The proverbial hardships of agricultural work was often remedied with songs interpreted by the workers, individually or collectively, to the rhythm marked by the kind of tool used on the job and the cadence of body movement required to do so.

 

En route to the workplace they often created melodies to the beat of their own footsteps or those of the animals that accompanied them and, in the event of ploughing and depending on the proximity of the adjacent parcels, the song, which went to the beat of the heavy steps of the animals dragging the plow, could be answered by the other workers performing similar duties.

 

In the planting fields, there was a constant flow of movement between firm footsteps and the worker’s arm that continuously grabbed the seeds from the seed bag which hung on the opposite shoulder and then projected it into the open range.

 

The harvest was rhythmically accompanied by selecting a span of harvest with dediles or zoqueta, then cut with the sickle or other large blade that went in the other hand, thus ending the process by leaving small piles of grain on the ground that were then tied into bundles, placed on pallets and loaded onto trucks and transported away.

 

Being in the era, the garios, bieldos and horcas performed the songs, without forgetting to mention the accompanying beat of the animals’ footsteps.

 

Subsequently, there were the bushel and shovel, the tools that favored the rhythym of the song and stored the grain.

 

Thus, the majority of agricultural tools mentioned herein have faithfully accompanied the songs of laborers and have allowed us enjoy an extraordinarily wide variety of labor songs, broadening the spectrum of the various difficult chores of years past besides agriculture, such as the Basque barrenistas that played the tobera (wind instrument) or the gancheros that hauled down the wood by the Tagus, amongst many others.