Work and Pray
Historic Negro Spirituals and Work Songs from West Virginia
Cortez Reece(Author)
West Virginia University Press
Published on 30. June 2003
Software
CD-ROM
978-0-937058-75-6 (ISBN)
Description
Field recordings from southern West Virginia, 1949-1953. Railroad work chants, ancient spirituals, hammer songs, slave-era songs, and more. A collection as rich, varied, and powerful as the African-American experience in Appalachia. The southern rim of West Virginia, a rugged land of steep hills and narrow valleys, was one of the last areas of the eastern United States to be opened and populated. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad passed just north of this region shortly after the end of the Civil War, and by 1890 the Norfolk and Western Railroad ran north from Virginia to meet the C and O. This opened the vast southern West Virginia coal fields to an industrializing nation, and brought former slaves and their families into the mountains. Bluefield, West Virginia, at the southern point of the state, became the major city of this coal boom. The town ballooned from 600 residents in 1890 to over 5,000 in 1900, largely through the immigration of African-American miners. In 1895, the state established the Bluefield Colored Institute to train Black teachers for the segregated coal-camp schools scattered throughout the region. Half a century later, it was a professor at the renamed Bluefield State College who unearthed the music heard in this recording.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Morganstown
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 135 mm
Width: 135 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
333 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-937058-75-6 (9780937058756)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification