The Worksong Project

The Worksong Project is an ongoing life project. I have explored it without building a formal organization. My preferred method has been to simply put music back into everyday community life, especially in working and active situations.

It used to live (digitally) on worksongs.org and now is a part of MovingMusic.Works

At its core, though it is offline. The project explores how singing can support real work, farming, building, rowing, running, harvesting, stacking wood, cooking, cleaning, and other tasks people do together. The work happens in public and semi-public spaces, with neighbors, friends, students, coworkers, and whoever happens to be around.

Some years this project is highly active. Other years it runs quietly in the background. It has no fixed membership and no permanent structure. It lives where people live and work.

The Worksong Project addresses three related needs.

First, to share songs people can actually use while working. In fields, markets, kitchens, workshops, boats, and at the table. Songs shaped by breath, movement, repetition, and effort.

Second, to better understand and enliven the culture of food and work. Much of what people once sang while working has been removed from daily life or preserved only as performance. These songs belonged to ordinary work. They still do.

Third, and more broadly, to explore how work itself can become more humane and more enjoyable. Singing together changes pace, attention, and morale. It helps people work longer, with more focus and more connection.

This project starts with the specific, the songs themselves. From there it moves outward. The aim is simple. Get more done. Have more fun doing it.

The Mighty Worksong Community Chorus

An informal part of this project is what I sometimes call the Mighty Worksong Community Chorus.

It is not a choir in the usual sense. There are no auditions, rehearsals, or fixed rosters. It forms when people gather to do something together and decide to sing while they do it. Stacking wood. Harvesting crops. Clearing land. Moving boats. Helping a neighbor.

Some years the chorus is very active. Some years it barely exists. That variability is part of the point. Worksongs arise from need, not scheduling.

Why Worksongs

Because they work.

They help me work better, faster, and longer.
They are fun, a little strange, and often ragged.
They do not require polish or perfection.
They sit in an underexplored space between music and labor.
They connect me to generations of people solving the same problem with song.

About Me

My name is Bennett Konesni and I am a singing farmer, rower, jogger, designer, planner, administrator, and long-time experimenter with music in motion.

I grew up in Midcoast Maine and continue to base my life and work there. I am the executive director of Bagaduce Music, a community music organization that supports participatory music through lending, education, and public programs. That work runs in parallel with the Worksong Project and constantly informs it.

I began singing while working as a teenager on schooners in Penobscot Bay. Farm work soon reinforced what I was learning on the water. Songs made hard work easier and more social.

On a TJ Watson Fellowship in the early 2000s, I learned worksong traditions from Italy, Switzerland Holland, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, Vietnam and Mongolia, including sung running, communal field songs, and work parties where music structured effort and leadership. I was interested in how these traditions fit into daily life and how groups used song to coordinate work.

Since then, I have continued to test these ideas through farming, teaching, community projects, and public workshops. The through-line has remained the same. Music belongs in motion, in work, and in shared effort.

I love these songs and the way they fit into work and life.
I hope you find them useful.

Bennett Konesni