Hi! I’m Joel and this is The Glossary, a bi-weekly supplement to Learned. This week, we're singing along.
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Apparently, 2021 is the year of the sea shanty. And I am...here for it. This current round of enthusiasm traces directly back to singer Nathan Evans who began recording himself on Tik Tok at a fan's request. One thing led to another and soon, this video began making the rounds. Slate, Polygon, Lifehacker and The New Yorker all have good write-ups that explain the entire phenomenon. The Slate piece, in particular, gets into some of the other recent resurgences in popularity.
(I’m not really an expert in Tik Tok, but I guess there’s a duets feature that allows users to respond to other videos, hence the picture-in-picture quality of the video.)
One thing I think gets lost in the rush to explain the sudden popularity of 200 year old songs is that we humans like to sing together. Ok, that's an obvious point to make, but Evans is quoted in the Slate piece as saying, "You don’t need to be able to sing to join in on a shanty." Add in easy-to-learn lyrics and suddenly everyone can sing along. It's a bit like singing in church, or at a baseball game, or even at a concert. It feels pretty good to be part of a sing-a-long. Just look at the video here, from 2010, of David Coffin leading a crowd through “Roll the Old Chariot.”
One other factor at play in this phenomenon is that of geek-spread. If the past two decades has taught us nothing else, it's that everyone is a geek. Everyone has that one thing they are absolutely passionate about and can dive deep into. More importantly, I think we're all learning to accept everyone else's geekdoms and to go along with them. We've seen it in the past few months with baking, chess, and now, sea shanties.
When I was around 23 or 24, I found myself in this Irish pub in downtown Seattle. The band played a great set and then started taking requests. And everybody knew all the words and everybody sang along. It stands out as one of the best nights of my life. This moment now, with the Wellerman and others, reminds me of that in all the best ways.
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Stay strong, stay curious. Sing something.
Joel