To avoid harmonies in sea chanteys seems to me to be academically rigid. It seems to me that on shipboard, men engaged in hard labor would find relief in the music by instituting harmonies.


Amen, brother! It seems obvious to me that, throughout history just as today, there have always been people who love to sing harmony and have done so, blissfully ignorant of any folk-establishment "rules" regulating what notes they may or may not have been allowed to sing.

I firmly believe that various individuals involved in group singing, in church or at work, onshore or at sea, have often contributed inadvertant harmonies, as well as technically dissonant accents, while other individuals have sung straight melodies, strict thirds and/or fifths, etc. When the overall group sound is an expression of shared joy (or, at least, satisfaction, in the case of work songs), it all sounds good to me.

I enjoy improvising harmonies, often do it quite well, but also sometimes miss badly. So what? I do, of course, restrain myself in obvious "performance" situations where group participation is not welcome, especially when the performer is working in a hushed environment. With loud, highly amplified music, especially outdoors, I feel completely free to sound off if and when the spirit moves me.