Overview
Making it in Hell, says Bruce Jackson, is the spirit behind the sixty-five work songs gathered in this eloquent dispatch from a brutal era of prison life in the Deep South. Through engagingly documented song arrangements and profiles of their singers, Jackson shows how such pieces as ""Hammer Ring,"" ""Ration Blues,"" ""Yellow Gal,"" and ""Jody's Got My Wife and Gone"" are like no other folk music forms: they are distinctly African in heritage, diminished in power and meaning outside their prison context, and used exclusively by black convicts. The songs helped workers through the rigors of cane cutting, logging, and cotton picking. Perhaps most important, they helped resolve the men's hopes and longings and allowed them a subtle outlet for grievances they could never voice when face-to-face with their jailers.
Full Product Details
Author: Bruce Jackson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Imprint: University of Georgia Press
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.626kg
ISBN: 9780820321585
ISBN 10: 0820321583
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 15 December 1999
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Language: English
Reviews
A thorough, socially responsible, sensitive, and scholarly presentation.--Bess Lomax Hawes American Anthropologist
A thorough, socially responsible, sensitive, and scholarly presentation. --Bess Lomax Hawes American Anthropologist There is great beauty in the simple, honest outpouring of human spirit in the texts and melodies of these songs. . . . Jackson has done great service. --Willard Rhodes Ethnomusicology A magnificent musical tradition . . . [Wake Up Dead Man] contributes to our knowledge of a little-known part of American life. --Library Journal It is difficult to imagine that anyone concerned about the human spirit in extremis could be unmoved by [this volume]. --Times Literary Supplement Beautiful and affecting . . . Perhaps the songs are valuable not only because of their artistic worth but because they remind us of something most important in society that no one can quantify--how much everybody owes to things people give each other for nothing, such as songs. --New Yorker A monument to a musical tradition that will soon disappear . . . Many of the early blues singers . . . served as callers on work gangs, and their music was certainly influenced by this experience. --William R. Ferris Jr. Journal of American Folklore
A magnificent musical tradition . . . [ Wake Up Dead Man ] contributes to our knowledge of a little-known part of American life. -- Library Journal
Author Information
BRUCE JACKSON is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at the State University of New York at Buffalo and former president of the American Folklore Society.
