The piece that would become Work Song began in a radically different place. Initially, I focused on Invoke’s unique expertise in both classical and folk music. I zeroed in on chopping as the musical impetus behind my piece, the percussive fiddling technique enticing my own sensibilities. The piece was to be an odyssey through the timeline of blues music’s descendants, a safari of styles based on a simple melody. Unfortunately, it wasn’t coming together quite right. Of the disparate sections, the opening phrase stood the strongest. It was an imitation of the earliest ancestor of the blues and by extension Black American music: the work song. My professor and mentor Omar Thomas urged me not to invoke the work song in vain, as I had been doing. In the allusion of those field hollers, those tools of perseverance and emotional expression, there was a certain responsibility I needed to assume. I re-examined my material with that respect in mind.

Work Song explores the myriad emotions and intentions that reside within the field holler, as well as those genres that were born from it. Blues, jazz, and folk influences, among others, inform the manifestation of that exploration. Veins of resistance, tenderness, and triumph are traced as they weave through the simple tune at the piece’s heart, whether the musicians are in step with each other or breaking forth alone. In its totality, Work Song highlights the humanity between the hammer falls, foregrounding what the axe forgot while the tree remembers. It traces the Black music I hold so dear back to its roots, and all the amazing and terrible things that birthed it.