Sing out a warning

I recently stumbled across some interesting audio files at the Library of Congress' website. On a pretty spartan web page, they've published an ethnographic field collection recorded in the deep south in 1939 by John and Ruby Lomax.

The Lomaxes went to prisons in areas where the practice of convict lease was once widespread. Because it was so profitable to lease convicts to work on chain gangs, when there was higher demand for convicts, law enforcement would often satisfy the demand by making more arrests for petty offenses. So it probably wouldn't be correct to characterize the prisoners interviewed by the Lomaxes as hardened criminals.

The Lomaxes recorded work songs [.MP3], corridos [.MP3], blues songs [.MP3], and many others. None of it sounds like anything you'd hear these days on the radio, but I find it has a certain authenticity that modern, target-marketed, popular music lacks.

One song that caught my attention is called Influenza (link to .MP3 file), a ballad that tells of the deadly flu outbreak of 1928-9. Compared to the Spanish flu of 1918-9 that killed tens of millions, the 1928-9 flu was much less catastrophic, but it was still far deadlier than the typical strain, and since 1929, we have not seen an outbreak to match it. Reading through obituaries from late 1928, I found quite a few along the lines of: "Ms. Jones' death followed a serious bout of influenza that lasted but two days." In the song Influenza, I would quibble with the message that the flu is a form of divine punishment and that you should "turn away from your sins" to ward off the disease. I have nothing against turning away from sin, but these days, we accept the germ theory of disease.