Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 07:51 AM

FAKE NEWS

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 08:09 AM

I haven't heard ANY chanties on TikTok ;)

But I did write this, sure to irk some people:

https://www.academia.edu/44914351/A_Statement_During_the_January_2021_ShantyTok_

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Felipa
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 08:54 AM

There was an item on BBC Radio (I forget was I listening to radio 4 or radio Ulster, but I think the latter) about the growing popularity of shanties, including newly composed shanties. People like singing along on the choruses. I don't think TikTok was mentioned. The item included some pleasant singing.

I know some sailing enthusiasts sing shanties, but on the whole they are one of a number of types of working songs which have become entertainment/art songs divorced from the work which has changed so much since the songs were employed.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 09:52 AM

Hi Gibb and welcome.
Awesome account. I just have one very minor quibble.
You appear to be saying that the river songs, stevedore songs and rowing songs should be called chanties. That they evolved into chanties is indisputable and some may even be visually the same song in one genre and the other. However I have always thought the actual word 'chanty' was only ever used to apply to the marine type and that quite a while later. Have you any evidence that actual word was used for any of them other than those used at sea? I know I'm nit-picking but I feel it's important to make this clear in your wonderful paper.

Also I tried unsuccessfully to print it off. I wonder if you would be so kind as to send me a copy I can print off please? If you've lost my email address I'll pm you.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 10:04 AM

GerryM aha that answers my niggling feeling of familiarity given lack of tiktok!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Felipa
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 10:44 AM

there's another article in The Guardian now
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jan/16/how-a-scottish-posties-simple-sea-shanty-struck-a-global-chord

Nathan's singing is nice!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Observer
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 10:51 AM

Wonder how many people expressing their opinions on Chanties/Shanty's or whatever you may want to call them have ever actually worked at sea on the deck of a ship, handled sail, or manned pumps or capstans. My guess would be very few of them.

I have actually done all of those things at various times in my life and not once was anything done to song, so I would tend to agree with
- EBarnacle Date: 15 Jan 21 - 05:21 PM. Too much going on and far too many things to concentrate on, for any singing.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: RTim
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 11:59 AM

I too had a problem printing Gibb's paper...could read it, but not print....

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 12:30 PM

Tim and Steve - Thanks for checking it out! Download the PDF, should solve your issue. I'm guessing you just read the webpage preview.

Steve - It's not a paper. See the note at the beginning ;) Was a one-off summary response to a journalist's questions.

Not saying those things were called chanties. Chanties weren't even called chanties most of the time! (most is called song or chant)--yet we read about unnamed songs and call them "chanties" because that's our name for that thing, expedience. Saying they are same form of song. A rose by any other name.

Didn't go into details on nomenclature, but I do that in the published 'The Execrable Term' article linked. Have another brief paper on non-sea songs at that Academia.edu site. Unpublished stuff. Haven't had time to put any of that in publishable form for last 3 years as I've been all about Punjabi music!!! :-)

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 12:38 PM

I have to say I do like the versiin ofthe song that all the hoopla is about. I just don't grok the hoopla.
But hey. Pandemic. I grok a total lack of needing to grok what keeps others sane.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 12:48 PM

I was able to print it after downloading the PDF... which seems to require at a minimum the free membership in Academia.edu.

Google gave me security warnings because downloading required allowing Academia to access my google account. I saw no danger, so said 'yes'.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 02:07 PM

"Wellerman" seems to be the megahit of this craze. It IS fun to sing, and it's nice to see people making multi-voice recordings. No doubt, we'll be getting scads of threads requesting the lyrics, and scads of other threads telling us we're singing it wrong.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 03:22 PM

...and on Facebook, John Roberts posted a scan of the original songbook version. I copied it, but Mudcat requires a remote link. I might put it on Dropbox or Google Drive...

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 03:44 PM

I thought it looked familiar on the site. It didn't say ACADEMIA anywhere and I hadn't spotted the PDF option. Silly me! Got it now and the other chanty related items. Many thanks, Gibb. Tonight's reading sorted.

Here's the Bailey Bros & Swinfen text from 1973.

There was a ship that put to sea.
The name of the ship was the Billy of Tea.
The winds blew up, her bow dipped down
O blow my bully boys blow

Chorus: Soon may the Wellerman come,
And bring us sugar and tea and rum,
One day when th' tonguin' is done
We'll take our leave and go.

She had not been two weeks from shore
When down on her a (w)right whale bore.
The captain called all hands and swore
He'd take that whale in tow.

Before the boat had hit the water,
The whale's tail came up and caught her.
All hands to the side, harpooned and fought her
When she dived down below.

No line was cut, no whale was freed.
The captain's mind was not of greed,
But he belonged to the whalemen's creed
She took the ship in tow.

Forty days or even more
The line went slack. Then tight once more.
All boats were lost (there were only four)
But still the whale did go.

As far as I've heard the fight's still on.
The line's not cut and the whale's not gone.
The Wellerman makes his regular call
To encourage the captain crew and all.

Just an opinion but I'd say this is more 1970 than 1830. I write similar pieces myself having done the research. That would also fit in with much of the other material in the book. The first 2 lines are adapted from Golden Vanity and the 4th line is the well-known chanty chorus which might well be why some people are calling it a chanty. It's certainly in the vein of the Wonderful Crocodile and similar pieces of the 1830s, but you could say that about some of my songs.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Felipa
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 04:08 PM

Mrrzy - Do people other than you still say "grok", and if so, where?
shades of Heinlein Stranger in a a Strange Land

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 04:18 PM

Wow! Mega respect to Gibb.

9 'papers' to download at Academia and all chock full of the most detailed background to the history of chantying. Well worth a look for anyone vaguely interested and with plenty of time for some serious reading. You'll be glad to know I won't be appearing here for a few days, I'll be too busy soaking it up.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 05:00 PM

re: grok
I do see it now & then. But is seldom used with the depth of meaning Heinlein attributed it in "Stranger..."
from Wiki:...."Grok means "to understand," of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, "to drink" and "a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. 'Grok' means all of these. It means 'fear,' it means 'love,' it means 'hate'—proper hate, for by the Martian 'map' you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you—then you can hate it. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate—and (I think) Martian hate is an emotion so black that the nearest human equivalent could only be called mild distaste."

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: RTim
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 05:52 PM

To interject and move away from all Chanty/Shanty stuff....

GROK - is a very nice Croatian white wine from Lumbarda on Korcula - crisp and great with seafood.......that is as close as it gets to Chanties.....

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Felipa
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 06:19 PM

not just one chantey - I looked at one of the articles about the revival of shanties which showed a clip from TikTok of Nathan singing What will we do with the drunken sailor.

Gordon Bok recording of Wellerman

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: meself
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 06:22 PM

I wonder if Gibb's journalist got a little more than he bargained for? Great stuff, nonetheless!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 07:20 PM

I do see grok here and there.

I really like the one song the hoopla started over.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 08:15 PM

Steve,

Apologizes if I sounded a little flip earlier responding to your valid point. Insomnia!

It's definitely something worth clarifying, or rather, being clear about when possible.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 08:15 PM

NPR Weekend Edition (click) had a nice story this morning about the TikTok sea chantey phenomenon. It's a 4-minute listen.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Catamariner
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 09:52 PM

There are older western chanteys too, as there has been rhythmic work to do aboard ships for a considerable time. I think "Haul on the Bowline" was considered one of the oldest in English. As for "sea songs," those one might actually sing in an off hour for entertainment would be called forebitters.

There is a subset of shanties from the iron-ship era and another set that have African influences from the American age of sail. But what charmed me in December (well, what with various covid-19 restrictions, I needed entertainment) was discovering, in the Rihla of Ibn Battuta, the following description of a rather ceremonial and clearly not very Islamic drinking bout at the court of Ozbeg Khan (a Turkish sultan): "During all this [ceremony], they sing [songs resembling the] chants sung by oarsmen." [HAR Gibb, the Travels of Ibn Battuta 1325 - 1354, Vol 2, p 480] So, drinking and bursting into sea chanteys has a long and glorious history... well, long, anyway :-)

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 05:11 AM

Well Ok! After 30 years of working for the BBC I was aware that there was a gaping chasm between what small amount of brains they have and their 'on air' mouth. I was also aware that the gap was called complete stupidity, but Paddy O'Connell (Radio 4) has just excelled the BBC's miserable record for mindless piffle.
Reporting upon the subject of this thread, he decided to demonstrate a Sea Chanty. What did he choose? Did he go for former BBC employees Bert Lloyd, or Ewan McColl. NO! of course not. Did he grab a recording of The Fisherman's Friends? NO! don't be silly! Did he play the interview with our singer from Scotland? NO! what ever for!
What did the BBC s##t weasel play? Rambling Sid Rumpo, just so he could ridicule the whole story. In this context it was about as funny as an STD on your wedding night. Well done Beeb! Another triumph of of unbiased journalism. Don't worry I promise I'll take two of my red pills and lie down in a darkened room.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: JHW
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 05:41 AM

Of course it was Rambling Sid. A real cnanty wouldn't have been funny.
Broadcasting House is a light news Sunday breakfast lazy listen.
I remember Subscriber Trunk Dialling but thankfully not my wedding night.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 05:45 AM

Yes, light news! They went on to discuss Covid vaccination, a perfect subject for lazy listening.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 08:21 AM

Narrating a voyage in a clipper ship from Bombay to New York City in the early 1860s, Clark wrote, "The anchor came to the bow with the chanty of 'Oh, Riley, Oh,' and 'Carry me Long.'" G. E. Clark's Seven Years of a Sailor's Life, 1867. (Wikipedia)

In 1951 William Doerflinger recognised that the worlds of both seamen and loggers shared the word shanty. Shantymen and Shantyboys; William M. Doerflinger (New York, 1951).

As I understand, sea shanties were originally unaccompanied work songs, led by a shanty-man. Whereas the songs loggers sang in their shanties were generally descriptive of the shantyboy's day-to-day routine. The two repertoires have usually been distinguished.

Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks; Roland P. Gray (Cambridge, Mass., 1924)

Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy; Franz Rickaby (ibid., 1926)

Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks Recorded by Alan Lomax and Harry B. Welliver Library of Congress Washington 1980
When Alan Lomax made a two-and-a-half-month survey of Michigan folk-song for the Library of Congress in 1938, one of his primary objects was the location of the remaining survivors of the lumberwoods singing tradition.

Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties; Various Artists
Canadian folk song authority Edith Fowke recorded men who decades earlier had ventured into the North Woods of Ontario to cut timber. Known as lumbermen, shanty boys, or lumberjacks, the men endured both cold and substantial danger.

Sea Shanties and Loggers' Songs; Sam Eskin
This fascinating collection of work songs is the product of Eskin's wandering and includes extensive notes about life in logging camps.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 08:50 AM

The Observer today; How a Scottish postie's simple sea shanty struck a global chord
Nathan Evans's viral TikTok covers have sparked a huge surge in interest in the formerly neglected genre, making him an overnight sensation.
Observer

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,The Sandman
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 10:15 AM

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Observer
Date: 16 Jan 21 - 10:51 AM

Wonder how many people expressing their opinions on Chanties/Shanty's or whatever you may want to call them have ever actually worked at sea on the deck of a ship, handled sail, or manned pumps or capstans. My guess would be very few of them.

I have actually done all of those things at various times in my life and not once was anything done to song, so I would tend to agree with
- EBarnacle Date: 15 Jan 21 - 05:21 PM. Too much going on and far too many things to concentrate on, for any singing. quote#
   Yes, Chris Rpche.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 02:10 PM

Henry,
Another good reason for spelling chanty the old way. The 2 genres of course entirely separate but you will find both in Doerflinger. I can't think of any that crossed the boundary but there may well be a couple in there. Some loggers were also seamen at different seasons.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: vectis
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 03:30 PM

Origins of the "Wellerman" song
Neil Colquhoun (Auckland, NZ) collected "Soon May the Wellerman Come" in about 1966 from someone called F. R. Woods.
Mr. Woods, who was then in his 80s, told Colquhoun he had learnt this song and also the song "John Smith A.B.," from his uncle.

"John Smith AB" was printed in The Bulletin Sydney in 1904, where it was attributed to D. H. Rogers (and contributed by F. R. Woods?)

It is possible that D. H. Rogers was the uncle of F. R. Woods' and that it was he who composed "Soon may the Wellerman Come" and "John Smith A.B."

If Rogers had been born around about 1820, then he could have been a teenaged sailor and/or shore whaler around NZ in the late 1830s, settled in Australia, written the shanties in his later years as his composing skills developed, and then taught them to his nephew in his 70s-early 80s, some time between 1890 and 1904.

Jim Delahunty (Wellington, NZ) et al. (The Song Spinners) recorded Wellerman in 1967 and Neil Colquhoun published it in the 2nd edition of Song of a Young Country, (Reed NZ, 1972).

Another edition of this book was published in England (Bailey Brothers and Swinfen 1972). This was purchased in Scotland by American chantyman Chris Morgan, who added Wellerman to his repetoire. He lent the book to Maine folksinger Gordon Bok who also sung and recorded it.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Felipa
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 04:46 PM

The Independent newspaper (UK) is another one that is covering the story
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/sea-shanties-lyrics-tiktok-song-meme-b1787155.html

I wonder about the assertion that "fallen out of popular culture for hundreds of years". There was a folk boom in the 1960s and chanteys were among the songs being sung. And then just a few years ago a film about the group Fishermen Friends was in the cinemas.

Was this article shared previously? I have seen some of the videos included it.

Anyway, there is a new article saying basically what we know well, that singing together lifts people's spirits. I read it on MSN and can't find it on The Independent website yet.
I'M AN OFFICER IN THE MERCHANT NAVY – IT’S NO SURPRISE PEOPLE ARE TURNING TO SEA SHANTIES DURING THE PANDEMIC
Thomas Murray 17 Jan 2021
You feel the walls are closing in around your workspace, yet, time ticks on, creating a sense of vastness. You do not know when this sense of confinement will cease. Your thoughts are your cargo. Where is your destination?

Lockdown is very much like an ocean voyage. Your home, a behemoth of a ship on the ocean waves of Covid-19. The destination? Your old life, free of these virus-induced shackles. Reunited with friends and family.

Confined to your quarters, working tirelessly at your computer, you lose your identity as you become a cog in a machine. Ocean, or Covid-19, is all around you – stopping you from being able to feel or to express. Stopping you from becoming the person you want to be.

Spirits are low, but they can be raised. That is exactly what shanties have been doing for those in isolation at sea for centuries. Of all the times for shanties to trend again, it is fitting that they reverberate at the perfect frequency that our lives are currently at.

Songs have been sung on the waves for millennia, but advances in technology and trade in the 17th century pushed sailors onto the ocean in great numbers.

We needed to find our places within the isolation, with little paper and few pens to record stories or provide amusement. The majority didn’t have the education to do so even if there was.

Humans are social creatures by nature, we value our social idiosyncrasies. We are not designed to be confined and isolated – on stable ground, never mind on ships. We take away those freedoms to punish, that’s prison.

Today we are surrounded by music. But it is big business. Plenty is made to purely line pockets. Every shanty was written to tell a story. They have a purpose. To lift your spirits. To connect with your being.

Shanties resonate within us, particularly the choral chant and emotive lyrics. Now, in a time where things feel chaotic and yet dull – with the removal of aspects of your old life and the limited outlets for something different beyond work – the hums and echoes of their tone calm and soothe the soul.

Music itself is such a powerful, emotive tool. At the base of all music, before any percussive instruments or beat, was the human voice. The purest of all forms.

In times of mourning or protest, we gather to chant and sing, it overcomes grief, pain, hard times – and isolation. Take singing away and you take away unity. Shanties are stories, but stories best told together. We are all in this together and social media provides platforms – like Tik Tok – that are some of the biggest storytelling mediums in history.

There is one overriding emotion that brings all of us all together, no matter your personality, future goals, wants and needs. That is hope. Hope that something better is around the corner, or that a good thing will last. That is true whether you are introvert or extrovert.

Shanties are making waves on our biggest social platforms for that reason. They are providing this subconscious emotion in their rhythms and rhymes.

We may not relate to the content of their stories, but we all can relate to the idea of unity in harmony. The feeling that times will be better when we complete our voyage and reach our destination of a post-Covid life.

Thomas Murray is a navigational officer in the Merchant Navy with 13 years of service

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Jeri
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 05:29 PM

Most of the "shanties" I've heard aren't shanties, but more rightly, sea songs, or has been already noted, forebitters. But I don't want to get too pedantic. If I were to imagine what Pete Seeger would think, the important thing is that people are singing.

Maybe when we can be social again, we'll have a whole new crop of singers at our son session. They may be doing the (as I've just heard on Facebook) the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air shanty, but whatthehell.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 05:47 PM

Thanks to vectis for more detail in the source(s) of Weller man.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 17 Jan 21 - 08:15 PM

Tik-Tok visitors: Irish Catholic 'shantying' is c.1400 years old, not 600. Columbanus had Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Gaelic &c nouns and verbs for it. None of them would be shanty(ing.)
Not shanty: Heia Viri - Coro de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Observer: I wasn't born at sea but… straight there from the maternity ward. My paternal grandfather was the last of the red hot telodynamic engineers (Google it.) Grampa Conchy would bust out a puirt à beul at the drop of a mallet or dip of an oar. Good times.
Also not shanty: Carolina Chocolate Drops LIVE "Mouth Music"

We understood the sort of thing on Tik-Tok today as the province of Kurt Hahn's Outward Bound culture. They were the nautical equivalent of play or campfire songs. The singers were overly prone to disaster at sea.

The only thing I took from the Gibb article(s) is the good professor still doesn't grok an instrumental or a Catholic African man… “Needs improvement.”

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 10:12 AM

Perhaps because Gibb is primarily concerned with singing, work SONGS.
Playing an instrument might well have the same or similar effect but it is something different. As for the African Catholics, you should be presenting your evidence to us in a way we can comprehend, and making the right connections. Gibb presents a very persuasive case that chantying evolved directly from African-American activities. If you can join this up to more African examples and make solid connections we would all be obliged.

'Needs improvement'! Well your obviously the man for the job!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 10:36 AM

Oops 'you're'!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 12:44 PM

Steve: Perhaps because Gibb is primarily concerned with singing, work SONGS.
Playing an instrument might well have the same or similar effect but it is something different.

An instrumental is not work SONG because... no lyrics. Say what?

Gibb presents a very persuasive case that chantying evolved directly from African-American activities.

Without ever once using the word "celeusma" in a sentence, ergo... "Needs improvement." Considered and eliminated or was the author utterly and completely ignorant of the subject matter?

I've read your post history too Steve, same questions.

I'm not arguing what you or Gibb are "concerned with," only the validity of using "likes" as a metric for naval science.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 01:19 PM

Let's try something we all can relate to - Most people do not like most songs.

Just like today, the 300BC-1830AD waterfront radio dial would be chock-a-block with work song you do not like.

Shanties are the station you like.

All the other stuff is still there, banging away like Tin Pan Alley and with the same effect on the creative/folk process.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 03:08 PM

'utterly and completely ignorant of the subject matter?'

Speaking for myself only, the answer is YES!

Which is why we're waiting for you to pronounce in language we can understand.

Chanties are only a small part of my likes/interest. All English language traditional song, would be more accurate. But if any of this can be related to other languages, which it often can, then I am also interested, for instance Scandinavian ballads.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 04:23 PM

Steve: The Advent and Development of Chanties

Because Tik-Tok & campfire songs are supposed to be fun...

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Joe G
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 04:50 PM

Great to see folk music getting some media and social media attention. Hopefully at least some people will go on to find what other treasures we enthusiasts have been fortunate enough to enjoy for many years :-)

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,Calico Jenny
Date: 19 Jan 21 - 08:07 AM

It was fun to learn that Twiddles is considered a sea shanty!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jan 21 - 11:12 AM

Hi Phil,
Yes it was good to be reminded of that thread. How the hell did you get that post to come up at the top? Canny!

Your knowledge is something which we would like to see more of. You post a lot of foreign language quotes and not all of us have access to this. It might seem tedious but direct translation and even simplification/explanation would be helpful for those of us linguistically challenged.

One grey area which you might expand on is the term 'cheering songs'. Do you consider this to mean assisting the rhythm of the work?

When I'm studying the Scandi ballads I have plenty of books in translation, but much of what you are posting is new to many of us.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: RTim
Date: 19 Jan 21 - 02:17 PM

A surprisingly good analysis of the TikTok and Shanty situation....by Adam Neely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1ovAB4vKzw&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0UWxG5HimonIFp9rNYMe8Y60y0zUEd5rnVwQVkM7mxFoJISQJO-G---Lo


Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jan 21 - 02:36 PM

Excellent stuff, Tim. Adam was very good with the technical aspects but some of the visuals didn't quite fit with what he was explaining. He gave yet another good reason why Wellerman can't be a chanty.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 19 Jan 21 - 11:32 PM

Yes, the visuals don't quite fit. I admire Neely's intellect and breadth of experience. It's clear at the same time that, realistically, he doesn't have a lot of time for research when putting these together. I can tell he used a lot of Wikipedia and Hugill 1961, so he basically presents info from those sources but doesn't always know how to interpret that info (i.e. without more contextual knowledge from research).

He included a clip of me leading a hand-over-hand maneuver, ha. But then when he's talking about halyards etc., he's showing sheets and a lot of bunting.

I'm still of the opinion that that stuff (e.g. how a chanty works at halyards) is irrelevant to "The Wellerman" phenomenon. And we'll notice that halyard chanties are rarely taken up by singers during such spikes in interest. Probably, halyard chanties do not have the musical sound that appeals to people. Ironically, the musical sounds that appeal most are those which are most distant from the sounds that make up the core of the genre. Popular items, if not non-chanties, then at most end up being items most peripheral to the core style of the genre.

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Jan 21 - 05:05 AM

More or Less BBC Radio 4 Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate.

Will UK fishing quotas increase two thirds in the wake of Brexit? We trawl through the data. Set to a traditional tune!

Subject: RE: Sea Chanteys All Over The News [TikTok]
From: Brian Peters
Date: 20 Jan 21 - 12:30 PM

Just logged on, anticipating that Gibb might be around these parts, to thank him for his response to ShantyTok, which I found very informative and timely. Thanks, Gibb.