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I had so much hope for 2021.  After the ball dropped on New Years Day my street erupted into a fireworks display that I have not seen since the last time I saw the New York Philharmonic.  Let me be real with you, hypothetical reader, for a moment.  2021 was not the doorway to an alternate dimension, and the United States is plagued by disease, and political and social unrest.  The Covid-19 virus continues to spread virtually unchecked in the United States as vaccine wielding doctors and nurses entered the fray and begin to administer vaccines to the public.  Optimistic reporting promises a gradual release from this pandemic induced isolation mid to late spring.  Then, six days into the new year, domestic terrorists ran amok in the United States Capital in an attempt, as recent reporting is making clear, to certify the vote and bring violence and death to our elected officials.  At least 6 lives were lost and uncounted political officials, capital staff and police were left horrified by the assault on personal safety as Americans collectively witnessed an attack on a symbol of our democratic institution.  By January 13th former President Trump was impeached for the second time.  On February 13th he was simultaneously found guilty and acquitted.  Whatever we are experiencing in our personal lives, whether good, bad, or indifferent, Americans in particular have likely been watching their hopes for a better 2021 sink like a ship to the briny depths.

As I discovered recently, for I am not social media-inclined, one creative burst of collective catharsis has been the revival of sea shanties.  I hope that I am not too late for the gam!*

Whatever the purpose of the voyage – whether for war, exploration, or commerce – the sailors on board spent weeks, months, or years in periods of isolation.    On a sailing ship, once the ropes were hoisted, the cracks caulked, and the deck swabbed a sailor’s time was his own.  A sailor could do one of three things: he could scrimshaw*, entertain himself with women, or he could sing.

A sea shanty is not the same as a sea song, the two had different purposes and meanings aboard the ship.  While ShantyTok is catchy it does not capture the original usage or context of the sea shanty, nor does it represent what I think this revival of the sea shanty/song means to the singers or listeners.  It has been said by news outlets that covered the story last month, but this bears repeating – sea shanties brought people from pandemic-imposed isolation to a safe virtual space where they could make and share music together.  Perhaps we have felt like a ship lost at sea, alone and isolated, trapped in the monotony of everyday life.  The sea shanty might call into our minds an image of a sailor humming as he carves the tooth of a sperm whale below deck, or a group calling and singing as they pull the sails during a storm.  There is a sense of nostalgia and community evoked by these songs that has been brought out as they were shared, built upon, or remixed through TikTok.  This is an experience we can share collectively from our personal isolation.  These are my interpretations developed through personal experience.  I just recently got a TikTok so that I could listen and participate in the moment.  What is your favorite shanty?  Do you think it is a shanty or a song?

Sailors hauling a line.

Sailors hauling a line.

A sea shanty is not a sea song.  In 1937 Harold Whates published an article on the background of sea shanties.  His main concern was with the accuracy of renditions and performances of sea shanties and songs in contemporary performances and musical scholarship.  A sea shanty was sung at work, it was necessarily and essentially tied to hard labor.  “A rope or capstan bar and hard work,” he says, “either monotonous or immediately strenuous, were essential accompaniments of a shanty… in sailing-ship days shanties were songs of work and nothing else.”  Sea songs, on the other hand, “may be defined as everything sailors sang in hours of relaxation.  They ranged from professional songs… to contemporary popular ditties… [and] pseudo-professional ballads.”  A sea shanty was designed to coordinate labor between sailors through rhythm and verse; sea songs were created and shared between sailors during a voyage to pass the time or commemorate a voyage, real or imagined.

According to Whates, “[a]n obstacle to a general recovery of the essence of shanty singing may be a socially happy loss of acquaintance with the nature of heavy physical toil.”  I think, though, that something is recovered, or recoverable.  If it is not the essence of the shanty as a labor song, then perhaps sea shanties and songs have reemerged in popular media because they are, historically, songs sung in periods of isolation.  That “the shanty is dead for the purpose for which it existed” is likely true.  Whates concludes his article with the example of men “uttering the rhythmical, inarticulate cries of sailors hauling a rope” as they hauled an electric cable from a manhole.  Their work was shortly replaced by a pestilential petrol motor, industrialization effectively “strangling a new race of shantymen before they are born.”  Perhaps in 2021 the sea shanty and sea song have found a new function, a new outlet?

Sailors below deck.

In 2018 Jordana Qi published an article on the sea shanty and song, looking at the historical, cultural, and spatial influences on the genre through ethnomusicological theory “to determine their relative place and function in both historical and modern settings.”  Qi defines the sea shanty and song as two subgroups of musical performance within the category of sea music.  Shanties and songs were collaborative performances created and dispersed by sailing-ship sailors.  Much of what he has to say aligns with Whates, though more informed by historical contexts of performance, intercultural collaboration, and musical theory.  Qi cites another author, Kelby Rose, who argues that shanties had a more creative side in addition to their purpose as songs of labor.  “Rose proposes that sea shanties have another function, as ‘shanties also added stimulation, diversion, and a chance for self-expression to the life of a sailor.’”  Qi elaborates by saying that “[t]he creative nature of sea shanties allowed shanties to be adapted and customized to an individual ship, and the individual task on that ship, while also including the adaptations that were made by sailors, usually by adding their own previous knowledge of shanties.”  The adaptability of sea shanties resonates with me as I think about their reemergence on TikTok in 2021.  Sea shanties and songs have found new meaning as creative outlets of expression and collaboration during a period of prolonged pandemic-imposed isolation.

We have all been adrift at sea for so long.  Even though vaccines are being distributed, healthcare workers are still struggling to distribute them, especially to the hardest hit areas and populations in the United States.  At least three new, more dangerous variants of the disease have emerged from the UK, South Africa, and Brazil.  Health care officials on the news are urging people to continue to social distance and wear at least two masks even after you receive a vaccine, because even if you are protected you can still carry the virus to someone else, according to CNN reporting.  We haven’t reached the shore yet.  Until we get there, perhaps the sea shanties and songs can help us get through this period of isolation together.

circa 1870: Fishermen singing a sea shanty. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Notes:

*A gam is a meeting between two or more ships.  During a gam the captains and crews of passing vessels can exchange news and mail, spin yarns, share songs, catch up with family or friends, and coordinate their whaling activities.  Interestingly enough, a gam also refers to a group of whales.  In this usage, it is synonymous with school or pod.

*Scrimshaw is a form of American folk art usually practiced on whalers.  The artist would take a whale tooth or piece of baleen and spend most of the voyage creating images by staining the carving with tobacco or soot, or creating utilitarian pieces like busks for sweethearts, needles for sewing, game boards and playing pieces, and crimpers for pie crusts he hoped to eat back on shore.

Further Reading:

 

  • Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. (277-278).

 

 

 

 

  • Jordana Qi. “Sounds and Songs of Sailing: A Historical and Theoretical Perspective on the Performance and Content of Sea Shanties.” Washington College Review 24, w.3 (2018), https://washcollreview.com/2017/05/16/sounds-and-songs-of-sailing-a-historical-and-theoretical-perspective-on-the-performance-and-content-of-sea-shanties/.