Songs about Contingent Workers

Subject: Songs about Contingent Workers
From:
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 03:10 PM

I'm looking for songs relevant to contingent workers (that term covers part-time, seasonal, temps, leased employees, independent contractors, interns, co-op students, people who do home-based work...you get the idea). Lyrics, tunes, and references to sources are most welcome. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: Amergin
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 03:17 PM

Hey,Tony...I'm not sure about the rest but for the seasonal bit there are a shitload....cotton picking songs...songs about harvesting....and the like...

Here are a couple....

Pick a Bale Of Cotton

Ramblin' Round

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: Charley Noble
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 04:16 PM

Hi, Tony,

Are you putting together a songbook? I'll see what I can dig up. Charlie King would certainly be a good contemporary source.

Good to hear you're still hard at work.

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 08:59 PM

Tony- Back in the late 60's, there was a theater arm of the Farm Workers' Union called El Teatro Campesino (think I spelled it right). They did some touring, and had a lot of muigrant farm workers' songs.

Subject: El Teatro Campesino
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 02:39 AM

El Teatro Campesino has a Website here (click). I think the introduction is Shockwave. If your computer has Shockwave, it's ultimately cool.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From:
Date: 09 May 01 - 09:16 AM

THANKS to all who responded. Charley, I'm not putting together a songbook - just providing the music for a May 20 service at Community Church of Boston where Tim Costello (director of the Massachusetts Campaign on Contingent Work)is speaking on "Championing Equity for ALL Workers."

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: GUEST,Brían
Date: 09 May 01 - 10:00 AM

You will probably have a rough go at finding songs on contigency workers. My stripes will show when I open my mouth on how an exploited group of working stiffs disguised as white-collar workers probably won't identify themselves as a group in need of developing their own voice. Their alienation in their home-based cubicles is in some ways more pronounced than migrant workers in the southwest in the 1930's.
There, I said it. That being said, I wish you luck. Its an idea thats time has arrived.
Brían

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 May 01 - 11:10 AM

Anne Hills, on an old album, a song called (I think), Shadows Crossing the Land. About growing up a migrant farm worker-- child's view. Lovely images and harsh realities, wrapped in a lovely, slow, singable melody.

Member Joe Offer may have it. Mine is LP and not currently playable, and no lyric sheet.

~S~

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: Amergin
Date: 09 May 01 - 02:06 PM

Hey, Susan, I found Anne Hills' Homepage

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 May 01 - 02:20 PM

Thanks, AmerDear, that's a new one since I last looked.

~S~

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 May 01 - 02:26 PM

Just spotted this dropping off the page. Lots of songs about migrant workers from the past, but I'm not aware of many modern ones.

There are an awful lot of people enduring solitary exploitation, especially the ones with dodgy immigrant status. There are probably songs too, somebody needs to hunt for them.

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 May 01 - 06:11 PM

Here's a snatch of one that might fit the bill - it's called Ballad of a Working Mother, by Marilyn Major:

My kids were only babies when their daddy went away.
So I hung up my apron and went out to work for pay.
They put me on the night shift working at a big machine.
And that was the last of normal life my kids and I have seen.

It's from "Carry it On" by Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser, which has the rest of the words and the tune as well - together with lots of other songs that might suit, from further back, like Woody Guthrie's Deportees - and also "Nine to Five" as a more recent example of a song about people getting a hard time at work.

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: Stewie
Date: 11 May 01 - 07:44 PM

I posted a good'un many months ago:

Migrant Jesse Sawyer

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Songs about Contingent Workers
From: Barry Finn
Date: 11 May 01 - 09:21 PM

Search the Fourm for "king Cotton" (child Labor). There's a small thread mentioning David Massingale's "My Name Joe" also try the DT for "Crooked Jack" written by one of the Behams to the tune of "Star of the County Down". The "Idle Wielder" (Scottish-ship building), this I have no backround on only that I got it from an old roommate RiGGy (Ricky) Rackin but I'm very close by so I could give you the words here & the tune I could send via phone. You didn't say if you looking for new material or also including old songs too? As an aside, my wife as a child used to watch your (channel 2?) folk program & has still remained quite the fan of yours. Good Luck. Barry