Sea shanties are cool, and so are union work songs

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Call-and-response work songs and the prison song subgenre are closely related to shanties.

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More in the shanty vein:

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The kaiserreich mod for the Hearts of Iron games have a fantastic set of union songs (it presents an alternate history where, among other things, syndicalism becomes the dominating socialist ideology)

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Then we are in perfect harmony.

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Exactly where my brain went, our modern socialist bard. Love him.

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It also meant that the bosses couldn’t call in the Salvation Army to drown them out with music.

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Two gs, tho…

OH! And of course his covers of Woody Guthrie he did with Wilco…

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Always liked “Hill an’ Gully Rider” which I first heard in John Huston’s film of “Moby Dick” starring Gregory Peck and “Blood Red Roses” from Richard and Mimi Fariña

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Should I put my sea shanty books up on ebay to ride the fad? I could part with Stan Hugill’s Shanties from the Seven Seas. It’s good, but I don’t need it. I could probably also part with the concertina I bought and never learned how to play properly.

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I hope we see a revival of the more recent shanty punk I love so much -
Here’s a perfect Sea Shanty (if you were ever curious what a Montreal Friday night was like when I was a lad)

And one more favourite for good measure:

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There’s another version of the lyric that focuses on the doffing mistress that the mill girls like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RtJ_Q_5Src

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If you like this then might I recommend Alestorm!

Pirate Metal is a thing!

Edit - and I should probably add a track dedicated to Ted Cruz, the Trumps and the NRA: ALESTORM - Fucked With An Anchor (Official Video) | Napalm Records - YouTube

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There’s always Arlo Guthrie’s “The Story of Reuben Clamzo and his Stange Daughter in the key of A”.

It’s a long story that eventually turns into a call and response song, that seems to invoke sea shanties.

It’s kind of about the Clamshell Alliance (and other anti-nuclear groups). It erroneously says Natives didn’t eat clams, but I gather they had clambakes.

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This is a fun thread. Here is my contribution

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Then there is the martyred union bard, Joe Hill.

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Marvelous choice. I was listening to Road Rage today and thinking about how much I miss their live shows.

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Pretty much anything by Chumbawamba is worth a listen in my opinion. They did some top tier activism music.

In the spirit of this topic:

Also, let’s talk about the only sea shanty to reach as high as #3 on the Billboard charts:

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I spent time in the UK in the late 90s and vividly remember this “Rock The Dock” compilation. The Chumbawamba track “One By One” was a favorite.

Edit - and @ficuswhisperer beat me to it by a minute!

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I assert that thematically, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 is a union work song.

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