Leafing through Sailor Song for the first time evoked in me a profound sense of nostalgia—not for the days of sailing ships, which came to a close decades before I reached the age of awareness—but for the folksong collections published in the 1950s and 60s from which I learned my earliest repertoire. The book is simply suffused with an inviting friendliness—compelling original and period illustrations, easy-to-read musical notation, and scads of collected verses plus historical background for nearly every song. For anyone not yet familiar with the world of the sea shanty and its relatives, this volume is sure to provide an excellent introduction.
Sailors have probably sung on shipboard from time immemorial—both as a means to set rhythms for group tasks and for simple recreation. The repertoire of English language “shanties” (work songs) and “forebitters” (recreational sailors’ songs) that we are familiar with today, however, seems to have sprung up no earlier than around 1815 (the end of the Napoleonic Wars) and gone into sharp decline as the age of sail gradually came to a close in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. As it happens, the decline of sailor song coincided with the birth of independent and academic folklore, and the genre seems to have caught the fancy of early song collectors. Consequently, a considerable slice of the melodies and lyrics that made up the repertoire have survived.
The second life of these nineteenth-century sailors’ songs is perhaps just as interesting as the first. If it could be said that a major aim of early folksong and folkdance collectors was to induce educated elements of society to emulate and carry on endangered musical traditions, then the full-scale incorporation of sailor songs into the twentieth-century folk music revival was one of their greatest successes. Just about every major folk-song collection contained chapters devoted to sailors’ songs and—once folk revival performances came into vogue—it was virtually de rigueur to include a shanty or two within concert sets. By the 1970s when I became active in the “folk scene,” both amateur and professional ensembles that specialized in maritime music had become commonplace, and it was not atypical for folk musicians, dancers, and enthusiasts to head for a pub after a performance and happily belt out sea shanties for hours on end. Today there are entire festivals devoted exclusively to the nineteenth-century sea-song repertoire, most notably the Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival in the UK, and the Seaport Sea Music Festival in Mystic, Connecticut.
Gerry Smyth’s own involvement in the repertoire seems to have roots in these trends. A professor of Irish Cultural History in Liverpool, he performs shanties locally (under a stage name), has released three recordings devoted to them, belongs to a group of shanty singers called the Rock Light Rollers, and leads a shanty choir at his university. It is to be assumed that the fifty classic sea songs he selected for this volume, along with their melodies as notated and associated lyrics, are drawn from these experiences.
Essentially, Smyth has produced a manual that is absolutely ideal as the basis for a sea-song club—or shanty choir, if you will—set up informally among friends or more formally at schools, universities, or religious organizations. His handling of lyrics seems to have precisely this role in mind, as he skirts the frontier between “authenticity” and contemporary acceptability. For example, there is a section where it is acknowledged that shanties and forebitters originally expressed sentiments that were “bawdy” and not otherwise respectful of women, but we don’t actually see those verses (or see only a glimpse of them). Although alternative verses can tend towards the anodyne, this is perhaps a worthwhile sacrifice to keep the contents within intended bounds. And these days, it is to be supposed that anyone inclined to encounter unexpurgated sea-song versions in print or on recordings can find them on the Internet!
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[Review length: 645 words • Review posted on May 6, 2021]