Music has always played an integral role in telling the stories and struggles of a people.  This is in no way unique to any one region, save the stories they tell and the form of the music.  In the United States, specifically Appalachia, the music has carried very strong stories involving labor and the struggles that come along with it.  The conditions that many of the jobs in Appalachia involved were poor to say the least.  This was unfortunately in accordance with the people of many a region for a majority as well.  Poverty was a part of these conditions to a heavy extent.  So… back to the music part.  The music often embodied these struggles.  One hears a lot of strong examples of this with regard to the classic image of the coal mine and the miner towns that existed.  The coal towns are now exceedingly known through the music as well as other histories as being harsh and impoverished to an extent where the people there basically owed there lives to the coal companies because they often did not even make enough to sustain themselves.  This can be observed in songs like “Sixteen tons” that describe the extreme intensity of labor working in the coal regions and the little that the workers made from it.  Music such as this fills Appalachia and describes the hard lives of the people well.