Locating Afr-Am chantey singers

Subject: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: GUEST,chanteyranger, at work
Date: 09 Nov 00 - 01:21 PM

There are some excellent interpreters of chanteys and fishing songs with strong African American connections, such as Bob Walser, The NexTradition, and our own Barry Finn. For various reasons, these traditions have largely, but not completely, disappeared from the African American communities themselves, at least as far as performers go, although the Georgia Sea Island Singers and the Menhaden Chanteymen are notable exceptions. Does anyone know of other African American singers who are preserving their traditions of sailor and fisherman work songs?

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 10 Nov 00 - 12:01 AM

I should add that it's more than idle curiosity. I hope to bring such singers to the San Francisco bay area for a few gigs - at least one, at the maritime park where I work.

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: WyoWoman
Date: 10 Nov 00 - 12:12 AM

That sounds fascinating. I hope you can locate some ...

What happened to the songs? the same thing seems to have happened re. African American songs from the American West. I read a statment in the Fort Union Museum in New Mexico that at one time one in four American cowboys (after the Civil War) was African American. They were a huge presence here in the West after the war -- the one place where they had some hope, albeit briefly, of having some personal freedom and a new start on life. The mining camps were full of freed slaves, tons of them were cowhands and wranglers. The Buffalo Soldiers are just a tiny sliver of the participation of African Americans in the Western frontier. But where are the songs within the African-American community that tell these stories?

Very, very interesting ...

ww

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 10 Nov 00 - 01:58 AM

Thanks to researchers such as Stan Hugill and William Doerflinger, who learned some of the chanteys they collected from African American chanteymen, there is a body of work preserved. Barry, hope you check in here.

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: GUEST,Barry Finn (at work & can't stay long)
Date: 10 Nov 00 - 02:00 PM

Hi Chanteyranger, I'll come back with more input later but for now know that I'd use any excuse to out west. Barry

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: GUEST,Barry Finn
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 12:39 AM

The Northern Neck Shanty Singers are another group of manhaden fishermen that still sing, I don't if they've been recorded though.
The West Indies & the neighboring Island groups that once fished the whale & grouper now fish under power. The day of the work song passed awhile ago, in the prisons & in in the manhaden fisheries they disappeared in the 60's, in the 40's you could still hear some of them on the Georgia Sea Islands. The hayday of the shanty fell somewhere between the 1860's to the 1880's after the Afro American sailor started to fade from the sea & most agree that few real shanties were invented after the the mid 1870's & some say the in the early 60's. Afro American sea songs have been been heard along the Eastern seaboard since the revololution. The Virginia Gazette in 1774 notes a runaway Negro woman as fond of liquor & singing indecent sailor's songs. In 1785 a New England merchant wrote about "the cheerful & pleasant sounds of Negro labor songs while working the tackle & fall". From the 1st impressment & imprisonment of American sailors by the British in 1807, of which of the 4, 2 were men of color, Britain's Dartmoor Prison saw 5000 sailors, 20% were Afro Americans. From the boom of the cotton trade in the 1790's & the opening of the China Trade in 44 & along with the gold rush in 49 Doerflinger points to these as causes for the need for more men & new designs that that gave up cargo space for speed, this was the hayday for Afro American sailors. Black/Indian captain Paul Cuffe writes of the whaling brig, Traveler, with it's all Black crew visiting Port-Au-Prince 8 yrs. after Haitian independence, this, I believe to be the same Traveler, with it's again all Black crew, that during a whaling trip in 1822 according to song met up with (according to the fisheries report) the all Black crew of the of the whaling schooner Industry. The early part of the 1800's was increasingly good for sailors of color, free or not, by the mid 1800's their prospects were receading & by the last 3rd of the 1800's they were becoming relics. Because of the dim prospects of finding meaningful work they stayed at sea far longer than their white counterparts, they became the Old Salts to the 1 or 2 passage making green horns only to disappear from the sea except as stewards & cooks leaving only their stamp on their songs & even that faded. The East Coast that was once monopolized by the Black pilots, steveadores, fisherman & in shore sailors along with the off shore Black sailor that sometimes numbered as high as 25% all were driven back on shore by the 1860's when Jim Crow went to sea. I believe that the Afro American sailor had far more influence on shantydom that ever given credit for, when he disappeared so didn't the songs. Blow the Man Down, popular in the 1840's, Hugill believes to have come from the black song Knock A Man Down which a very close version, Kick Him Along was collected in the Islands in the 1930's. Pre 1840's heard Round the Corner Sally & Sally Brown whose very close cousin Finney Brown appeared in the BWI in the 1960's along with the West Indian versions of Shenandoah, Solid Fas & Cold & Squally Weather. Doerflinger's version of Blood Red Roses called Come Down You Bunch of Roses, Come Down rings of a version collected in the Bahamas (along with Sloop John B) in the 1930's Come Down You Bunch of Roses. Shallow Brown's found as Shallow Ground, versions of Bowline, Good Bye Fare Thee Well & Long Time Ago along with dozens of others were still to be found in the 60's when they were all but a memory elsewhere.
Barry

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: Night Owl
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 12:48 AM

WOW Barry....thank you!

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: Ship'scat
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 10:58 AM

Moving inland,

There's a wonderful family of African-American Steveadoring songs from the great lakes ports. They were collected by a member of the University of Michigan's Engineering English Department over his life. My failing memory obliterates all the details like the the song (words, tune, chorus, name - stuff like that) the Boarding Party did from this collection.

Unreliable fragments include:

I think the refrain was "Whose on the way boys? Whose on the way?"

It mentions Detroit as a port.

There's a reference to a "tub 'o suds" which Jonathan's research revealed was rot gut gin and peppers.

The cargo was copper "pigs" (ingots) which were off loaded on hand trucks.

Anybody have more on this?

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: WyoWoman
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 01:26 PM

This is a GREAT thread! If I were a documentary filmmaker ...

Keep talkin', keep talkin' ...

Reading along avidly, WW

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: GUEST,chantey ranger, at work
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 03:42 PM

Thanks, Barry, for that background info! I loved the "Juliana" chantey you sang at the Boston singer's circle last June. Can't remember the title. Is it in the digital tradition? I wonder if you (or anyone reading this) have heard Frankie and Doug Quimby - the current Georgia Sea Island Singers. Their website lists the various performing programs they do, and one of them is a sea chantey program.

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: GUEST,Barry Finn
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 09:05 PM

Hi Chantey ranger & thanks, Yup, I heard Frankie & Doug at Old Songs a few yrs back, followed them around like a little puppy dog in heat, they're great aren't they. Juliana is also called London Julie, it's not in the DT though. I picked it up off a Polish sailor Marek, you can find a thread back a bit on this song. If you have a copy of the Johnson Girl's new CD they do this & Bonny (Liam's sister-in-law) traces it back from Poland to Roy Harris for the perticulars read the jacket. Barry

Subject: RE: Locating Afr-Am chantey singers
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 12 Nov 00 - 03:38 AM

"London Julie." That's it. I had the title wrong, but that's the one you sang. I'll get in touch with Liam's Brother and order the CD. Thanks again.

-chanteyranger