What Should We Do With an Old Sea Shanty?
In an old church in Essex, Connecticut, a man with a curled gray beard that spills halfway down his red-and-white shirt takes a moment to adjust his suspenders before opening his mouth into a perfect O-shape and issuing a note so deep that the pews seem to shudder. He sings not of God or heaven or worship, but of tragedy on the water. No one joins in this ballad, though I know many of our odd congregation have the lyrics memorized. The summer air is still and warm. Tears gather in the eyes of my friends and I watch their faces surreptitiously. I’ve seen these men cry before, but not often, and never quite like this.
We went as a group to the Maritime Music Festival last June, an excursion that I suggested after spending long pandemic years in my home, listening to live recordings of folk music. Starved for physical intimacy, I found the inherent roughness of the genre comforting. I suspected my friends, most of whom I’ve known since childhood, would feel similarly. And, I should explain, I’m a romantic. Not in matters of the heart, but in matters of labor. Like so many people, I look backward with sepia-tinted binoculars. Nostalgic for lives I never (didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t have anyway) lived.
I forget sometimes that America was born of the water.
The age of the sail has ended, the age of the work song has largely passed, but certain genres of music persist, thanks in part to the work of activists and archivists. In early 2021, sea shanties became a viral trend, a coronavirus-infected meme that hopped platforms. Headlines followed, explainers were published, historians consulted,
