Sorry about all the typ-os in my recent posts! My eyes were fried from looking at the computer all day.

The description of corn shucking is interesting because it seems to fit the rough paradigm of chantying as in cotton-screwing and some other labour of African-American gangs. There's the pile of corn, and the lead singer sat/stood atop it, not "working" per se, but leading the song. (They say he also threw down ears to the shuckers.) Surely it is significant that, in cotton screwing, there was one "chantyman" who just did the singing and no "work"! Similarly, the chanteyman on board ships just sat on the capstan or took his place at the front of a halyard block ("coasting" a bit, I'd imagine.) (And did he also sometimes just stand by halyards without pulling?) One of the recent sources I'd mentioned, too, talked about a stevedore getting paid just to sing. What I'm trying to impress is that this concept of one who sings as an absolutely essential part of a group of workers is surely something distinctive. We can say that many peoples/cultural regions have their work-songs; we can also say that call-and-response is a phenomenon that developed simultaneously in several cultural regions. However, if we add this concept of the (paid!) professional singer-worker, we can get a sense of the cultural background from which "chanties, proper" emerged.

I'd also like to (re)impress the idea that the work -- let's say halyard hauling -- and the singing were inseparable. By analogy, think of the way some African cultural groups don't use a distinct word for "music" alone. "Performance" includes singing, dancing, and drumming, all together by requirement. It may be inappropriate in those contexts to expect to only sing without dancing, say. The physical aspect is as much a part of it as the sound. This rings with the statements about "no hand was put on a rope without raising a song."

I reason that if the things were inseparable, that they also CAME *together*. That is, although earlier in history there were calls to help pull, there was also pulling *without* sound. I hypothesize that there was a historical moment, not when sailors just started singing a lot more, but when the inseparable paradigm of a certain kind of song with a certain method of action was introduced to the scene.

On a slightly different note, I scanned through Scarborough's book, and I've looked at Talley's before. Besides some of the usual suspects ("Charleston Gals" as "Poor Old Horse"), I don't see a lot in common with our chanties. Certainly, very many of the chanties borrowed from minstrel songs (which borrowed from and tended to get mixed up with authentic Black songs in these books). People have discussed that a lot and elsewhere on Mudcat. And although the borrowing from minstrel songs does not necessarily mean the derivative chanties (lacking any other attestation, that is) were originated during 1830s-40s-50s (typical minstrelsy years), it is generally enough for *me*, not as proof but as strong-suggestion, that those chanties *did* probably emerge in that time frame. Incidentally, when this thread was started, I was thinking that a better question would be (**assuming "historical imagination" is at work**) "What shanties were NOT around in 1853?"!

However, what I/we have also noted is that while many chanties do have phrases that were most likely picked up from minstrel songs, there are not many that actually take over the song wholesale. In other words, only phrases have been borrowed. I want to suggest that this is because, although these "hooks" were wildly popular in the musical culture of the time, the forms of the minstrel songs did not usually fit the chanty-act. Phrases had to be grafted onto the chantey form. Moreover, in cases when the minstrel song forms *were* used (e.g. "Camptown Races," "Oh Susanna,"), they were generally as heaving (capstan) shanties - those with a different, more flexible form than the "classic halyard work-song" structure.

So...in Scarborough and Talley (the latter which I've not read carefully lately), there is not a whole lot that is like chanties. This has been my possible explanation *why*.

I was also looking in what might be considered a Jamaican equivalent to those books, Jekyll's JAMAICAN SONG AND STORY (1907). In my opinion --although this is a vague sense-- the melodies there have more in common with chanties. Still, there are few that are just like chanties. I once identified a variation of the revival era chantey "Bring 'Em Down" in Jekyll, but that one, like most of the work-songs there, is more of the "Hunhh!" (grunt), one-pull at regular intervals (like "Eki Dumah") type. Then again, none of these collections have much maritime-related material.