The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #169158   Message #4088874
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
19-Jan-21 - 11:32 PM
Thread Name: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
Yes, the visuals don't quite fit. I admire Neely's intellect and breadth of experience. It's clear at the same time that, realistically, he doesn't have a lot of time for research when putting these together. I can tell he used a lot of Wikipedia and Hugill 1961, so he basically presents info from those sources but doesn't always know how to interpret that info (i.e. without more contextual knowledge from research).

He included a clip of me leading a hand-over-hand maneuver, ha. But then when he's talking about halyards etc., he's showing sheets and a lot of bunting.

I'm still of the opinion that that stuff (e.g. how a chanty works at halyards) is irrelevant to "The Wellerman" phenomenon. And we'll notice that halyard chanties are rarely taken up by singers during such spikes in interest. Probably, halyard chanties do not have the musical sound that appeals to people. Ironically, the musical sounds that appeal most are those which are most distant from the sounds that make up the core of the genre. Popular items, if not non-chanties, then at most end up being items most peripheral to the core style of the genre.