What’s wrong with the Shanty trend?

Burning Q: What do you do with a drunken sailor in the early morning?

For answers, we turn to TikTok, where a question that has tormented men, primarily sailors, for centuries has recently been picked up by a new generation. Yes, that’s right, Gen Z’s favorite app has just discovered the songs of the sea, embracing them with the warm enthusiasm of a giant squid capsizing a rowboat.

Wait what? you may be reasonably asking. Why sea huts, and why now? I have no concrete idea about this; all I can tell you is it’s happening. Apparently we are doing sea songs now. It makes as much and as little sense as anything else.

Sea songs are working songs historically sung on board tall ships, merchant ships, whalers – old ships whose operation relies on the simultaneous movements of many sailors. According to Historic-UK.com, sea songs have been used since “at least the mid-1400s” to ensure that everyone “was pushing or pulling, precisely at the same time”: the lead singer, or the singer , set the pace while the rest of the crew carried the chorus. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “it has been said that a ‘good shantyman is worth four more hands on the string'”, due to a great ability to punctuate a task.

The shanties usually consist of simple, repetitive and easy to remember verses with nautical themes. It is possible that “shanty” comes either from the English word “chant”, or from the French “chanter”, which means “to sing”. The end result is basically the midpoint between these two verbs. Either way, Britannica says the barracks have lost popularity with the rise of the steamboat. So far, that is.

Sailors, originally, but their rebirth is attributable to TikTok, where for a few weeks, users have joined in remote and harmonized tours. According to Polygon, Scottish singer Nathan Evans started the trend on December 23 with a catchy version of a folk song called “The Scotsman.”

Since then, “Wellerman”, a slum apparently inspired by the Weller Brothers ships that sailed between Australia and New Zealand in the 1800s, has become particularly popular for whatever reason. Per Polygon, a Wellerman would have been a supply ship that resupplied a whaler such as the one immortalized in song.

However, the most popular bogus content to have landed online since this all started is this footage from TikTok user strong_promises, who recorded what happened when he recently gave up control of the auxiliary cord. during a car trip. Its emotional trajectory – skepticism that almost feels like annoyance, confused but sweet fun, acquiescence, absolute enthusiasm – faithfully reflects what many slums are feeling right now.

It’s the year of the slum!

Again, it’s not very clear why this is happening. As the resident slum expert of Vulture, Kathryn VanArendonk, points out that seaside huts are “resiliently not cool.” These are songs about whaling and high winds, and they sound like a bowl of New England clam chowder: imprecise, a little lumpy, and, not to put too fine a point on that, very white. ”Plus, when you think of the early days of the UK shipping industry (which obviously actively contributed to the slum cannon), it’s hard not to think of the colonialist history that brought it all together. this “sugar, tea and rum” in Europe. Like VanArendonk NotesBlack cultures seem to have played a crucial role in the formation of the slum, although the genre has since been completely whitewashed.

Either way, the songs are easy to sing, VanArendonk points out, “unifying, survivalist songs designed to transform a huge group of people into one collective body, all working together to keep the ship afloat. And perhaps this is a metaphor for our current cultural moment! Or maybe the haphazard nature of the slum as a new trend is universally funny enough to splash it all over the internet. TikTokers love their messy tendencies! Really, who could say for sure how we got here.

“Shave her stomach with a rusty razor,” according to the song.

Yes, yes, captain.