A brief loud melodic phrase characterized by highly stylized vocal techniques including
yodel-like glottal snaps, falsetto, staccato, blue notes (in African American tradition), and
various other techniques employing a wide tonal compass. The holler characteristically
employs vocables, or meaningless syllables, rather than words and is performed without
instrumental accompaniment. Musical and entertaining in form, the holler is generally
performed outdoors and may also be performed to communicate as signals, animal calls,
greetings between farmers, and by vendors announcing their presence. Because diey are
individually stylized vocal performances bearing the unique style of the individual
performer, hollers are a musical oddity that do not readily lend themselves to written
description. Performances may range from a gently rising melismatic whooping sound to
an energetically hooted falsetto rendition of a popular hymn.
Although hollers and hollering are documented in both Caucasian and African
American traditions, most references to the holler occur in publications by collectors and
scholars treating them as idiomatic material closely related to worksongs and blues. One
of the earliest descriptions appears in 1856 in Frederick Law Olmstead’s A Journey in the
Southern Slave States, in which he described shrill music “whoops” of Negro laborers as
“Negro jodeling” and “Carolina yells.” Numerous other writers in the first half of the
20th century viewed the holler in relationship to the development of early blues, often
pointing to characteristic wordless moan-like refrains and advancing the view that the
holler is an antecedent to the blues. Contemporary thinking de-emphasizes the
romanticized view that the holler is a pre-blues form and suggests that hollering was one
among a familiar stock of vocal techniques from which performers borrowed.
The term “holler” also subsumes a broad range of stylized vocal performances that
share many common elements. Remarkably similar performances have been reported as
cattle calls, street cries and shouts, and the shantymans “sing-outs.”
Although hollers are rarely performed in the 1990s, there is broad public recognition
of the term due to the continued media coverage of the annual Spivey’s Corner Hollering
Contest since its beginning in North Carolina in 1969. During the contest’s early years
several participating traditional performers appeared on national television and radio
programs.
Peter Bartis
References
Bartis, Peter T. 1973. An Examination of the Holler in North Carolina White Tradition. Southern
Folklore Quarterly 39:209–217.
Browne, Ray B. 1954. Some Notes on the Southern “Holler.” Journal of American Folklore 67:73–
77.
Courlander, Harold. 1963. Negro Folk Music U.S.A. New York: Columbia University Press.
Odum, Howard W., and Guy B.Johnson. 1926. Negro Workaday Songs. London: Oxford
University Press.
Olmstead, Frederick Law. 1856. A Journey in the Southern Slave States with Remarks on Their
Economy. New York: Dix and Edwards.