Introduction

Citation

Evans, S. (2005), "Introduction", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 18 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2005.05918fae.001

Introduction

Listening to the soundtrack from the Coen brothers’ movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I began thinking about work songs. That was reinforced when Martin Scorsese’s series of documentaries about blues music featured lyrics propelled by a solemn and grand beat that conjured visions of hard labour, of picking cotton and breaking rocks.

Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg, among others, have extended the themes of the dignity of labour and vulnerability to exploitation. Who, I wondered, ever wrote a work song for the daily activities involved in accounting and auditing that was not tongue-in-cheek, though? Satire – the world of sometime songsters like Tom Lehrer and Spike Milligan and Monty Python – seemed a more natural source for that subject than the blues.

Serious artistic approaches to the quotidian world of accounting do exist, however –even if not in music (and you are welcome to correct me on this score). There are certainly poems and creative prose that attend to the place of the individual at work in accounting, as these pages often attest. In the pieces featured in this issue, that focus is particularly on issues of trade and commerce, where the microcosm often speaks to the macro. The situation of a single human becomes a symbol for many.

In this issue, Kerry Jacobs’ “Half a pound of tuppeny rice” offers us two voices. One is from the past, speaking from the gritty reality of nineteenth century England and not knowing when work will next be found. The other, more detached and modern and scholarly, floats above – it sees the sting, the truth that lies in seemingly innocent nursery rhymes from that era. It reminded me how some blues songs were ostensibly about love gone wrong when their authors feared saying that their real complaint was mistreatment or exploitation at work, and that it was the boss not their own man or woman, who was the villain in the tune.

Gavin Reid gives us three linked poems that deal with several aspects of labour. He intertwines past and present, and poor and developing worlds, to make some strong points. Not all of them are dark; there is a shared humour here in the third part, “The exchange”. That is evident too in Ray Stuart’s perceptive poem, “No barter”. As with Reid, Stuart’s poem also emerges from the meeting of two cultures.

I hear an echo of the blues in such writing that deals directly with transactions and values. It presents human interaction and asks us to ponder our motives and our concern for each other. In their own way, then, maybe each of the pieces here is a work song.

I look forward to seeing your own contribution to Literature and insights. Please feel free to contact me.

Steve EvansLiterary Editor