This is the 1997 reissue of Alan Lomax's original Negro Prison Songs. These are recorded at Parchman Farm (Missisipi State Penitentiary) which is the only maximum security prison in Mississipi. Volume one is a masterpiece, the best single document of the African American work song and field holler tradition. The group work songs, while excellent examples of this are by their nature less distinctive than the solo performances. Nonetheless, they are uniformly strong and include many of the most common of such pieces.
“These songs belong to the musical tradition which Africans brought to the New World, but they are also as American as the Mississippi River. They were born out of the very rock and earth of this country, as black hands broke the soil, moved, reformed it, and rivers of stinging sweat poured upon the land under the blazing heat of Southern skies, and are mounted upon the passion that this struggle with nature brought forth. They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen.” – Alan Lomax
No comments:
Post a Comment