- People on the internet are obsessed with “sea shanty TikTok” after a song called “The Wellerman” went viral.
- An expert in marine slums says that music is not really a slum because it is not in a call and answer format.
- Sea tents were sung specifically for work 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 sensation on the Internet, with large groups of TikTokers coming together to sing maritime songs online. He captured the imagination of the Internet and proved that, once again, with all its flaws, TikTok could be home to some of the healthiest memes out there. For a UK-based academic, success is equally intriguing and exciting.
Gerry Smyth, an academic and musician at Liverpool John Moores University, spent years researching marine slums, culminating in a book, Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas, which was due to be published in the UK in spring 2020.
“The idea was to capitalize on the UK folk festival season in the summer,” he said. But the pandemic indefinitely postponed the festivals and the launch of the book. As an American label moved forward with the release of Smyth’s book in September 2020, its publication in the UK was postponed until spring 2021.
Then, a Scottish postman’s version of a popular folk song went viral on TikTok.
Smyth says the viral music that drives ‘shanty Tok’ is not really a sea slum.
After Nathan Evans posted an extremely popular video of himself singing “The Wellerman” on TikTok, the song became inescapable online and users created a new genre of online content that they call “shanty Tok”.
While Smyth is thrilled by the renewed attention around the sea slums, he wants to fix something – “The Wellerman” is not a sea slum. “The song ‘The Wellerman’ that has created so much buzz on the internet is a whaling ballad that people are singing in a particular way that suggests a favela aesthetic, but it is not an adequate favela, which is a call and an answer,” he said. Smyth.
“The Wellerman,” he says, is “in a format that is usually sung by a single person,” explained Smyth, and there is only one chorus where more people can participate.
Although he does not mind the incorrect categorization of the public, the merchant sailors who popularized maritime slums between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the rise of steam navigation in the 1860s and 1870s would almost certainly do so.
Sailors were diligent in keeping sea shacks separate from their personal lives.
The sailors developed sea shacks, which rely on the call and the response, to give the rhythm at which they should be working, pulling ropes to hoist sails and pushing pumps to drain excess water from the ships’ holds. “This work was costly, difficult, demanding and required groups of men to do the same thing at the same time,” says Smyth.
Sailors drew a distinctive protective barrier between the shacks that sang on the ships and the community ballads that sang on the coast. “The shacks themselves are work songs, and the sailors were very superstitious about it,” says Smyth. “They only sang during work. They didn’t sing when they were off.”
The popularity of sea slums declined when ships began to be powered by steam in the mid-19th century, although they lasted in the cultural imagination in one way or another until the beginning of World War II. “They were not kept in files; many people sang them, or versions of them, ”says Smyth.
Victorian Puritans have altered the lyrics of the shacks to accommodate their ears – as the folk singers who perform them today often do for modern sensibilities. “A lot of that was obscene and questionable to modern ears,” he says. “Many of them changed the lyrics and people continued to sing them.”
They have remained popular ever since in folk clubs in the UK, on the east coast of the USA and anywhere with a strong maritime history. “People are still singing in bars and clubs,” said Smyth. “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” appeared.
Smyth says he hopes to be able to sing ‘The Wellerman’ with his band.
Smyth’s daughters called him one day and asked if he had seen the commotion about sea slums taking over the internet. He did not have. “I got off the circuit a little bit,” he professes. “I don’t really deal with social media that hard. I’m immersed in files, research and books.”
Even with the audience’s incorrect categorization, he is happy that people are talking about sailor songs.
“It is absolutely fantastic that people are adapting technology and the way they communicate, articulate and be creative,” he says. “Anything that makes people work together, singing together especially and thinking together about form and delivery will be a good thing. We were so isolated last year that it was difficult, I don’t think we can survive without technology.”
He is particularly excited about the opportunities he offers. After “The Wellerman” went viral, his UK publisher postponed the release date for his book.
In addition to the book, Smyth performed in a maritime folk band with colleagues from his university, which was forced to close. Now, he hopes that when the restrictions are removed, they can record an album of shacks and take out “The Wellerman” in live performances.