I attended the Sea Music Festival for the second time as a presenter in the “Music of the Sea” Symposium, sponsored by Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut College, and UConn Avery Point. This year I was honored to be able to present last, on Saturday morning in the Greenmanville Church at Mystic Seaport.
The title of my presentation-paper was “Rethinking the Practical Use of Chanteys; or, Why the Charles W. Morgan’s Windlass is a Priceless Item of Historical Significance.” The text of the presentation, with references, can be read here:
Admittedly, it was something of two theses in one paper. The first part argued why an emphasis on the “need” (or, practical use) of chanties in the narratives of chanty history, while provisionally useful in explaining chanties to newcomers, may ultimately inhibit progress in understanding chanties as a genre and that genre’s place in the history of music of the world. The second part argued that, not to throw the baby out with the bath-water, we can still “read” practical use as part of the texture of chanty development as long as we are willing to see it as not the primary determining factor, and I applied this idea to a reading of the importance of the shipboard device called “lever windlass.” The presentation had an overall aim to get people thinking/conversing about their assumptions—the frames of reference in which they produce discourse on chanties—and to suggest a direction for using the lever windlass on the Seaport’s whaleship Morgan in future public history interpretations. Because the Morgan’s lever windlass may be the only working one left in the world—certainly the only one at a museum that uses chanties as part of public history—there is great potential in tailoring their interpretation with new historical insights in mind.
As usual, I attended as many of the “Chanteys at Work” workshops that I could. When I wasn’t participating in the work, I was often filming (albeit this time with the subpar device of a cell phone camera). Here is a collection of clips from the working chantying demos.
A highlight of this year’s festival roster was the appearance in workshops, concerts, and a Q&A session of the Northern Neck Chantey Singers from Virginia. These five men in their 60s-80s who all at some point worked in the “menhaden” fishing industry between the 1950s and 1980s. They are currently the only group of performers to be presenting the songs sung during work at that trade. Some of the key points made in their Q&A (and in conversation after) were:
- Lyrics were ad-libbed.
- Their repertoire tended to be created by individuals during the work, later sticking through repetition. However, nowadays one would consider the canon of songs to be closed, and the group’s current repertoire consists of about a dozen of the well-known items.
- They sometimes sang the same songs at times when they weren’t working. One member, with whom I spoke afterward, clarified that (at least from his perspective) this didn’t mean they were singing the songs here and there and everywhere, but rather the songs tended to be limited to the vicinity or environment of their work. So, they might sing them while waiting around to work, while on the boat or the dock.
- They appeared (to me) to be rather tired of demonstrating the songs along with a pantomime of working (using a net as a prompt). They did this at least once in each concert, and it required that pause after each refrain. However, they seemed to prefer just being able to sing the songs straight through (in continuous meter), detached from the work reference and just as songs in and of themselves (more musically).
- The same gentleman with whom I spoke stated (in response to my question) that he did not know anybody in other trades at the time who might have been singing this or other repertoire while laboring.
Here they introduce themselves (excerpts):
The men easily adapted to singing a song that was not in their repertoire but had been in the repertoire of the “other” (no longer existing) Menhaden chanty group from North Carolina (and which, after that group’s prior visit to the Seaport, had entered the repertoire of many of the maritime music enthusiasts who frequent the festival). However, they changed the (now standardized) lyrics in at least one spot to something that (in my opinion) made more sense!
As to my own singing/performing activities this year, I attended the Thursday night pub sing and sang the chanty framework of “Roll the Cotton Down.” Following my aesthetic of “wild chants with doggerel words,” I sang it at a high pitch, overlapping solo and chorus (antiphonal style), and with a text that was completely ad-libbed, either pure improvisation or variation of my stock lyrics or themes. One of my more unusual lyrics was about people playing cards and shooting dice on the Blue Line Metro train from Los Angeles, and how one must watch out for MS-13 gang members.
The Demonstration Squad, always gracious and welcoming, permitted me to lead two chanties at the head of the halyard (pulling down). The first I did, on Charles W. Morgan, was the “Roll the Cotton Down” framework again, with improvised lyrics—I don’t remember what they were, but I experienced the “fun” discussed by Tom Turino in his writing about improvisation in participatory music, when one surprises oneself. One knows the “pull” must come—the work may not stop, as many hands are waiting to haul—but after starting the first line of the chanty one is not sure what one will say in the second line! The second one I led was on Joseph Conrad, and I believe the lyrical themes, upon the framework of “Long Time Ago,” revolved around New London, Groton, and grinders.
Directly after the Symposium, I was honored to lead a chanty for the windlass demonstration on the Morgan. I sang the classic “Mister Stormalong,” and the heavers, directed by Craig Edwards (also Moderator of the Symposium) indulged me by pumping the windlass in the historically “correct” way for that style of device and chanty. This sparked some hope that future interpretation at the Seaport might incorporate this method. On the next day (Sunday) I again led a chanty, this time “Sally Brown” for the Morgan’s windlass demo. The crew, not in the habit of doing so, was less comfortable with working it and that “correct” style. Without a load on the windlass, one has to pantomime a bit. However, there was some talk of considering finding a way to simulate the load which would make this style of work more natural and, ultimately, encourage the singing of historically appropriate chanty repertoire in its demos.
Lastly, I was part of a workshop, with Jeff Warner, Tim Reilly, and Craig Edwards, entitled “Creole America.” There was not as much time for music making in this workshop because each item required a lot of contextualization. I sang two rowing songs, one from Georgia and one from Maryland, that were documented in primary sources commenting on the canoe rowing of enslaved Africans in the early 19th century, and I matched their themes to familiar chanties, “John’s Gone to Hilo” and “Shallow Brown.”
The festival, as usual, closed with something like this:
Ranzo :{
07 March 2015
You have reached one of those dreaded posts that adds nothing to your experience, but rather, serves only as a disclaimer on the part of the writer to inform that he wishes all to know that this blog has not been properly updated in dog’s years and that its content of the past, while standing for those who may benefit from it, does not necessarily represent his current position or thinking on the topics therein. That being said, enjoy the archives. R :{ 3/7/15
After my work on the chanties in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas, I have been gradually, puzzle-piece fashion, going through the other print and recorded sources for historical chanties and learning items (chanty frameworks or distinctive variants thereof) not previously covered. One of the significant bodies of information, that contains much material not covered by Hugill, is the Carpenter Collection. Although the Collection is not fully accessible without a trip to the physical archive, portions of its content are available digitally, and 156 of its sailor-related recordings (not all chanties) have been made available on Folktrax. So, from the available content, I have identified what is unique (or reasonably different) from what was covered earlier. At this point, I have learned and recorded renditions of all that material. I may add to this body, either after gaining more complete access to the Collection or in the case of uncovering more information about some of the items—items that, while their titles are noted, cannot easily be tied to known songs.
A bit about Carpenter (from a recent draft of a writing of mine):
James Madison Carpenter (1888-1984)
As a student of Harvard English Department Professor George Lyman Kittredge, Carpenter was
encourage to collect material that could be used as field evidence of
English-language folk traditions, in the vein of ballad-collector Francis James
Child. However, as biographers Jabbour and Bishop opine, Carpenter perhaps did not fit
the mold of other folk-song scholars of the age. His expansive, comparative
fieldwork never yielded any substantial and high-profile publications, and he
never became established in a major university position though he continued to
make field collections. Carpenter’s enormous repository of manuscripts and recordings was acquired by
the Library of Congress in 1972. As with R.W. Gordon’s collection, Carpenter’s
remained more or less unstudied, until later in the 20th century. Roy Palmer included some of the chanties in The
Oxford Book of Sea Songs (1986), and Bob Walser started working with the
collection in the 1990s.
Carpenter’s represents the
largest field collections of chanties. In 1927, he made collections from
sailors in Massachusetts and at Sailors’ Snug Harbor (Staten Island). In the
summer of 1928 and for a full year in 1929, he continued the work in Britain
and Ireland. The results went into his large dissertation, “Forecastle Songs and Chanties”
(1929). Among the collection were some ninety-eight different chanties out of a
total of about 375 original recordings, many of which he made using a portable Dictaphone machine. In all, Carpenter
collected chanties from some sixty-one men. Most of Carpenter’s remarkable
array of informants first went to sea in the 1870s and ‘80s, but included a
couple men who first went to sea before 1850. A few of these men can be identified here.
Edward Robinson of
Sunderland, among the oldest men interviewed, first went to sea in 1846,
shipping to America, Canada, and the West Indies. The chanties sung by
Robinson seem to match his era well. He knew the early (and later, less common)
song “Cheer’ly Man,” and chanties that otherwise can be tied to the 1840s (2),
1850s (10), and 1860s (2), along with one I cannot otherwise tie to earlier
than the 1870s.
Mark Page, also of
Sunderland, first shipped in 1849 and left the trade in 1879. His repertoire included chanties from the 1840s (2), 1850s (4),
1860s (5), and three others that are hard to determine.
"Mary's on the Island"
"What is That, My Dearie-O?"
"Mummy-O"
James Forman of Leith
first shipped in 1856.
James Wright (Leith, shipped 1864), Robert Yeoman (Dundee, shipped 1869), Andrew Salters
(Greenock, shipped 1872), "Juba, Mind the Bee"
"Very Well Done, Jim Crow"
Richard Warner (Cardiff,
shipped 1877), William Fender (South
Wales, shipped 1878),
"Fire Down Below"
"Down in Those Valleys"
"Here We Come Home in a Leaky Ship"
Rees Baldwyn
(South Wales, shipped 1879),
"Haul Away Rosy"
"Pull Down Below"
"Hilo Johnnie Hilo"
John Conway (Wiclow, Ireland, shipped 1882), and Alexander Blue (?),
"London Julie"
all indicated that
they had learned certain chanties from experiences observing cotton-
sugar-screwing, and other stevedores in the West Indies and the African-American
South. Fender and Baldwyn’s singing is especially notable for what might be considered “Black” vocal style
characteristics.
Nonetheless, much like with Sharp and his
cohort, as with Terry, the material collected by Carpenter mostly or entirely comes from
White British or American informants, naturally giving it a particular cast. However, while Gordon, by contrast, recorded both White and Black singers of
work-songs and concluded the latter were influenced by the former, Carpenter
felt the opposite. Carpenter wrote four articles on chanties for The New York Times, in July 1931 and
October 1938, within which he stated his belief that African-American work-songs were a major
contributing element to the form of chanties.
These working
choruses, frequently taken from the Negro laborers of different countries,
especially the Southern States, existed in large numbers, for the Negro required a song to lighten his
work. I have found scores that have never been published. Most of them are of the simplest nature, being
little more than a rhythmical, melodious drone of nonsense syllables. But created In the midst of toil and chanted over and over again for the brief
respite that they gave from its weary monotony, they bear a hidden charm that the
sailor was quick to discover. In the more pensive ones he must have found
something of the strange satisfaction and restfulness of the chant.
And elsewhere:
Indeed, it is not surprising to find a fairly large proportion of the
chanteys coming from the American South. Chanteymen were naturally quick to press into service aboard ship the Negro gang-work songs—with
their droll fun, languorous cadences, and well-worn rhythm.
Further, he reasons from analysis of his data that
chanties did not exist in great numbers until after Dana’s time—ideas that
square with the historical evidence now available.
What is significant is that
Carpenter arrived at those ideas without so much of a literary survey; his
dissertation indicates that his book sources were just the 19th
century ones of Alden, Luce, and L. A. Smith. Rather, his evidence was the
recordings he gathered and the statements of his informants. The troupe of
folklorists in Sharp’s school did also do fieldwork, but their style differed
in that they always accompanied their discussions with a run-down of what prior
authors on the subject had said. I think that all that secondary-source
reading, though undoubtedly important in scholarship, colored their
presentations in a way that Carpenter’s, perhaps, was not.
Appearing only in the unabridged version of Stan Hugill’s Shanties
from the Seven Seas, this song is one of those marginal little bits thrown in
due to Hugill’s extreme inclusiveness and, perhaps, his willingness to look at songs popular
right up to his day. I’ve not seen “Goodnight, Ladies” attested as a chanty
elsewhere, though Hugill's presentation appear to be authentic.
It works fine as a capstan chanty, functioning like the
recently discussed“The Arabella” and “The Saucy Rosabella”in that each verse
simply consists of a line sung three times, followed by a common refrain and a
grand chorus. It takes little imagination and even less memorization to sing. I
call it the “hokey pokey” style of chanty.
“Goodnight, Ladies” originated as a popular song that, at some
point, seems to have gotten associated with seamen.
As far as anyone has been able to determine, the “merrily we roll
along” part turns up by 1867, in a Yale University songbook—with reference to
the yacht club. Was it part of an earlier folk ditty? Though it shares a melody
with “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” the understanding is that “Lamb” was patterned
on this, not the reverse.
The work lyrics at the beginning are not contained in the college
glee version. This leaves open the question of whether they had been a part of
the “Merrily” song or whether sailors added them. Sailors would have also
changed the Yale version’s “…o’er the dark blue sea” to what we have here, “…on
the good ship XYZ.”
Another year, another Sea Music Festival. I'll warn you that this "report" is rather self-centered. Not really telling about the Festival, but some of the stuff I did there that might have relevance to this blog of mine.
It was great to see old friends and acquaintances. These included the veteran sea music scholar and interpreter Prof. Revell Carr. Rev was one reason for my rekindled interest in chanties in 2006, when we were colleagues at UC Santa Barbara. He presented the paper, “‘He boatsteerer no hoi au no luna o Reindeer” (‘I am the boatsteerer aboard the Reindeer’): Songs and Ballads of Hawaiian Whalers in the Nineteenth Century,” at the Sea Music Symposium. I also met up with John Minear of Virginia, whom I owe for helping inspire me to get deeper into the historical study of chanties.
I was honored to participate in the academic symposium this year (June 8-9), where I presented the paper, “Twentieth-Century Editors and the Re-envisioning of Chanties: A Case Study of ‘Lowlands [Away]’”. (I've made the paper available here.) The paper actually grew out of a rough song history I had sketched on this blog. And I'm happy to say that there was a large audience and the presentation provoked a lot of discussion.
In order to put my money where my mouth is, I guess—or rather to offer a realization of the vision of "Lowlands" that I presented in my paper, I thought it proper to sing it, in one of the evening open sessions. That I did, on Saturday night of the festival, but since I don't believe anyone recorded it, I did it afterwards, here:
There are two general highlights, for me, of the Mystic festivals. The first is the nighttime sessions, after the official evening concerts, which are held across the street from the Seaport in what they call the German Club. It's perhaps one of the biggest chanty "sings" one could find anywhere. Individuals simply begin a chanty when they like, and, if it is known enough, get the support of dozens of voices on the chorus. I skipped out on Thursday night's session, in order to rest for Friday morning's symposium (which was in Groton this time). But I was there for the entirety of Friday and Saturday (and dropped by for the after-hours session at Seaport, too).
Friday I sang "Hooraw for the Blackball Line," with some original/personal verses—something I always aim to do at Mystic. Then I sang the rather "plaintive" "Roll and Go," thinking that most would not have heard it. The German Club sessions are also historically one of the places to "introduce" "new" or little-known songs. New friends Rachel and Jeff (visitors from Key West) captured my performance.
Saturday night at the German Club I sang my "Lowlands," along with this "shout out" chanty early in the night.
The second thing I am really drawn to at the festivals are the "Chanteys at Work" demos. This time, as before, I tried to participate in as manny as possible. Saturday had David Littlefield and Bob Walser as chantymen on the Joseph Conrad. One of the young Chanteens led the halyard haulers with "Serafina"—a bit shocking! In addition to the capstan and halyard demos, they did a cargo hoisting one this time, to such songs as "Lindy Lowe" and "Sun Down Below." I felt honored that the squad let me lead a halyard demo, for which I sang "Stormalong, lads, Stormy." On the L.A. Dunton later, Nicole Singer and Don Sineti led chanties as I volunteered helping heave the anchor with the windlass.
On Sunday, during a "round robin" on the Joseph Conrad, I sang "Shiny O" with ad libbed lyrics. The working demo that day was on the Conrad with Denise Cannella, David Iler, and Rev Carr. Rev sang the Hawaiian song "Honolulu Hula Hula Heigh" at the halyards, and "Paddy Lay Back" at the capstan.
I enjoyed the gracious hospitality of Rev and his mom in the nearby Stonington Borough, and felt welcomed by the wonderfully brave and talented Mystic squad, including an invite to their cozy squad BBQ.
Being a "participant" of sorts, I was shuffled into the stage area for the ritual closing chanties of the final concert (Sunday afternoon), "Old Maui" and "Leave Her, Johnny." Though locals might not care to admit it, the Mystic culture is rather "closed," relatively speaking. After this third festival visit, I felt like maybe I was starting to break in.
I have not made many entries here lately, though the project does continue. I have just been too overwhelmed with writing—writing other things. I have had three articles (on non-chanty related things) accepted and needing to be put in their final forms this Spring/Summer, which will appear in academic journals. That's the never-ending editing process. I had a conference paper to write for Summer, and I will have another I need to get working on for a Fall conference. I submitted yet another article to a journal, and I have another I am currently working on to submit. Then by the Fall I want to get started on writing a short book. So it has been too much of a writing overload and I don't have as much time or inclination to write entries on the chanties here.
I have, however, been learning lots of new songs. I had finished doing all the chanties in the core of this project, Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas. After that, I was revisiting them as I gave weekly local performances of one or two in Long Beach—my temporary port of 9 month. I'm now back in the Hartford, CT area, and with no performing outlet I have gone back to learning more chanties. Hugill got the great majority of them, but there were other sources of information that he did not see and which contain other chanties. I have haphazardly been digging into Harlow's Chanteying Aboard American Ships and also Beck's Folklore and the Sea. I eventually intend to go to some of the older, non-collection-style sources.
I've been filing all these "other" songs into a playlist.
Also known as “The Arabella,” this is in the vein of these “say
something three times” songs like “Drunken Sailor” and “Roll the Old Chariot.”
Such a song works well to pass a great deal of working time —e.g. for pumping
out ship— without demanding much by way of creativity from the chantyman.
During my YouTube project, one of the interesting things I found
about this chanty, as it appears in Stan Hugill’s Shanties from the Seven
Seas, is the great
degree of transcription error. The transcription goes through three different
keys, for some reason, and also changes meter! It presents a case where I believe the errors are so obvious
that we should be wary of many of the other tunes presented by Hugill for which
there is no other source to compare to.
When Hugill performed this chanty at Mystic Seaport in 1988, he
mentioned that it had not yet been learned over there. He stressed that it was
a very “American” chanty…which doesn’t mean a lot to me because I consider most
to be rather American, ha! He finished his “Next time I come over here, I want
to hear you all doin’ it!”
Here’s from my YouTube series:
“The Arabella” seems reasonably related (i.e. in the same stylistic family) to another chanty, known as “The Rosabella.” This is one that Hugill did not include in his collection, but has become known to audiences through other sources. The name of the vessel is similar, the melody is kind of similar, and they both have a “say a line 3 times” thing going on.
“The Saucy Rosabella” was mentioned by John Hutcheson in a letter to the Wellington Evening Post, 1934. Hutcheson had begun a sailing career in the Atlantic Ocean trade in 1871, and among the site he remembered,
…I’ve heard the Jamaica niggers sing ‘The Saucy Rosabella’ or ‘Waitin’
for de Steamboat,’ or ‘Jimmy Riley,’ etc., as they rolled the big hogsheads of raw sugar or hove at the winch discharging their coastal drogher….
It’s interesting that he mentions Jamaica. Folklorist Horace Beck heard the chanty later on, in the 1950s, when he was discovering the still extant tradition in the Caribbean. It appears in his book Folklore and the Sea (1973).
There are field recordings of “The Rosabella,” made by JM Carpenter. The first, made in 1929, is of JS Scott. Scott’s career had started in 1863, but he was active until 1903. The cylinder recording is available from Folktrax. The second is of John McPherson (first went to sea 1880) singing “I shipped on board the Rosabella.”
The song’s
“Revival” origins begin with Tom and Barbara Brown, who came upon an
unpublished manuscript of Cecil Sharp. Sharp had collected the song from his
main chanty informant, John Short (sea career 1858-1875) in 1914. The verses
included were as follows.
I’m
going on board the Rosabella
I’m
going on board the Rosabella
I’m
going on board, right down to board
The
saucy Rosabella
O
one Monday morning in the month of May
One
Monday morning in the month of May
I
thought I heard our captain say
The
Rosabella will sail today [Notes from Tom Brown, on Mudcat]
According to
Tom, they first recorded a revived rendition of the song (with added lyrics) on
the North Devon Maritime Museum’s cassette Over The Bar in 1979. After this, the well-known
chanty duo of Johnny Collins and Jim Mageean picked it up. All this was done at
the time in isolation from the few other sources I have noted above.
After
considering these sources, however, and releasing the third volume of the Short
Sharp Shanties project
CDs (2012), folks synthesized a rendition that included bits of them all.Here it is, sung by Sam Lee.
I decided to try my hand at the “Rosabella” chanty, but because it
had not really been tackled, I tried rendering Beck’s text. Beck doesn’t say
where specifically he heard the version he presents, though it seems from other
notes in the book that it was probably in Bequia (the Genadines) or Carriacou
(Grenada). Then again, he doesn’t cite the work being performed. It might have
been hauling in or pushing out a boat from/to sea, or working cargo, perhaps.
There are spoken interjections of “heave away” that Beck has transcribed,
however it seems like a hauling action (I’ve noticed that, unlike the case with
deepwater sailors, “heave” has been used in the Caribbean to emphasize pulls). It’s not clear whether the workers
paused when these directions and words of encouragement were spoken (i.e.
somewhat like the style of the Menhaden fishermen and their chanteys), or if
the beat was continuous. I picked the latter. The recurring “heave away” is
actually reminiscent of another chanty about a vessel presented by Hugill, “The
Albertina.” The result is completely unauthentic, but hopefully would help us
get a step closer towards envisioning this chanty.
