All Together Now

Suddenly, there came a cry from the crows nest: "Ahoy! Memes off the starboard bow!" Then, looming out of the fog covering the trackless ocean that is social media, there they were, like a flotilla of ghost ships crewed by disembodied heads singing as one: it seems sea shanties have become A Thing. On TikTok, too, whatever that is. Shiver me timbers! I think any old webdog could be forgiven for exclaiming: Haul about, shipmates! All hands to the blogpost [1], and heave!

A lot of the attention to the phenomenon of "ShantyTok" has focussed on Scottish postman Nathan Evans and his rendering of "The Wellerman", but these viral things rarely have quite such a neat origin story. For some reason the sharing of sea shanties via social media has met some deep-seated need, probably not unconnected with the isolation imposed by Covid, but possibly also to do with the corruption of honest simple truths in these Trump years, the continuing substitution of "McJobs" for real work, and perhaps even the exclusive, unattainable polish of slick studio music. Take this, another extraordinary example, from Bristol-based folk outfit The Longest Johns, with its hundreds of participants. Isn't that something? Although, to be honest, I'm not sure what.

I have always enjoyed sea shanties myself, and feel a deep, if entirely illusory connection to the world and worldview embodied in them. AFAIK there have been no sailors, dockers, or fishermen in my family, but the "folk revival" of the 1950s and 60s planted songs of the sea deeply into the curriculum of British primary education. We sang sanitised versions of them in school music lessons – songs like "Donkey Riding" ("Were you ever in Quebec?") or "Drunken Sailor" – and older Brits will only have to think of the theme tunes to the BBC's children's flagship Blue Peter or Captain Pugwash to feel the salt stir in their veins.

It must have been around 1969 when I first ventured into a folk club which was situated in the upstairs room of the Red Lion, a pub on the High Street of Stevenage New Town's "old town". The second folk revival was by then well under way – the one that gave us John Martyn, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and a hundred other bands and singer-songwriters – but communal singing of shanties was still a feature of the evening's entertainment, usually led by some accountant or teacher in a distressed Aran sweater and playing a button accordion. Once you had overcome the initial embarrassment, it was actually a fine thing to feel part of such a rowdy choir. I have never been to a football match at a large stadium, but I imagine the feeling there is similar, and amplified 1000-fold. Sadly, although there are still a few such occasions when a like-minded crowd will raise their voices in full-throated song, pretty much everywhere else communal singing is a thing of the past. Which reminds me of a post I wrote way back in 2009, which I shall now proceed to incorporate in a modified form.

Back then I had been hearing a song called "Roots" by a folk duo called Show of Hands. It's a very catchy, shanty-inflected song, with lyrics that caught my mood at the time: basically, a feisty lament for the way we English have lost touch with our own native musical traditions, and by implication our national identity. Apparently it was written in reaction to the then Labour Culture Minister Kim Howells' remark that his idea of hell was three folksingers from Somerset in a pub.

After the speeches, when the cake's been cut
The disco's over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing 'til the morning breaks?

With the Indians, Asians, Africans, Celts
It's in their blood, below their belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

As a veteran of the folk scene myself, it spoke to me very clearly. "You need roots" asserts the chorus; yes, indeed. But the more I thought about it, the more suspicious I became of the feelings the song aroused. The reason we have had at least four "folk revivals" in this country is that the patient is, frankly, dead. And every time we bring it back, it's a bit more of a Frankenstein zombie. And I'm also always uncomfortably aware that in Russia "rootless cosmopolitans" was Soviet-era code for "Jews".

The English folk scene nowadays, lacking the continuity once provided by the likes of the Copper family, for which even the Carthy/Waterson dynasty is no substitute, is about as authentic as chicken tikka masala. Which is to say, it's a perfectly decent reflection of our own times, but has little or no connection with the motivations and experiences behind the original source material. Some might say it was ever thus, and that continual renewal is precisely the point. But to claim these songs as "ours" and thereby somehow intrinsic to our national identity is to raise Balkan and reactionary questions about race, land, culture, and belonging. Let's be honest: for anyone born post-1945, "Smokestack Lightning" is even more "ours" than "Cold Haily Windy Night"; and "Smokestack Lightning" is not "ours" at all. We're all rootless cosmopolitans now.

So it didn't surprise me at all when I heard that Show of Hands had been obliged to take legal action to have their song removed from a video put out by the extreme right-wing British National Party. Well, of course. Billy Bragg and Show of Hands might talk of "taking back" the Union Jack and the flag of St. George, but – come on – does anyone really want them back, knowing where they've been? The fact is that the strong emotions aroused by talk of "roots" and "tradition" may be real, but they are not progressive, in the sense that they will not take us forward from here – this imperfect but really rather not at all bad place we call "England" – to an even better place.

In fact, when you think about it, isn't England leading the world in its casting off of the trappings of nationalism? Have we not perhaps muddled through to a society strong enough in its self-acceptance to find itself ludicrous, and post-modern enough to enable millions of Pick'n'Mix identities to rub along together? After all, why do so many people with rather different roots find this a congenial place to come and live? It sure as shepherd's pie ain't the food (though chicken tikka masala was definitely a step forward, except as a flavour of crisps). And why do so many of us not really mind all that much if they do come here? Apart, that is, from a few boneheads with a thing about the dilution of our mongrel "blood" and the preservation of "traditions" most of them are too ignorant even to identify.

I'd go so far as to say that I think the urge to poke fun at morris-men and all such solemn attempts to re-invent "traditions" is, ironically, one of the genuine and life-enhancing legacies to be found in our interesting island's sea-chest. It's our insurance policy against Kultur-peddling Nazis. Remember the 1983 film The Ploughman's Lunch? Scripted by Ian McEwan, it used the "ploughman's lunch" – an allegedly "traditional" meal of bread, cheese, and pickle sold in pubs, but which was actually invented within living memory as a marketing ploy for cheese – as a metaphor for the continual and self-serving rewriting of history by our masters, something we have every right to be cynical about.

Of course, apart from a few peculiar backwaters like Rottingdean, the singing of folksongs (other than in folk clubs) died out in most of England so long ago that no-one can actually remember when. People have always sung together, of course. In the late 70s my partner and I used to drink most nights in a pub called The Phoenix in Bristol: on certain weeknights the entire pub would resound with the communal singing of about thirty or forty well-oiled senior citizens. I never did hear them sing a single "traditional" song, though, whereas "Delilah" would reliably raise the roof. No longer: subsequent generations have lost the taste for the singalong, and that is something to be regretted.

This has less to do with a lack of "roots" or national identity, though, than it has to do with the professionalisation and monetisation of entertainment, and the consequent embarrassment of being a less-than-perfect imitation of some highly-polished act. Music has become something we buy, rather than do or share. Sadly, you'll never hear supermarket workers singing shelf-stacking shanties as they work, or the girl at the till lamenting her lost love. At least, not in England, and even if you did there would probably be complaints.

But to return to the ShantyTok phenomenon. It might seem, at first glance, like a promising revival of communal singing: you can all join in! But the sight of all those isolated faces singing into their phones is really much more a sad reflection of contemporary life, with or without Covid, isn't it? It has the vibe of one of those artificial charity events where a string of celebrities each contribute a pre-recorded line or verse of a song. And no-one on TikTok will ever get to feel the vibration of many other voices raised in song deep in their own chest, that profound feeling that hovers somewhere between tears and laughter.

As to where all this started, not so long ago a butch bunch of singing Cornishmen – most of whom actually know one end of a boat from the other – made a splash in the folk world and beyond by singing sea-songs as The Fisherman's Friends (which happens to be the name of a well known brand of throat lozenge in the UK: we do love our self-deprecating irony on these islands). So if I wanted to identify the place where the current shanty craze first broke out, I think I might be taking a closer look at somewhere like Port Isaac in North Cornwall before wasting too much time searching the doldrums of TikTok. They've even gone and made a film about them, haven't they? And guess who it is singing the rousing chorus on Show of Hands' "Roots"?

1. Traditionally pronounced "bloggust".