The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145760 Message #3372893
Posted By: Highlandman
06-Jul-12 - 02:24 PM
Thread Name: Shanties as work songs, question
Subject: RE: Shanties as work songs, question
I think one of the things that throws me off, as a sailor of little bitty boats, is the spacing of the pulls. They seem very long between -- but then again considering how heavy the work is on these ships I suppose it makes sense.
Watching the Moby Dick video, the thing that strikes me odd is that the pulls aren't evenly spaced in Blood Red Roses... when the shantyman is singing his verses the men get a bit of a blow, I suppose, then have a couple of pulls on the chorus. Does that make sense? You're not trying to keep momentum up, but rather keep at a heavy job 'til it's done, right?
I learned all my shanties from folk song books; I'm trying to rid myself of folk-revival performance presuppositions (not that stage performance is all bad; not trying to start an argument) and understand the songs better as they were used in their natural habitat.
Thanks for the starting points, I'll spend some time there. (Wikipedia, really? hm....)
-Glenn