Highland Clearance - edit

[dukealien]

What’s weird about modern labor is the lack of music. 

Forever and ever, music coordinated hard labor, a notion lost to time. So, the replacement of bagpiper drones with leafblowers droning is a real loss. I’d argue a terrible loss. 

I think you’ve stumbled into something deeply worthwhile, maybe worth an epic.

Stumbled, indeed, since I had no inkling when I wrote it (g).

Seriously, when I see/hear Hispanic workers (generally construction workers) they almost always have a loud radio going with Mexican music - frequently more tuneful and romantic than anything but US Country&Western, but not with a beat the work actually falls in time with. There are shouted comments to each other, but the noise is asynchronous pneumatic nailguns and a little electric sawing. Field work, that could be done in time to a song, exists only in mechanized form, mostly landscape maintenance. Running a stand-on or large ride-on mower is a solo enterprise, so the only scope for steps-in-time and synchronization is blowing the leaves and cuttings away.

Which is to say, you may be on to something there!