ALL HANDS TO THE PUMPS!

The Popular Perspective on work songs has long been that they establish unity of effort.

As newcomers dove into a vast backcatalog of songs, many quickly highlighted just how catchy these tunes really are. But while early sea shanty composers didn’t envision ever reaching the top of the charts, they certainly wrote them to be earworms. The sea shanty is only one variant of a work song—rhythmic melodies designed to help laborers keep pace with one another during repetitive, often backbreaking jobs. Other types of work songs developed over generations among Appalachian coal miners, prison chain gangs, and British textile workers, just to name a few examples.

Yes, tightening the side-wall on the Big Top:  "Break it, pull it, shake it, now downstake it!  Move on to the next one."

There's more serious research material in those songs, dear reader.

At Austria’s Central European University, a team of cognitive scientists recently delved into how songs like shanties may affect the laborers’ performance. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, provides strong evidence that work songs not only maintain collective timing among team members—the shared tempo prevents individuals from accidentally quickening the pace.

Better for everyone to be pulling with an even strain, which the songs help maintain.  "Groups often unintentionally speed up shared tasks, so much so that there is even a term for it: joint rushing."

“Many work songs are sung either by a lead singer or in call-and-response patterns, meaning that at least part of the vocalization is produced by only one person,” [researcher Thomas Wolf] explained, adding that the songs also regularly include “musical events between the instrumental actions.”

For instance, a work song for a task requiring an action like pulling a rope or swinging a hammer may include additional notes or syllables that coincide with the task itself. These musical subdivisions lower the chance of varied timing, which is known to cause joint rushing.

What's intriguing is that the songs, by maintaining an even pace, keep the "speedier ones from throwing everyone else off their groove."  That gets the bilges pumped, or the side walls guyed out, more effectively.