Seasongs / Shanties

About Seasongs and Shanties at the sea-folk-song-festival

The Festival offers a wide variety of maritime music-literature - from rough singing to the melancholy ballad, the seafarer's song.

A shanty is a traditional working-song,  formely sung to the specific rythm of the toiling on deck of the sailing-vessels. A choir-leader (shantyman) would strike up the song and set the rythm. Shanties are about stories and events in the sailor's life. Quite often their roots are Irish, but they became enriched with all kinds of "rythmic and sailors' flotsam".

Seasongs or "chants marins" are the rather more quiet, often melancholy seafarer's songs as sung during the sailors' sparse leasure time.