The chants, as may be supposed, have more of rhyme than reason in them. Singing helped to alleviate boredom and to lighten, perhaps, the psychological burden of hard work. [29], The decks were all life and commotion; the sailors on the forecastle singing, "Ho, cheerly men!" Popular music of the time was readily adapted, especially the minstrel music genre, songs of whose couplets were often of a suitable metrical length. One writer about shanties warned his readers that their lyrics, to landsmen, would "probably appear as the veriest doggerel. One of the earliest shanty collections, Davis and Tozer's Sailor Songs or 'Chanties' (which circulated in the early 1890s), included such accompaniment, along with safe, "drawing room" style lyrics. This has led some to believe that the more sophisticated shanties of later years developed from the more primitive chants.[28]. And then some one of them would begin, and if every man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath expended on it. When asked why he thinks the trend has become so popular, Nathan looked to the origins of the Sea Shanty. Through the mass distribution of particular shanty forms through recordings and clubs, the folk revival has had the effect of creating an impression of rather consistent forms of texts and tunes—a sharp contrast to the highly variable and often improvised nature of work-based shanty singing. Hugill readily included more recently popular songs—those that evidently were not sung until after the shanty genre was experiencing decline, but which were extant when Hugill sailed (1920s–40s). "[179] The only characteristic it appears to share with the shanty genre is a 6/8 meter (displayed by some well known shanties like "Blow the Man Down"). After listening to many a shanty, we arrived at our 11 favorites. Lloyd's album The Singing Sailor (1955)[116] with Ewan MacColl was an early milestone, which made an impression on Stan Hugill when he was preparing his 1961 collection,[117] particularly as the performance style it embodied was considered more appropriate than that of earlier commercial recordings. [99] Robert Winslow Gordon, founding head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, recorded sailors singing shanties in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1920s, and later made recordings of African-American work songs in Georgia and elsewhere,[100] seeking to demonstrate correspondences between these and the shanty genre. Their use as work songs became negligible in the first half of the 20th century. Due to this, shanty texts might have been poor from an aesthetic standpoint—even at times random nonsense—so long as the singing fit the form of the work song. Although those terms were not in great evidence in the 19th century, some literary references to "fore-bitter" and, less so, "fo'c'sle song," attest to their use even prior to the appearance of "shanty. All shanties had a chorus of some sort, in order to allow the crew to sing all together. Swedish uses sjömansvisa, "sailor song," as a broad category, but tends to use the borrowed "shanty" to denote a work song. While shanties were historically understood as work songs, the word "shanty" has often been used in popular culture since the mid-20th century as a catch-all term that also includes songs supposed to have been sung during leisure time at sea, and even other songs about the sea or which vaguely inspire thoughts of the sea. [90] While Sharp's manner of documenting shanties was more or less objective, the field of his research and his biases in what to collect certainly influenced the outcome of this study. In an influential early article about shanties, New York journalist William L. Alden drew a comparison between shanties and both authentic African-American songs and the quasi-African-American minstrel songs: The old sailor songs had a peculiar individuality. [60] Whatever their fundamental origins, by the late 19th century shanties constituted the heritage of international seamen, with little or no necessary national associations. There is a notable lack of historical references to anything like shanties, as they would come to be known, in the entirety of the 18th century. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/what-you-need-know-viral-19703897 In other news, TikTok: What is 'A Bra That Fits'? This can be contrasted with the method of performers focusing on maritime music, who tend to think of themselves as operating within that genre or a tradition, and who develop their repertoire from multiple sources and through various experiences. Stylistic characteristics include lighter vocals with a "folk" timbre, livelier tempos, and instrumental interludes between verses. Both these non-shanty sailor songs and the historical repertoire of shanties are typically performed with instrumental accompaniment—something that was rare or unheard of at sea in the case of authentic shanties. As discussed above, there is a notable correspondence between shanties and African-American songs of both work and leisure. For example, the phrase "girl with the blue dress on" is documented in a Black muledriver's song[126] and in a popular minstrel song,[127] as well as in a few shanties, for example, O wake her, O shake her, Nathan has become famous for singing Sea Shanties, and his videos often rack up millions of views and are watched by people across the world. In general, performances may be more "rough around the edges" and be of variable length to accommodate impromptu changes in verses. In these, coordination was of minor importance as compared to pacing. concertina). [52] An early article to offer an opinion on the origin of shanties (though not calling them by that name), appearing in Oberlin College's student paper in 1858, drew a comparison between Africans' singing and sailor work songs. Shanties continued to be used to some extent so long as windjammers were, yet these were comparatively few in the early 20th century. Much of the historical shanty repertoire, being by definition designed to suit work, is less attractive as entertainment listening. The purpose and parameters of shanty singing in the present era have had an influence on which shanties are sung and how. [91] And whereas Bullen's work was fairly inaccessible, Sharp was influential as the leader of a cohort of scholars who were actively creating the young field of folk song research. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton collected shanties from Nova Scotia seamen, such as 'Blow the Man Down', 'Whiskey Johnny', 'The Sailor's Alphabet', 'Shenandoah' and Rio Grande. [68] In 1882, due to the proliferation of steamships, Alden was already lamenting the passing of shanties. For these reasons, sea songs that were never or only exceptionally adapted as shanties—but which have engaging melodies and texts—have proved popular to 20th century audiences under the rubric of "shanties." This can be seen in the frequent lack of consensus, among different writers and informants, as to what job a given shanty was used for. [107] Shanties from the Seven Seas and Stan Hugill's performances have had a tremendous bearing on how shanties have been understood and performed by enthusiasts since the second half of the 20th century up to today. He might be a postman by day, but Nathan’s dream is to become a musician, and he started singing on TikTok to try and make his love of singing a career. The 1914 collection by Frank Thomas Bullen, Songs of Sea Labour,[83] differed from the work of writers such as Masefield in having a more practical, rather than romantic, tone. #viral #singing #singer #scottishsinger #seashanty #sea #shanty #sailor #fyp #foryoupage #scotland #new #original #xyz. Shantyman (solo): Boney was a warrior, Schreffler, Gibb, "Confronting the Legacy of 'The Last Shantyman': New Media in an Auto-ethnography of Sea Shanty Performance," paper delivered at British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Liverpool, U.K. (April 2009). The musical program includes old-time chanties, in which the young men are instructed by a veteran deep-water chantie man.[112]. {{#media.focal_point}}. The gatherings aim for an inclusive atmosphere that welcomes people of all ages, genders, ethnicities, and singing abilities. It requires, however, some dexterity and address to manage the handspec to the greatest advantage; and to perform this the sailors must all rise at once upon the windlass, and, fixing their bars therein, give a sudden jerk at the same instant, in which movement they are regulated by a sort of song or howl pronounced by one of their number.[24]. The English poet John Masefield, following in the footsteps of peers like Rudyard Kipling,[77] seized upon shanties as a nostalgic literary device, and included them along with much older, non-shanty sea songs in his 1906 collection A Sailor's Garland. Information about shanties was preserved by veteran sailors and by folklorist song-collectors, and their written and audio-recorded work provided resources that would later support a revival in singing shanties as a land-based leisure activity. as shanties. 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