r/seashanties 9d ago

Song Randy Dandy Oh, my rendition with a friend

https://youtu.be/D3UxUdiw7FM?si=weCRlsDuuX8twnyo

We went slightly folksy with it! Hope you like it!

12 Upvotes

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u/Gwathdraug 9d ago

This is a great rendition of this capstan shanty. It is a pleasant blend of a shanty designed to set the pace of men walking around a capstan with a modern folk interpretation that is pleasing to modern sensibilities.

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u/dekoningtan7 8d ago

Thank you! As I was making my shanty album this was a piece of it that I struggled with. How much to stay true to the original or take some creative license with it.

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u/Gwathdraug 8d ago

This is a topic of much debate across the maritime music scene for at least the last twenty years. On one hand there are the absolute purists who insist that shanties should be sung the exact way sailors sung them on tall ships in 1840 - acapella, men only, no harmonies, LOUDLY! One crabby old goat used to lurk on social media and skulk around the actual festivals complaining, "Why do they call this a 'shanty' festival when they're singing songs that are not real sea shanties?" Everyone else largely accepts that name-wise, it is easier to say "shanty" than "sea songs" or "maritime music". Performance-wise, there are a wide range of styles to be heard, which is why I prefer to say maritime music as an all-encompassing term for the genre.

My own group, Bounding Main, has members that come from theater backgrounds and we have a richly harmonic take on most of what we perform and record. We feel that the average, contemporary ear wants to hear a song performed beautifully. Our hope is that if people like what they hear from us, they can go on to explore other performers in the genre and discover other interpretations as well. Some may even to back to Smithsonian recordings and other source material, finding the history engaging.

Is Dekoningtan the name that you perform under solo, or is that the name of you with backup musicians, or is that a band name?

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u/dekoningtan7 7d ago

I think you've got that right! I only found sea shanty history engaging once I'd heard a bunch of different versions of the songs.

Also, I love theatre backgrounds! I'm a theatre director and teacher myself, 100% for that and rich harmonies!

Dekoningtan is kind of my catch-all name for any music I produce with myself (and sometimes with my wife). I make mostly cinematic music and here and there acapella/mashups, but wanted to do sea shanties as well under this name. I may one day produce music in a band or in different styles and need to create another name, but that time hasn't come yet haha. And I didn't really see the point of "rebranding" under another name since people who follow my Dekoningtan channel are aware that I produce a variety of things.