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Shanties on TikTok: The longing sings last

2021-01-25T11:04:59.207Z


A Scottish postman started, and since then, ancient sea shanties have been making a huge wave on TikTok. Shanties seemed completely out of date. Why is everyone singing "The Wellerman"?


How exactly it could happen that a young postman from a small Scottish town turned old sailor songs into a global trend in pop culture, he doesn't quite know himself.

It all started last summer of lockdown.

Nathan Evans, 26, returned home from the morning round with his letters and packages and uploaded a shanty on his TikTok page.

TikTok, the hands-on and messing app, mainly used by young people.

"Leave her, Johnny, leave her," an old sailor's song from Ireland.

He had a good dozen followers.

Six months later, Evans has more than 400,000, plus several million likes.

Journalists keep calling him.

R&B star John Legend praised him.

One song in particular, probably composed around 1860, is developing into a kind of soundtrack from the Corona era: "The Wellerman".

The content is about catching and cutting up whales.

Until recently, sedate men with plauze, fishermen's shirts and Elbe sailors would have succeeded with this song at the harbor festival in Warnemünde.

Or the shanty choir De Tampentrekker, who usually belts out short appearances in front of the Zum Schellfischposten pub in Hamburg-Altona on the NDR show “Inas Nacht” (“What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor”).

Quick to sing on deck

But now it feels like half the world is singing songs about hard work and the prospect of tea and rum. Rappers, rockers, everyone hums this song.

The hashtag #seashanty has almost 80 million hits, and a separate genre called Shantytok has even established itself on the platform.

There are now hundreds of variations of Evans' "Wellerman".

How did it come to that?

Shanties used to be really important, out at sea.

At a time without machines and hydraulics, work on the deck of tall ships meant hard work.

Especially when anchors were raised or sails were set and the crew had to pull together.

It was more harmonious with singing and was certainly easier.

So the "shantyman" started a song, loud enough to get through the wind and the sound of the waves, and the crew answered him in time.

Scottish whalers sang their songs, dock workers in the Caribbean, sailors on the great clippers going to Asia for tea.

All in one boat, a "Wellerman" long

When ships with steam engines replaced tall ships because they were faster and more reliable, shanty singing also fell silent.

It was simply no longer needed in a technical world.

If anything, the sailors sang in the docks at the harbor.

But even those times are long gone: Today, seafarers in the ranks of the crew are poorly paid industrial workers who are not looking for quick schnapps and quick love in the port, but for free WiFi.

The fact that the shanty genre experienced an unbelievable renaissance in the Corona era is probably also due to the element of the archaic.

A crew far out at sea, in the face of an approaching storm - that's what it feels like for many people in lockdown.

No instruments are required for the shanty.

Skewed notes are even welcome.

It's all so down-to-earth, so authentic and honest and fits into a time when many feel lonely.

Everyone is in the same boat, everyone is pulling a rope.

At least for the duration of a "Wellerman".

From whaler to streaming

The history of this shanty goes back almost two centuries to the shipping company of the Weller Brothers.

The brothers had emigrated to Sydney from Folkestone in the south of England in 1823 and within a few years had built up a small empire from Australia and New Zealand, mainly through whaling.

On one of the Weller ships, the "Lucy Ann", the later writer Hermann Melville, author of "Moby Dick", is said to have toiled as a seaman: a Weller employee, a "Wellerman".

This is also how the supply ships were called.

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The shipping company went bankrupt at the end of the 1840s, but its name lives on in a song, probably first intoned in a New Zealand port: "Soon May The Wellerman Come".

The catchy tune is about the whaling ship "Billy o 'Tea", which wants to take a right whale in tow.

But then, conversely, the boats are pulled through the sea for many days by the harpooned and submerged whale - and the crew hopes for the supply ship »Wellerman«, which brings sugar, tea and rum, until the »tonguing« begins, the dismantling of the whale carcass:

"Soon may the Wellerman come

To bring us sugar and tea and rum,

One day, when the tonguin 'is done

We'll take our leave and go"




More than 150 years later, the shanty went viral and is among the five most played viral songs worldwide on the Spotify streaming service.

Which also has to do with a shanty band from Bristol, England.

The Longest Johns, four young guys, have been singing shanties at festivals in Great Britain for years, largely unnoticed.

At the end of last year they made the song available on the Twitch video portal as free background music for videos.

Result: Your "Wellerman" version is one of the 200 most streamed songs in the USA.

Feeling of a wide sea, a full glass and burping in between

Shanties have hit the charts before.

As part of a modern fairy tale that eventually even got to the cinemas.

Ten fishermen from the village of Port Isaac, Cornwall, who call themselves Fisherman's Friends and sing old sea shanties, had caught the eye of a BBC radio presenter.

Fascinated by the »Rock'n'Roll of 1752« - as it is later called in the film - he showed his manager the band's self-produced CD after his vacation.

Soon afterwards, the manager threaded a record deal with a major label - for the fabulous sum of one million pounds.

An investment that paid off: The Fisherman's Friends debut album was released in 2010, sold more than 150,000 copies and temporarily ranked in the top ten of the charts.

One of the most popular songs is "Nelson's Blood".

It is about how the naval hero Horatio Nelson died in a battle against the French, whereupon his body was transported in a rum barrel to Nelson's home port of Plymouth.

What didn’t stop the crew from drinking from it: "Nelson's Blood".

The story of the singing fishermen, who were awarded a million-dollar contract in the era of hip-hop and R&B, had fallen so out of time that it met with wide media coverage.

The feel-good comedy "Fisherman's Friends" was, of course, a big hit.

That may be the reason for the triumph of the shanties: this feel-good momentum.

Singing along with the courage to play a weird tone, the feeling of a full pub and a full glass, of a long lake and belching.

Part of the irony of this success is that sea shanties are a global trend, while the misery of seafarers is growing into an ever worse problem: More than 400,000 crew members are stuck in ports or on board due to the corona crisis worldwide.

When they can return home is uncertain for most.

Will the stranded sing a "Wellerman"?

Rather not.

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Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-01-25

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