Creating harmonies in sea shanties

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Mar 12 - 12:24 PM

Lloyd and MacColl sometimes sang harmonies in their mid-'50s recordings.

They weren't as fancy as later arrangements though.

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: GUEST,Gibb Sahib
Date: 19 Mar 12 - 06:28 PM

There is no universally 'natural' way of harmonizing. In fact if you were in, say, Indian music-culture you might consider all harmonizing to be wrong and 'noise'. Every hear the famous Bulgarian singing? They think minor second intervals sound like good harmony. Style of harmonization varies according to cultural aesthetics/ local custom.

The style of harmony selected by The Young Tradition to sing a shanty, or by a Polish group, or by a choir like Fishermen's Friends, sounds different the style used by The Barouallie Whalers.

Let's leave aside the always available option to sing whatever way you want. Let's say you want your style to be "true to" historical practice. Given that the evidence suggests harmonizing was done by Blacks or by Whites in imitation of Blacks, it seems reasonable to look to African-American harmonizing styles as a model. Again, that is if you want to go about this methodically.

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: radriano
Date: 19 Mar 12 - 06:54 PM

There's lots of good advice in this thread.

There are some shanty groups that go for tight, complex harmonies.
Others prefer to keep it simple.

These days we are not singing these songs traditionally because we are not actually working aboard ships.

So do what feels best to you. Personally I feel that some harmony is fine as long as it is not overdone. Of course, that's easy when you are singing in a duet! I (radriano) sing with Peter Kasin (chanteyranger). You can hear some of our songs on CD Baby:

Click here

Click on each of the links and you can listen to some tracks.

Also check out our website: Click here

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: Marje
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 12:15 PM

As someone said early in this thread, the British and American seafarers would have been familiar with the harmonies usd in church music. These have a lot in common with the African harmonies, possibly due in part to the missionary tradition that took English church music out to the colonies.

British "revival" singer and their modern successors are less likely to be church-goers than their forebears were, but they are still likely to be familiar with the harmonies that are used in British church music and also in secular choral music of various genres. Harmonies that occur in the tradition, such as those of the Copper Family, are very churchy in their structures and cadences. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that similar harmonies were used in working shanties.

So if a modern English shanty group wants to sing harmony, I don't think they need to apologies for being un-traditional. It's quite deeply embedded in our culture.

Marje

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 12:35 PM

Marje-

"These have a lot in common with the African harmonies, possibly due in part to the missionary tradition that took English church music out to the colonies."

Are you suggesting that Africans learned to harmonize from missionaries, and were not singing in harmony before contact with such missionaries? I don't think you'll find any support for that position from any contemporary ethnomusicologists.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: The Longshoremen
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 04:52 PM

Some fascinating thoughts from you all. it seems to me that we have a lot to learn. I guess my own feeling is that whatever sounds good has to be right, I suppose many songs were passed down aurally and so there are likely to be as any versions as there are people singing them. We feel we should pick songs we like and suit our voices. I see now the difference between a shanty and a sea song and i get the feeling we will move more towards the sea song

last time we met we tried singing alternate lines and also tried 'copying' some of the harmony lines on some tracks we downloaded featuring fishermen's friends and Port Isaac. everyone is very keen to experiment which is good. we are also picking songs so that everyone takes turns in singing the lead whilst the rest join in with the chorus.

We also sing in a community choir and we are thinking of introducing some shanties or sea songs to the choir as a whole. Could be fun! We will also be tracking down some of the songs suggested.

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: stallion
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 05:01 PM

excellent

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: Snuffy
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 06:45 PM

Are you suggesting that Africans learned to harmonize from missionaries, and were not singing in harmony before contact with such missionaries?

I don't think that's at all what Marje is suggesting. More along the lines of cross-fertilisation when two styles of harmonies met. As the words and tunes of certain shanties were formed from the fusion of African and European elements, so also with the harmonies.

I think that when Marje referred to "the missionary tradition that took English church music out to the colonies", the colonies she had in mind might have been Virginia, Carolina, etc.

For a couple of hundred years before the shanty explosion, slaves would have been exposed to the religious music of their white masters, so by 1820 would a purely African style remain intact, totally uninfluenced by contact with Europeans? Or would it have become Afro-American style(s)?

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: Marje
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 05:01 AM

I was really referring to all the various places to which English church harmonies were exported. I have heard it alleged that some of the harmony patterns used in African singing are influenced by this - of course I don't mean they'd never used harmony before, but it was an influence in parts of colonial Africa.

And church music was certainly important in parts of the US where both white settlers and their African slaves attended church and sang the same hymns. The same may well apply in areas of the Carribean where the slave trade was prominent.

Musical cross-fertilisation and "fusion" has always taken place where cultures meet, and sailors who crossed the oceans would have been right at the hub of these musical interchanges.

Marje

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 07:54 AM

Marje-

That sounds more reasonable.

Thanks for the clarification.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 08:06 AM

I used to quite like shanties - but after 40 years of exposure to stentorian bellowers and nasal droners I'm all shantied out!

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: The Longshoremen
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 02:26 PM

Oh dear

Subject: RE: Creating harmonies in sea shanties
From: radriano
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 04:23 PM

Hey, that would be a great name for a shanty duo, the "Stentorian Bellowers."