Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas

Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas

Smyth, Gerry
Hannah, Jonny

Paperback

Country & FolkGeneral World HistoryMusic Reference

Publisher Price: $22.95

ISBN10: 029575415X
ISBN13: 9780295754154
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: Aug 26 2025
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.30 Width: 5.90 Depth: 7.50
Language: English

Reintroduces the traditional sea shanty for a new generation

Passed down in the oral tradition and sung as working songs, sea shanties tell the compelling human stories of life on the water: hard labor, battling the elements, pining for distant loves and far-away homes. The music's rhythms are designed to galvanize the group effort of heaving, pushing, and pulling to weigh anchor, wind rope around a capstan, or set sail.

Acclaimed shanty devotee Gerry Smyth presents the background to each shanty alongside musical notation. The lyrics are elaborated upon with explanations of terminology, context including historical facts and accounts of life at sea, and the characters, both fictional and nonfictional, that appear in the songs from the great age of sail to the last days of square-rig.

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