Hi EBarnacle,

There is no question as to the validity of your approach to performing chanteys. I was suggesting something different, however. I'm speaking with respect to the form of what "chanty" seems to have first referred to.

I'm also speaking from a position of experience with instances where what one person may perceive as a "song" is not so by the people who perform it. For example, there are plenty of verses sung by Punjabis that, nonetheless, do not fall under the category of song. To cite a more familiar example, Quranic chant or the Islamic call to prayer is not a song, though listeners from other cultural backgrounds sometimes cant help feeling like it "sounds like" one. Is what a rapper does a "song"? I say no, but for lack of other terms, people might label "rap songs." Too bad, then you have people who don't get the aesthetic of rap who then say it is not "music", probably because it is not a "song" in their sense...though the rapper never claimed it was!

Songs were adapted for use as chanteys, so now we have that significant percentage of chanteys that are...songs. But let's think back, and distinguish the style of different chanteys. There ARE the ballad types. Those are the type I am suggesting were not the original item described as "chanty."

If you take "Blow the Man Down" as an example of a hybrid: As "Knock a Man Down," quite possibly an adapted cotton hoosier's "chant," it had its one-off verses, "Were you ever in Town X", a chorus that didnt mean much of anything (didnt relate to verses), and a repetitive, call and response structure. The basic couplet form of the verses, however, allowed ballad themes like "Ratcliffe Highway," "The Milkmaid" "The Fishes" etc. to be spliced onto it.

A subject for a different discussion, but to my mind it is quite clear that the needs and desires of singing chanteys as "folk songs" ...to audiences, ....for entertainment, ....by a different class of people than historically sang them...has weighted or biased our impression of chanteys towards their interpretation as ballad-like "songs" in the Anglo-European sense.

But that's water under the bridge, as they had already begun to undergo that form during their historical period. My question, however, seeks to get at how people would have first understood those early chanteys, with respect to how they classified other sung-expressions, by different groups of people, in their world at the time. Only then can we understand why "chantey" might derive from "chant" (as Lighter suggests, and I'm inclined to agree with).

kendall,
You may not give a damn, but as usual, those who do, discuss. I know your statement may be in the spirit of "don't worry about it; and let's all get along," but I don't think anyone is worried, nor are they not getting along -- it is just a question of interest.

I think investigating the development of the word tells LOADS. It has already told me something about the dynamics of the folk revivals, and how the manipulation of terms has had its effect on perceptions of the national affiliations of chantey singing. If mis-information means that some people are being perceived by others as "pedantists" or less "authentic" in some way, or if some people from one nation feel they have more God given rights to something than people of another...if you've ever met someone, from any nation, who thinks chanteys are somehow inherently "British", or that they belong with "Irish music"...then having some correct info out there is important. Most importantly, the discussion has the potential to tell us about the nature of the chantey form and where it came from, which helps to interpret it in the present. Knowledge gives you options, while "don't think about it, just do it" means you're almost certain to be doing what someone else has set for you.