, the genre lost its wide public appeal, but work songs have continued to be very popular throughout the folk scene, at protest gatherings and with union choirs.

Waulking songs from Scotland are a traditional genre performed while women communally beat and felted cloth. Some women's work songs have been created within modern genres. Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" is pop country, Cher's "Working Girl" is also an office work anthem. Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money" is disco/techno and refers to "the oldest profession" (prostitution).