Forgotten Sea Shanties of the Gulf (Oman)

Subject: Forgotten Sea Shanties of the Gulf(Oman)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Mar 21 - 04:17 AM

I came across an interesting article online in /Newlines Magazine, a publication I know nothing about. The article is titled Forgotten Sea Shanties of the Gulf, and I take it they are referring to the Gulf of Oman:

https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-forgotten-sea-shanties-of-the-gulf/

An excerpt from the beginning of the article:

Ahmed Ruqait Al Ali was just 16 years old when he survived a shipwreck off Oman’s coast by latching onto a piece of the mast until he floated upon a desert island. It was 1958. That year, he was one of the luckiest sailors from his neighborhood. It was a monstrous one for typhoons, and three other ships from his neighborhood in Ras Al Khaimah were lost. On the other ships, all perished.

For men of his generation, life revolved around the sea. They circumnavigated centuries-old Indian Ocean trade routes on great wooden ships and sailed to pearling beds in the final chapter of the Gulf’s ancient pearling trade.

Song provided solace and strength for Gulf mariners at the mercy of God, the winds, and waves, recalled Al Ali, now in his 70s.

He was about 12 years old when he heard the mariners’ melodies on his first voyage aboard his father’s ship, from Ras Al Khaimah to Bahrain. Sea shanties, or maritime work songs, helped sailors keep time during the day’s labor. When darkness fell and the day’s work was over, music provided the evening’s entertainment.

“The sailors sang when they raised the sails, they sang when they rowed, they sang for everything to encourage the group, oh yes, to encourage them,” says Al Ali, who captained dhows, the sailing vessels used across the region, on the Indian Ocean in the 1950s and 1960s. “We sang of life, of love and longing, of anything.”

In the Gulf, shanties are still sung by those who knew the sea’s hardships firsthand.