Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720

Subject: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: GUEST,Guest, pirate performer
Date: 10 Feb 17 - 12:44 PM

I am a performer with a children's educational-entertainment program featuring a pirate character.

I play guitar, mandolin, uke, tin whistle, etc, so I can play some period-correct (or period-similar) instruments. I know lots of shanties and sea songs from much later, but I am trying to locate songs from what is known as the "Golden Age Of Piracy", roughly 1650-1730.

I am concentrating on a smaller spread of years because several pirates whose histories I have studied and know well were alive and working during the years I asked about.

I guess there are really two questions here:

1) What songs would sailors have been familiar with from before 1675 that had become "standards"

and

2) What songs were "written" or created then, perhaps about contemporary persons and events?

P.S. if it helps, I am trying to stay away from songs that were popular but celebrated military persons and conquests - although many pirates like Capt. Henry Morgan (he of the rum) considered themselves proud, patriotic Englishmen, I am going to be presenting to largely multi-ethnic, multi-cultural groups, so they might not understand or appreciate cheering for one or another specific nation.

I will of course be including songs that are associated with pirates but come from later years or from fiction (such as "Sixteen Men On A Dead Man's Chest" and "A Pirate's Life For Me").

Thank you!

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Feb 17 - 01:20 PM

As just about everyone here will tell you shanties didn't really take off until the 1830s so your dates are way out.

Similarly we have very little idea what sea songs would have been sung in this period. The ballad Sir Andrew Barton dates from the late 16th century when the incident occurred and this eventually evolved into the much shorter ballad Henry Martin.

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: GUEST,Wm
Date: 10 Feb 17 - 01:43 PM

Ditto Steve's comments about chanteys. (Plus none of the instruments you list are much in line with this sort of music.)

The University of California, Santa Barbara has a large digital archive of seventeenth century broadsides here that you might take a look at.

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: GUEST,pirate performer
Date: 10 Feb 17 - 02:11 PM

RE: instruments

I suck at the fiddle and I stay away from woodwinds. Too easy to get winded, especially playing outdoors and/or aboard ship, which I have done and shall do.

I tend to skew the story more towards the instruments a pirate would have encountered in places other than his native land. The Spanish would have exposed a pirate to guitars and their cousins, the Italians to mandolins and their ilk. One of the earlier forms of banjo was listed on the manifest of a pirate ship; one of the crew apparently came across a gourd-type banjo instrument when dealing with Africans or trading with someone.

We need to remember that pirates were the result of the "folk process" of elitist politics crossing with the self-preservationist bent of the average non-rich, non-commissioned sailor.

Thus, they went "out of bounds", socially, politically and legally, and they absorbed a lot of musical, linguistic, sartorial and other influences along their journeys.

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 17 - 08:37 PM

Unless you are Ed Fox, you should check out Songs and Music of the Golden Age of Piracy

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Feb 17 - 09:11 AM

A very large proportion of pirates were from sexual minorities - a pirate ship was one place where nobody was going to punish you for sodomy.

The Polari language probably dates back to the period you're talking about; a mix of vocabulary from the same cultures you're suggesting were sources of instruments. Then as more recently, mainly a gay language.

So, are there any old Polari songs?

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: GUEST,Tom Mycock
Date: 12 Feb 17 - 05:53 AM

Barbary Allen?

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: Snuffy
Date: 12 Feb 17 - 08:24 AM

How about The Golden Vanity/Sweet Trinity?

This is Child Ballad No. 286 and, according to Wikipedia, the first surviving version apparently dates from ca. 1635.

Subject: RE: Sea songs and shanties from ca.1675-1720
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Feb 17 - 09:00 AM

Of course, they'd have to sing it over and over and over....