Mini Music Lesson: Sea Shanties
Sing like a Sailor!
For sailors, music served two purposes. The first was for entertainment. Traveling by sea could take many months and music helped keep sprits high. The second was to provide a rhythmic foundation for completing tasks on a ship that required the sailors to work together.
Now there is some disagreement in the musical world about the different types of sea shanties. Some sources will divide the songs into a few as two different groups, others as many as five. We’re going to g right in the middle with three!
Windlass Shanties: Also called capstan shanties, these types of shanties were for jobs that needed long, continuous work.
Short Drag or short haul shanties were sung during jobs that needed a few pulls over a short period of time.
Long Haul: For jobs that needed a pull-then-relax rhythm, like hoisting a sail. Another name for long haul shanties is haylord shanties
Let’s Sing!
This popular shanty was sung while sailors raised the topsail!
Hear the Melody!
What type of shanty do you think “Blow The Man Down is?”
Sing Your Book!
The text of this picture book is set to a popular sea shanty!
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enter your access code to learn the melody and sing along!
Shanty vs Chanty
You’ll often see two different spellings of the word for these sailor work songs. ‘Chanty’ (and adding to the spelling chaos, sometimes written out as ‘chantey,’ comes from the French word ‘chanter’ which means to sing.
‘Shanty’ has been found in the writings of sea captains that date back hundreds of years and is likely
the reason for this popular spelling.