Lead Belly - Take This Hammer

Lead Belly
Song Name: Take This Hammer
By: Lead Belly
Song Local Name: Not available
Album: Not available
Link to buy: Not available
Genre: folk music of United States of America , American folk music , traditional folk song , labor song , prison song , railroad work song , hammer song
Date Added: 05 Nov 2017
ghostdog
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Take This Hammer by Lead Belly is part of folk music tradition in/by United States of America. Folk Music of United States of America is traditionally brother to some other region(s) in the world. If you want to listen to song(s) in the same genre or with the same root with Take This Hammer (or folk music of United States of America), other than checking United States of America you can also check music of Africa, Ireland, Canada, Australia. From the top menu, first choose the desired region and then find the link from the map or country list.
"Take This Hammer" is a prison, logging, and railroad work song, which is similar to some other folk songs and shares verses with them. Together, this group of songs are referred to as "hammer songs" or "roll songs" (after a group of wheelbarrow-hauling songs with much the same structure, though not mentioning hammers).

For almost a hundred years after the abolition of slavery, convicts, mostly African American, were leased to work as forced labor in the mines, railroad camps, brickyards, turpentine farms, and then on road gangs of the American South. Forced labor on chain gangs, levees, and huge, plantation-like prison farms continued well into the twentieth century. It was not unusual for work songs like "Take this Hammer" and its "floating verses" to drift between occupations along with the itinerant laborers who sang them.

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