What’s the matter with the Shanty trend?

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

For answers, we turn to TikTok, where a question that has plagued men, especially sailors, for centuries, has recently been addressed by a new generation. Yes, that is correct, the favorite application of Generation Z has just discovered sea shacks, embracing them with the enthusiasm of a giant squid turning a rowing boat.

Wait what? you may be asking reasonably. Why shacks at sea and why now? I have no concrete idea about this; all i can say is what is happening. Apparently, we’re making shacks at sea now. It makes as much and as little sense as anything else.

The maritime huts are work songs historically sung on board sailboats, merchant ships, whaling ships – ships of the old days, whose operation depends on the simultaneous movements of many sailors. According to Historic-UK.com, sea shacks have been used since “at least the mid-1400s” to ensure that everyone “pushes or pulls at precisely the same time”: the lead singer, or shantyman, sets the pace while the rest of the crew loaded the chorus. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “it was said that ‘a good favela was worth four extra hands on the rope’”, due to his great ability to follow a task.

Shanties usually include simple, repetitive and easy to remember verses with nautical themes. It is possible that “shanty” comes 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. In any case, Britannica says the popularity of the shacks has declined with the rise of the steamship. So far, of course.

Sailors, originally, but their revival can be attributed to TikTok, where in recent weeks users have joined in remote and harmonized rounds. According to Polygon, Scottish singer Nathan Evans started the trend on December 23 with a stimulating version of a folk song called “The Scotsman”.

Since then, “Wellerman”, a slum apparently inspired by the Weller brothers’ ships sailing between Australia and New Zealand in 1800, has become particularly popular, for whatever reason. By polygon, a Wellerman would have been a supply vessel that replenished a whaling vessel like the one immortalized in music.

Probably the most popular favela content that has appeared online since it all started, however, is this sequence by TikTok user Strong_promises, who recorded what happened when he recently relinquished control of the auxiliary cable during a car ride. His emotional trajectory – skepticism that almost seems boredom, confused but gentle fun, acquiescence, absolute enthusiasm – accurately reflects what many favela novices are feeling right now.

Year of the sea slum whatever!

Again, it is not very clear why this is happening. As Vulture’s resident slum specialist, Kathryn VanArendonk, he points out, the sea shacks are “resiliently not legal. They are songs about whaling and high winds, and they sound like a bowl of New England clam chowder: inaccurate, a little irregular and, not to mention very well, very In addition, when you are thinking about the beginning of the British naval industry (by all accounts, an active contributor to the canon of the slum), it’s hard not to think about the colonialist history that brought all that “sugar, tea and rum “to Europe. Like VanArendonk grades, Black cultures appear to have played a crucial role in the formation of slums, although the gender has been completely whitewashed.

In any case, shacks are easy to sing, points out VanArendonk, “unifying and survival songs designed to transform a huge group of people into a collective body, all working together to keep the ship afloat.” And maybe there is a metaphor for our current cultural moment there! Or possibly the random nature of the favela as a new trend is universally funny enough to spread across the internet. TikTokers love their unbalanced tendencies! Seriously, who could say for sure how we got here.

“Scrape the belly with a rusty razor”, according to the song.

Aye Aye captain.