Sea Shanty expert: TikTok’s ‘the Wellerman’ is not a slum

• Internet users are obsessed with “sea can TikTok” after a song called “The Wellerman” goes viral.
• A sea slum expert says the song isn’t really a slum because it isn’t in a call and answer format.
• Sea songs were sung specifically for professional purposes among sailors and were popularized in the 1860s and 1870s.
• Visit the Insider home page for more stories.

“Sea shanty Tok” is the latest internet sensation, with big bands from TikTokers joining together to sing seafaring songs together online. It captured the imagination of the internet and proved that once again, for all its flaws, TikTok can be home to some of the healthiest memes around. For an academic based in the UK, success is equally confusing and exciting.

Gerry Smyth, scholar and musician at John Moores University in Liverpool, spent years researching sea songs, culminating in a book, Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas, which was due for publication. in the UK in spring 2020.

“The idea was to capitalize on the folk festival season in the UK this summer,” he said. But the pandemic has indefinitely postponed festivals and the release of the book. While an American printing press forged ahead with the release of Smyth’s book in September 2020, its publication in the UK has been pushed back to spring 2021.

Then a Scottish Postman’s version of a popular folk song went viral on TikTok.

Smyth says the viral song propelling “slum” isn’t actually a slum.

After Nathan Evans posted a hugely popular video of himself releasing “The Wellerman” on TikTok, the song became staple online and users created a new genre of online content they are calling “shanty”. Tok ”.

While Smyth is delighted with the renewed attention around the songs of the sea, he wants to make something clear – “The Wellerman” is not a slum. “The song ‘The Wellerman’ that created such a hubbub on the internet is a whaling ballad that people sing in a particular way that suggests a slum aesthetic, but it’s not a proper slum, which is. a call and a response, ”Smyth said.

“The Wellerman,” he says, is “in a format that is usually sung by one person,” Smyth explained, and just has a choir where more people can join.

If he doesn’t care about the public’s poor categorization, the merchant seamen who popularized sea shacks between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of steam navigation in the 1860s and 1870s almost certainly would.

Sailors strove to separate sea huts from their personal lives.

Sailors developed sea huts, which rely on call and answer, to provide a rhythm at which they should work, pulling ropes to hoist the sails and pushing pumps to drain excess water from the bilges of the sailors. ships. “It was expensive, difficult, demanding, and groups of men had to do the same thing at the same time,” says Smyth.

The sailors drew a distinct firewall between the songs they sang on ships and the community ballads they sang ashore. “The barracks themselves are work songs, and the sailors were very superstitious about it,” says Smyth. “They only sang them when they were working. They didn’t sing them when they were on break.”

The popularity of sea barracks waned when ships began to be steam powered in the mid-19th century, although they persisted in the cultural imagination in one form or another until the outbreak of WWII. global. “They weren’t hidden in the archives; a lot of people sang them, or versions of them, ”says Smyth.

Victorian prudes altered the lyrics of the songs to suit their ears – as the folk singers who perform them today often do for modern sensibilities. “Much of it was shoddy and objectionable to modern ears,” he says. “A lot of them changed the lyrics and people kept singing them.”

They have remained popular ever since in folk clubs across the UK, the US East Coast, and wherever they have a strong maritime history. “People are still singing carols in pubs and clubs,” Smyth said. “It’s not really above the radar. It’s not a popular form of music; it’s folk music at this point.”

Until “The Wellerman” comes along.

Smyth hopes to be able to sing “The Wellerman” with his band.

Smyth’s daughters called him one day and asked him if he had seen the hubbub about sea songs taking over the internet. He hadn’t. “I got off the loop a bit,” he says. “I don’t really do a lot of social media. I’m immersed in archives, research and books.”

Even with the public’s poor categorization, it is nonetheless happy that people are talking about sailor songs.

“It’s absolutely fantastic that people are adapting technology and form to communicate and articulate and be creative,” he says. “Anything that gets people to work together, sing together in particular, and think together about form and performance will be a good thing. We have been so isolated over the past year that it has been difficult, I don’t think we can survive. without technology. “

He is particularly encouraged by the opportunities it offers. After “The Wellerman” went viral, its UK publisher pushed back the release date of his book.

In addition to the book, Smyth performed in a maritime folk group with colleagues from her college, which was forced to shut down. Now he hopes that when the restrictions are lifted they can record a cabin album and release “The Wellerman” at concerts.