Sea shanty

Together we sat down and did a live stream and talked about all things podcasting and what that means in the shanty world.

We also have a new addition to Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion.

We know we've got Ollie the Shanty Boy who is our roving reporter and regularly features on the show with his segments of audio that he's captured when he's been out and about.

But we have a new addition, and that, of course, is Dean Callan, who, of course, is the man behind the Maritime Music Directory International.

Now, weather permitting, he's going to feature every single month, give us a little bit of a snippet of information around shanty singers, shanty music from around the world.

So we're hoping to lift the rafters there for them.

It's going to be a late one as well.

And the reason that's important is the 20th and 21st, so that's the two days following, we're at the St Ives Shanty Shout.

but um all their what we do at pax we do different things outside of pax when we do it sort of through streaming and whatnot but at pax we take over one of the stages which is the third stage called wombat stage and we have a whole bunch of fun panels activities crazy stuff from gaming related stuff to just things like cooking and fun mini games that callum puts on Yeah, and music shows that I'm on.

And sea shanties and all that.

And then all the

time, over the three days, people can donate to the cause that we're raising money for.

It's a secret for your listeners.

You'll have to wait till next PAX.

But these last few years, I like to play what I call an intermission set because I'm right before Apolline and then what's considered probably one of the wildest ones, which is the Sea Shanties, which is full on.

And so I like to just... go like this is a bit of downtime we're just gonna chill everybody relax we don't need much you know there's this time there's no like things to keep up on top of and incentives and whatnot but for 250 dollar donations i will play wonderwall and so i still got a bunch of random i think i ended up doing like nearly 800 which is just really nice and like this is the people at pax are just so wholesome in that genos community But, again, 250 came in, and as was the rule, Sam came in, interrupted my song, literally stopped the strings on the guitar, and was like, you've got to switch to Wonderwall right now.

It just didn't feel right.

Well, it is interesting that that's, you know, and I don't mean to now box you into just the sea shanty genre, right? But I do like that you mentioned earlier that like, well, you love music, but you also like love making music with your brother.

It's like partly about making music with other people, even playing with groups, stuff like that.

And so to be drawn to that sort of the communal feel of sea shanties, it seems like a consistent part of the through line there for sure.

yeah.

And when he opened, he reached out to me, and this was like...

This was still like we were we were out of the pandemic, but we were still kind of in that post pandemic sort of what's the world like? The the sea shanty craze that came about over the pandemic was still fairly fresh.

And the the owner had gotten very into sea shanties during that time.

So we take select texts and turn them to song.

Please tell me we can start with the sea shanty on the other side.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because

it's Pirates weekend, right, at RenFest? Yes, and I thought it'd be a perfect opportunity to give a sea shanty a try.

A sea

shanty.

What's that mean? So your texts

He was a submarine captain.

and essentially he was looking for a sea shanty group to sing his retirement party so he rented the uss constitution i don't even know if that's the right term here in the navy can you just jump on one of the ships and use it

yeah yeah down in boston right the

little lion sides so yeah so we got to sing on the deck of the uss constitution the entire the the commander of the atlantic fleet was on the ship um mind you none of the portermen have any military background whatsoever so it's felt a little a little strange it wasn't disingenuous just kind of like wow i'm looking at these people i'm like you guys protect the world like

I don't remember that

one.

I hoped it would be a sea shanty.

Can we circle back next quarter?

It's some young guy, and it's an old sea shanty from 150, 200 years ago, Cornish, I think.

And the thing that I find really interesting is that the songs like...

Those old sea shanties... generally made up of four lines, very simple, easy rhymes, so that anyone could sing them.

And if you knew the code, if you're in a pub, you could guess what the end of the line was going to be so you could join in.

And then they'd sing it twice, and then by the time you're in the second time round singing it, you all know the words.

does tap right into a whole history, like genuine, like serious history.

Yeah.

Sea shanties, convict ballads, traditional colonial folk songs.

You see, I recently watched all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and after spending that much time with Captain Jack Sparrow, pirate ships, the open ocean, and all things nautical, apparently my brain decided it wasn't quite ready to come back to dry land.

I started thinking about songs of the sea, and especially sea shanties.

Of course, Pirates of the Caribbean also gives us that wonderful Hollywood version of life at sea: pirates, treasure, sword fights, giant sea monsters, cursed sailors, and Captain Jack Sparrow somehow surviving situations that absolutely no human being should survive.

And while I don't think we'll encounter any giant sea monsters today, I thought it would be fun to find out what sea shanties were really all about.

But before we set sail, welcome everyone to The Music in Me, the podcast where I explore the music we love, the stories behind it, and all of the interesting places music can take us.

I'm your host, Terry, and I am so glad that you're here.

The waves are crashing against the side, the sails are blowing in the wind, and there's a group of sailors pulling on ropes while singing at the top of their lungs.

And somewhere in my imaginary version of the scene, there's probably a pirate with an eye patch and maybe a parrot, and somebody definitely says, "Arr." But here's the thing, that picture we've gotten from movies, television, and popular culture isn't exactly the whole story.