Went to Cornwall for a wedding over the weekend.
It was thus a pleasing surprise to find that it was also the Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival.
I'm sure my fifteen-year-old self would cringe at the thought of Future Sam not only going to, but thoroughly enjoying a sea shanty festival. I no longer care for the concept of cool.
You have not lived until you have seen a group of elderly German gentlemen singing What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor complete with a slapstick drunk. Who said Germans can't do comedy?
Though the festival (and Skinner's Press Gang) plastered a smile across my face, I couldn't part with the £10 for the festival CD. My thinking was that it would never get played; That I will never have the urge to listen to sea shanties.
Stewing on this thought on the train back, I came to the realisation that some of the main attractions of shanties, the narrative, the history, and most pertinently the collective voice, are sated by other forms of popular music.
The sturm und drang of Arcade Fire's music draws greatly on the collective wail (amongst other tropes), but I shall not post one of their songs, as I shall probably save them for the new album out in August.
Instead I shall go with the more nautical Port O'Brien. Named after a now-abandoned bay on Kodiak Island, the band's leader Van Pierszalowski spends his summer months fishing commercially with his father. I believe you can hear the bonds with the ocean, the family-unit, the lore of the sea within their music.
mp3---> Port O'Brien - I Woke Up Today
