I would now like to add that in one sense this "warmth" did exist among people in simpler times, a warmth that we in modern society seldom experience. It is the warmth of total belongingness. One feels it most in communal singing. People get together, feel together — indeed, feel as one — when they sing. That is its deepest purpose. People sing essentially to themselves. There are no listeners; there is no human audience "out there." The welling up of emotion — drenched, rhythmic sound — swallows up the individual singer, makes him or her a part of the whole to a degree that no other group activity can. Working together at a common task no doubt also creates a strong sense of oneness, but, significantly, that oneness is enhanced by work songs, which enable laborers to forget their own fatigue in their total identification with the group.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Cosmos and Hearth