Review: sea shanties and maritime music website

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 24 May 25 - 07:26 AM

Jerzy "Shogun" Brzezinski posts :
https://mudcat.org/usersearch.cfm?who=Shogun

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 May 25 - 03:57 AM

So criticisms can be made regarding the shanty site, but it seems we are not allowed to make criticisms of technical aspects of Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: DaveRo
Date: 24 May 25 - 03:08 AM

You can list acts and venues by country - ascending or descending - but it's not easy to find those for an individual country. Especially as you don't know how many pages of results there are. A country selector or filter would be useful - including eg Europe, North America (USA + Canada).

Personally I don't like the random and ever-changing collection of stuff on the front page. I'd rather it changed only every day, say, so if I go back to it in the same browsing session I see the same page and can look further down the items.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 23 May 25 - 11:40 PM

LOL where was this site 5 years ago when I spent hours searching for sea music books. A pretty good bibliography here. See for yourself.

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book//browse?type=lcsubc&key=Sea%20songs&c=x

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 23 May 25 - 11:30 PM

it's really nice that some long out of print books are in the public domain and are now online available to download.

Bullen's Songs of Sea Labor

https://ia902800.us.archive.org/28/items/songsofsealabour1914bull/songsofsealabour1914bull.pdf

RR Terry's Shanty Book I & II

https://urresearch.rochester.edu/institutionalPublicationPublicView.action?institutionalItemId=24944&versionNumber=1

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 23 May 25 - 09:49 PM

a few years back I tracked down Flying Cloud by MC Dean along with some fine recordings by Brian Miller

here is a wonderful site with many links plus a box with playable mp3

https://mnheritagesongbook.net/other-resources/the-flying-cloud/

there's a lot to ehjoy here

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 23 May 25 - 03:13 PM

another nice site


https://www.mainsailcafe.com/

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 May 25 - 10:24 AM

Jerzy used to post a lot of his links here, search on his name and you'll see his early work. I'm sure he's glad to have another place catalog his research.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 23 May 25 - 09:07 AM

this link is from Jerzy Brzezinski's website which is linked with MMDI as he is in the performer's listings... but there is no easy way to know that or find it ... so here it is


https://traditionalshanties.com/shantyman-library/

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 23 May 25 - 08:25 AM

Just as shelf space is critical for accessing your collection of books, it seems that bandwidth restricts what a small website can do.

Over the years, Mike and I collected a lot of information from the internet and shared with friends. I can slowly add links here for helpful sites or documents we found that the MMDI can not handle.

https://media.efdss.org/resourcebank/docs/An_Introduction_To_English_Sea_Songs_and_Shanties_2016.pdf

Hope this is useful.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 May 25 - 03:39 AM

I found the site in question, to be particularly useful in passing on information about other shanty festivals and finding artists who sing shanties and maritime music
.Specialist sites like this particular sea shanties and maritime music website give potential audiences the opportunity to seek out the music they want to hear
.It is als ouseful to Organisers pf Festivals

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 May 25 - 10:36 PM

Dean Calin, sciencegeek posted about the site "It's still a work in progress" and remarks about your new site have been solicited here. You're new to Mudcat, which has been around for over 25 years, collecting, in a more random fashion, some of the information you appear to be organizing. (The Mudcat oeuvre is much larger overall.)

Your remark 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 was dismissive and inappropriate after feedback was solicited here at Mudcat. For someone who has only four posts so far on Mudcat, if looks like you're kind of full of yourself.

Mudcat has a rather fraught relationship with the old search system still in place on the home page, but there are many excellent guides to how to search the site, and the content is quite comprehensive in many areas. Rather than dismissing the remarks of people looking for scholarly content, take a look at what has been achieved on Mudcat without even the shoestring budget you have rounded up. Max runs this out of his house, last time I checked.

These sites can complement each other, but it helps if you don't start out by insulting users here.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: Dean Calin
Date: 21 May 25 - 09:21 PM

pattyClink, I have no idea what you're talking about. You were not familiar with the site, nor were others in this discussion, so I explained how the site works.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: pattyClink
Date: 21 May 25 - 11:52 AM

Well Dean, I'm sorry I provided feedback. Many creators welcome first impressions from new users, they can be very helpful, but I see now that is unwanted.

We're all aware this is a labor of love and no one is judging it harshly. Apparently I was misled by the phrase "you all are invited to check it out and provide input".

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 21 May 25 - 05:44 AM

my bad for using the term historical instead of legacy... slip of the fingers for sharing links to things posted online about folks like Barry Finn.

meanwhile there is a crying need for a brick and mortar physical space to house maritime music reference materials ... a library of books and recordings with open access to public view but non-lending. Maybe with online access to public domain PDF & mp3 historical material.

I donated tons of books and recordings to the G W Blunt library until covid shut down the sea music festival and I haven[t been back. Not that access there was all that great. Most of the old books I donated had been discarded from university libraries that then landed on ebay. See the trend? I hoped to scan the books but health issues have stalled that. When I do find free access to scanned books I post the links on facebook or mudcat.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 May 25 - 11:30 PM

Dean, thanks for the site and the explanation.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: Dean Calin
Date: 20 May 25 - 07:04 PM

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.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 20 May 25 - 06:51 PM

Rome wasn't built in a day and Dean is just one guy that I deluge with info as I find it... and whatever format I found it in .. mea culpa

he's just one guy with plenty on his plate

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: Dean Calin
Date: 20 May 25 - 06:32 PM

You can find the listing for the Ballydehob festival here:

https://seashanties4all.com/venues/fastnet-maritime-and-folk-festival/

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: pattyClink
Date: 20 May 25 - 10:15 AM

I've visited the site on two separate days, and it still looks like a promotion page for Schooner Fare. (I had hoped maybe it was randomized to feature different groups daily, but apparently not)

Please think about redesigning the front page to showcase all the great things you say the site has. I still don't see a path to the scholarly stuff.

I looked up 'my' group, the New Orleans one, and though it is listed as an Act with some ancient photos showing a handful of people (it's now more like 40), its monthly sing is not listed as an Event. The last thing a local group needs is a clearinghouse that returns 'no results' in their city.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 20 May 25 - 08:45 AM

update... this was a new post on the MMDI facebook page and shows how interactive we can be

We received this letter today: "Hi, I'm looking to join a sea shanty band if you'll have me. I've sung In bands in the past, was in a make voice choir, which also had a barbershop quartet which I was asked to join and sing lead vocal.
"I'm looking for a new adventure. I've been listening to harmony
sing by the likes of the Young 'Uns, The Longest Johns, Stan Rogers, Fishermen's Friends, and others. I would like to audition if any arise."
To which we answered: "You can find local sea shanty sing-outs by going to the Venues and Events page, browse by Category by clicking on Sea Shanty Sing-Out, then you can sort those results by clicking the “Sort By” box in the center, sort by country and then look at the results in your country."
If you want to audition for a professional group you can go to the Musical Acts page, sort by country and look at the results in your country."
Good luck!"

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 20 May 25 - 05:31 AM

Thank you... That was the goal, Sandman...

find the best way to support the genera and keep it vital is to find a way to get the interested public involved with the living people currently participating in it... and keep them all solvent. With Spotify milking cash from performers and search engines that favor popularity ie. # of hits rather than an unbiased list based on simple criteria.

It's still a work in progress and one that Dean was funding out of pocket and his kickstarter funding. As a not-for-profit it gets a home and prospect for longevity. Having spent 40 years in traditional music and sea music events, I leapt onboard and gave Dean plenty of historic information and suggestions. Supporting performers and venues by letting them link to a common site with up to date information is one way to let others know the who, what, where and when of current events. The more people involved the greater the flow of information and hopefully the long term success of all involved.

Having been a concert manager, newsletter editor and other odd jobs in small music organizations I remember the real headaches of doing publicity and hoping to make enough to pay the performers out of the gate.

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 May 25 - 03:39 AM

This is a useful site, Sciencegeek

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 19 May 25 - 08:54 AM

FYI they are already listed on MMDI see below

https://seashanties4all.com/venues/fastnet-maritime-and-folk-festival/

if you know of a relevant venue coming up and quick search doesn't turn anything up... post it here and I'll alert Dean so he can make contact

performers interested in joining can do the same

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: The Sandman
Date: 19 May 25 - 03:37 AM

www.fastnetmaritime.com

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 17 May 25 - 05:06 PM

facebook page    MMDI


link works in other page but no blue clicky gak no joy

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 17 May 25 - 04:57 PM

Gibb is already available on https://www.academia.edu/ along with many other academics ..

he can also sign up with the directory to post seminars, gigs, etc

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: meself
Date: 17 May 25 - 03:41 PM

Not criticizing, just wanted to confirm that I wasn't missing something. If you do want to get into the more serious side of the subject, you may want to ask "Gibb Sahib" if you can re-post some of his essays and/or Mudcat contributions.

Great list of links to recordings - that'll keep me busy for awhile ... !

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 17 May 25 - 12:21 PM

when the site opens you can go to the upper right and use the discover button to explore with currently 4 choices to select from

if you have suggestions, then put them here because feedback is important and I promise to check in regularly

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 17 May 25 - 12:07 PM

no... I'm not sure why that photo popped up and I will pass on your comment to Dean because the site is way more about preserving the genre's content ... he also uses facebook to generate exposure for performers and festivals

that said, because current performers need exposure and databases are expensive to set up and maintain as Dean learned in the beginning it came down to how add names into one slot to use as a search criteria and he's one guy not ten and has his day job   

and since venues and performers need to make a living they are getting more attention...

but search for Hugill or Bob Webb and they are there to be found
we are still in the early stages of a long term project and need a staff for data entry big time .. so any volunteers with librarian type computer skills would be helpful I think just to provide flexibility to the site as well user friendly interfaces

Subject: RE: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: meself
Date: 17 May 25 - 11:33 AM

So ... it looks like it's mainly about marketing acts that perform nautical-themed music - is that right? Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, but it seems it's not the place to look for scholarly essays or field recordings ....

(Btw - not a comment on the site - and nothing against Schooner Fare, but the claim that they are "the premier performing group of original and traditional songs" strikes me as rather bold ... !)

Subject: Review: sea shanties and maritime music website
From: sciencegeek
Date: 17 May 25 - 10:43 AM

a few years back I saw a kickstarter campaign to fund an interactive website devoted to shanties and sea music that would serve as a way for performers and the public to access information about the music, both past and present, and venues out there that present the music we love. 


Dean Calin came up with the idea and was more than happy to get input from others on setting up the databases and storing reams of background information about maritime music past and present...  an ethnomusicologist's dream come true.  And a not for profit so it can continue into the future with a younger generation. 


The site is called Maritime Music Directory International,  MMDI, and is up and running as I write... 



here is the URL  https://seashanties4all.com/   

and you all are invited to check it out and provide input