Positive News · 16 hours ago

The Unlikely Rise of the Sea Shanty Band

Something old and salt-worn is finding its way back to people who need it. In coastal sheds and riverside pubs across the UK, men and women who never thought of themselves as singers are gathering to bellow working songs that sailors once used to survive brutal labor at sea -- and discovering, in the process, something they hadn't known they were missing. "Some of us have got health issues or partners with health issues, or we've lost partners, but through shanty we've found roots to understand our place in life," says Tony Lewis of the Wreckers, a group whose members range in age from 22 to 82. What the sea shanty revival quietly reveals is that the original purpose of these songs -- to bind people together around shared effort, to make hard things bearable -- was never really about the sea at all. The music was always just the form; the fellowship was always the point.