Sailor Song: The Shanties and Ballads of the High Seas - Hardcover

Smyth, Gerry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295747285 ISBN 13: 9780295747286

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2020

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Gerry Smyth is professor of English at Liverpool John Moores University. The work of illustrator and printmaker Jonny Hannah has been featured in Vogue, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe and in the publication Greetings from Darktown.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295747285
• ISBN 13: 9780295747286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Hannah Jonny
• Number of pages: 160