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Sea shanties?

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Where do these things come from? I was watching Steven Colbert last night for his latest wry take on US politics, when he dropped in references to sea shanties. Whatever, I thought. Then, today the wave, which must have been cresting for days now, broke over me on Facebook. It’s officially a ‘thing’.

These phenomena multiply exponentially from out of nowhere, don’t they? So quick, you can almost see them happening in real time.

I guess communal choral singing is a good thing in these strange times, as @TheCheshireCat would probably attest. What would Afterworders sing a capella together, I wonder?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/shantytok-how-a-19th-century-seafaring-epic-inspired-a-covid-generation

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Comments

  3. On Colbert, @salwarpe, I guess you saw his monologue from a couple of days ago – I was astounded because he seemed genuinely outraged and angered at the behaviour of Trump and his acolytes.
    You’d have thought after four years plus he’d be inured to the Orange One’s antics, but this has been an outrage too far.

    • Hey @Carl. I can see what you’re saying. Trump is a leopard who never changed his spots – what’s different now?

      I did see the monologue – that guy is good. Puts James O’Brien’s daily 10.05 monologue deep in the shade, and I think JOB’s a good ‘un. But I also saw Colbert’s monologue the week before, straight after the riot. And he was shocked. Shocked and outraged. Because the thing about Trump, I think, is that he’s a bully. And all bullies are at heart cowards. (Same with Johnson). I think Colbert, like many of us, thought Trump was all mouth and no trousers. All talk.

      So when the bellicose idiots and A-holes took him at his word, and broke into Congress, it broke through the layers of irony – real and present danger. Shit got real.

  4. This is wonderful news. I imagine Cheddar is chuffed.

    Shanty singing has been there been going on all the time. But now it’s in the limelight.

    Here’s a wonderful Norwegian shanty combo, Storm Weather Shanty Choir, with an old chestnut.


    Filmed five years ago. They are perched on the bandwagon that others are now jumping ont..

    A Ramones quote in the middle of a shanty. Classy!

  5. “These phenomena multiply exponentially from out of nowhere, don’t they? So quick, you can almost see them happening in real time.”

    That’s so true. Just a couple of nights ago, I bumped into a video of someone singing sea shanties on reddit, enjoyed it, and subscribed to his YouTube channel.

    I really only watched the video as the post header seemed to suggest that it was someone from Black Flag singing a sea shanty, which was an intriguing prospect. Sadly, it wasn’t Henry Rollins but instead – and even better, so far as I was concerned – turned out to be the bloke who’d provided the songs for Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, which were one of my favourite parts of the game.

    • Lester Simpson runs a folk choir or two. Participating in his workshops at Derby Folk Festival was one of the joys that led me to sing. He’s a great teacher, but that is backed up by the massive respect he has as a performer.

      Of course, that’s very much a planned arrangement. It’s interesting how those have caught on, since they are the direct opposite of how bawdy shanties must have sounded – call and response – one bloke bellowing while the others, breathless from working a full shift at the capstan / oars / pump, roar back with less co-ordination than a football crowd. Not much thought of pretty harmonies in those circumstances, I suggest.

      Still arranged, but giving more of the feel of massed singing, these are the guys who are genuinely inspirational for me.

  7. One of my favourite bits in folk clubs is when some old lag gets up in the floor spots and sings a sea shanty with everyone singing along. On a similar note someone sang a Gilbert and Sullivan song once which was brilliant. G&S playlist required please!

    • Crikey! It’s Monty Python meets the Parrots of the Caribbean!

      Alestorm look like the kind of band who would go down very well late at night at a festival.
      Very silly!

  14. Hats off to Nathan Evans! He is the Singing Postman for the Instagram generation.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/sea-shanties-lyrics-tiktok-song-meme-b1787155.html

    How soon before there’s a Postman Pat episode about a shanty festival in Greendale?

    The Independent article mentions that one aspect of the shanty craze is that TikTok allows you to create duets and collaborations.

    Easy to see why people enjoy “playing together” in this way. Great fun!

    It won’t be long before my hipster teenage son gives up on Grime and starts talking about whaling ships!

  15. I discovered the Longest Johns, an a capella combo from Bristol, a few weeks ago because of Xmas at sea. It’s a poignant Robert Louis Stevenson poem, which they set to music.

    The Treasure Island Hitmaker also co-wrote one of the world’s most famous shanties: He created the opening lines for his novel and an American poet, Young E Allison, added the rest, lines which becamea poem called The Derelict

    The Longest Johns are a fine combo.

    Here are they are doing some community singing.

    Wonderful stuff. This new craze is good news.

    Rumour has it that Baxter Dury is going to give his dad’s classic a facelift:

    New Boots and Shanties!

  19. Sal is right to call me to the blog. Massed a capella singing is my thing. My natural habitat is after hours in the beer tent at a folk festival, taking turns to lead on a chorus song. But you may be surprised to learn that shanties – sea or otherwise, and there are plenty of otherwise – aren’t really my thing; for some reason they just don’t click with me. One particularly wonderful night in the back room of the Kings Arms in South Zeal, Dartmoor, I sidled in unknown and unfamiliar to a wall of sound of the sons of Devon and Cornwall singing shanty after shanty. A quiet word confirmed that this was not deliberate or mandated, and this cat was off the leash. Those boys now know rather more miners and union songs than hitherto.

    It all started at Shrewsbury in 2012, the first time I stood up and sang. Having the whole room sing back at me was deeply moving, and addictive. This was the song, and if you ever sing this at a folk gig, you will find the whole room knows it and will lift the rafters.

    • Please tell us more about shanties which are not associated with the sea. Cheshire.

      The Cambridge dictionary gives tis definition.

      “a song that sailors sang in the past while they were working on a ship”

      Here’s an excellent article about different kinds of work songs.

      https://thenestcollective.co.uk/work-songs/

      Sea shanties date back to the middle ages but faded out with the arrival of steam ships.

      A lot of work songs are based on call and response. It suddenly struck me that there was a revival of that kind of song during the folk music/protest song boom in the 60s.

      • It’s true that most definitions will pigeonhole all shanties as sea songs, but not all shanties are sea shanties and not all sea songs are shanties. The difference is made by the purpose and rhythm. The purpose of a shanty is to give co-ordination to heavy team work; that can be on dry land, but is most remembered for being at sea. But some wipsy ballad about missing one’s sweetheart back in port, don’t count as a shanty just ’cause it’s being sung at sea.

        Here’s a quote from the Library of Congress, close to my own heart :
        “A good example of the kind of song needed to coordinate labor is the railroad work song. When hammering in spikes to hold down the rails and ties, workers swing ten-pound hammers in a full circle, hitting the spike squarely, one after the other, without faltering or missing. The most efficient way to do this is to get the workers into a rhythm, which is traditionally provided by chants or songs, such as “Steel Driving Song,” collected from Henry Truvillion by John and Ruby Lomax in Louisiana in 1939. In the same way, realigning whole sections of railroad that have been shifted by trains – rails, ties, and all – requires a crew to tap on the rails with hammers or pull on them with crowbars. If one man taps the rail alone, or five men tap it at different times, it won’t move at all, but if five men tap it at exactly the same time, they can move it. Songs like “Track Callin'” provide the rhythm to get them all tapping or pulling at the same time.”

  21. 1. My absolute favourite video clip posted on the Afterword last year was the one that thecheshirecat posted of “Bully in the Alley” sung by that guy whose voice is so deep and powerful it can move buildings. Amazing. I’ve viewed that video many times since.

    2. Here’s a nice short shanty sung by Chaim Tannenbaum and Loudon Wainwright.
    “WE ALL SHAVE UNDER … THE CHIN!!!”

  22. I don’t know about presenting sea shanties in a modern way – I can’t see that catching on. I would be more interested in something more natural like an old prog rock guitarist expertly strumming away in his kitchen, perhaps with energetic vocals from someone in his family. I doubt whether such a clip exists.

  23. Of course, if you really have had your appetite whetted, you can get a fix in Falmouth on the second week in June. I am walking the South West Coast Path in June with my mucker from work. I did the bookings. He has been warned.

  24. A full interview with Lake Davineer from the Wellington Sea Shanty Society.

    https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/14-01-2021/ahoy-a-sea-shanty-veteran-on-why-the-genre-is-blowing-up-on-social-media/?fbclid=IwAR04lXBxwr5jk6KytAXaXfQCSKXmkwuOqH-6ydv6fILHslgh7nJVYi63uZA

    Here is his comment on the difference between French and Kiwi shanties.

    “What I find cool about some of the French songs, they’re more “up middle finger to the captain”. My take on them is that they’re a bit more subversive – we’re working down here, let’s push the captain overboard. There’s an English one like that as well – Come All You Tonguers – which has that sort of same thing. Those are my favourite ones, about organising as workers to oust the ship owners. ”

    Come all of you tonguers!!

  26. Now, going back to the OP, there was a question ‘What would Afterworders sing together?’, well I think there’s enough proggers around to make this far more likely than a shanty. Not a capella, but why would you when you’ve got this band? Let’s get choral!

  28. Every floor singer needs a certain type of song in their repertoire, what I call the ‘Come All Ye’ song, to welcome the throng, to silence the room, to start the session, to encourage participation. This one was written by a mate of mine who I (used to) meet every month at some pub or other in Lancashire. Keith lives and breathes this song. There is nothing that defines him more than to be in a room with voices ‘shaking plaster from the wall’. Though his voice is long past being the plaster shakerer, his words ring out through Derek Gifford’s tunes and the massed voices that sing them.

  30. They are singing a Beach Boys cover rather than a shanty. However the Spooky Men’s Chorale from Australia to my mind are the modern heirs to the shanty singers of the past.

    Powerful male voices and a lot of heart.

    There is a wonderful comment on YouTube by Steve Biddulph:
    “This is what post patriarchal masculinity looks like. Hairy, vulnerable, and holding a wombat!”

    Talking of heirs to the shantymen, I suddenly thought of the Only You Xmas Hitmakers

  32. From someone I’ve never heard of on Twitter:

    “If you lot keep doing sea shanties you know what’ll happen don’t you?

    GARY BARLOW WILL END UP DOING AN ALBUM OF THEM.

    Is that what you want? Because that’s what’ll happen.”

    • Not at all!

      Troll on, troll on, troller!

      It is simple and extremely catchy. There is great scope for singing along: “At shanty town”

      But could it get people working? Perhaps…

      A song so good, we should listen twice. Another excellent video of vintage footage.

  35. Here is an excellent page from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It’s very good at explaining ow different shanties were needed for different kinds of tasks.

    https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/sea-shanty-facts-history-meaning

    Hats off to them for having their ear to the ground and incorporating some lines on Tik Tok and the latest shanty craze.

    Here is one of my favourite author,s Neil Gaiman, with his wife Amanda Palmer performing a shanty at the South Street Seaport Museum.

  37. I never suspected I’d get round t mentioning a Disney film.

    But I suddenly remembered Frozen Heart, from the opening scene from Frost.

    Now there’s a work song, if ever there was one.

    Not quite enough call and response for it to be a shanty but pretty near.

    I also stumbled across Boston troubadour, David Coffin, who entertains and educates with his shanties.

    https://www.wbur.org/artery/2017/06/16/sea-shantyman-david-coffin-musician

    Here he is at work.

      • Talking of full time shanty singing, my paper this morning tells me that Nathan Evans has quit being a postie, to capitalise on his TikTok fame. I fear he may be overestimating the lifetime earnings potential of folk singers. But you can’t fault him for nudging Sal towards a hamper.

        • That Nathan is a brave lad. But at this moment in time, with no possibilities to perform, he is being a tad reckless.

          One of the reasons that the history of shanties interests me is that it intertwines with the history of folk music.

          From those bowdlerising Edwardians, let’s fast forward to the field recordings of Alan Lomax in the 1950s. As well as the work he did in the USA, Lomax also spent several years collecting folk songs in Italy.

          These Calabrian tuna fisherman are the real deal.

          You can almost smell the brine, the seamen and the nets full of fish.

  40. The latest Word Podcast, from messrs Ellen and Hepworth popped into my inbox yesterday.
    The title: “It’s All Gone Sea Shanty!”
    Haven’t listened to it yet. Dozens of other podcasts to catch up on first.
    Post #98 on the thread. I can smell that shanty hamper. It’s full of herrings.
    Shoals of ’em.

  41. This just in.
    https://www.falmouthseashanty.co.uk/news/2021-festival-announcement/
    though an insider tells me that the decision was also coloured by the fact that the G7 are meeting in Carbis Bay and all the accommodation in Falmouth has been hoovered up by the press corps who are using the town as a base.

    All the accommodation, that is, apart from a twin room on Gyllyngvase Beach occupied by a couple of blokes walking the South West Coast Path.

  42. A modern work song from Bagpuss!

    I just listened to an interview with Nancy Kerr who did the music and voiced Madeleine.

    She mentioned that the mice from the Mouse Organ refused to work if they were not allowed to sing!

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