pattyClink: The banner gets changed weekly to feature a new "Shanty Group of the Week". This week it happens to be Schooner Fare. Below the banner is a separate section which refreshes with each site visit to offer a Featured Musical Act. Additionally, below that is a rotating preview of Musical Acts and Venues and Events.

You won't find the kind of "scholarly stuff" I think you're looking for; that is not our bailiwick. Let me explain.

Young people today have learned to love "sea shanties" from video games and TikTok. The performers that are featured there are largely people with no chops in today's maritime music scene. While Seán Dagher (of Assassin's Creed fame) has gone on to become much more familiar with maritime music, Nathan Evans (of TikTok's The Wellerman fame) continues to know enough to splash around in his £5M cash and little else, it seems. Only a few contemporary maritime-themed groups have enjoyed viral exposure: Fishermen's Friends, David Coffin, Kimber's Men, perhaps a few I've missed.

Maritime Music, as a subgenre, does not have a representative body like other musical genres have. Further, search engines like Google have restricted their indexing to websites that are both ecommerce secure and are formatted to be mobile friendly, resulting in MANY website by traditional musical artists invisible to casual browsers.

I felt it was important to have a central place that satisfied the search engine requirements for new shanty fans to discover who are the real performers of maritime music in an easy-to-use directory. So I built it. The Maritime Music Directory International also became a place where people go to find musicians to hire for gigs.

Each listing gives the musical act or venue the ability to upload as much information as they care to about what they're doing. It also is a place to find legacy information about musical acts that have passed on, or festivals that no longer operate, but hold important memories and connections for people. There is a cross-linked section in the listings between musical acts and where they perform. We've built a lot of features into this site.

This is NOT a place for lengthy, scholastic treatise on maritime musical subjects - our server space won't allow it. It IS the place where the links to where those works reside can be discovered.

All of this operates on a shoestring budget and volunteer labor. If there is anything that needs to be included in the directory, we depend upon those in the know to tell us about it - extrasensory perception was not included when we set up the website. I did set this up as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization, but my bandwidth to chase after grants has been subsumed by my constant efforts to add to the database itself.

I invite you to please explore the site before you cast aspersions at the remarkable effort a handful of volunteers have put into this directory.