#also stop trying to cancel sea shanties on social media and donate to amnesty international or something maybe

[bondsmagii]

Hey Miceál got any hot takes today?

I’ve been saving this for a good hot take and now I have one.

so, recently I’ve been pissed at the people saying the Wellerman song is problematic because it praises colonisation and slavery and whatnot. you know, because of the references to commodities available because of colonisation (sugar and tea and rum) and the fact that the sailors in the song are basically indentured to the company they work for, and are essentially slaves.

the thing is... these are the men who wrote the song and who sing the song. enjoying the song, singing along to it, reworking it and interacting with it in modern times -- it’s keeping their history alive. I think this is something a lot of people don’t realise when it comes to any kind of folk music, sea shanties included. music -- especially in the past -- was a way to preserve history. many people were illiterate, news was difficult to spread. if somebody wanted to preserve something that was important, they would often do it orally. what’s easier to understand and remember than a long spoken story? a song with a catchy tune and a repeating chorus. what’s incredible at capturing and invoking emotion? music.

I’m Irish, and in Ireland we have a long history of this kind of thing. back in the day, our poets were on level with royalty. oral history is a very important part of our background, as it is in many cultures. but we also have a lot of rebel songs, because of the bullshit the English have been pulling on us for 900 years now. we were once (and some of us still remain) a colony of England’s. we suffered abuse, murder, oppression, and slavery at the hands of these oppressors -- mistreatment that continued into my lifetime. and we have a lot of songs about it. we have songs that tell the stories of battles and uprisings; we have songs that tell the stories of individuals or groups who were murdered or martyred; we have songs about famines and deportations; we have songs about the love of our country and our desire to see it free. many of these songs are catchy as hell, with a repeating chorus designed for everyone to sing along to.

so if we sing these, are we glorifying our oppressors? when I sing Men Behind the Wire, which contains lyrics such as in the little streets of Belfast in the dark of early morn, British soldiers came a-running wrecking little homes with scorn; heedless of the crying children, dragging fathers from their beds -- watch the scene as helpless mothers watch the blood pour from their heads, am I glorifying the soldiers who dragged hundreds of Irishmen out of their beds that morning and interned them indefinitely in prison without charge or trial, or am I showing solidarity with the victims and repeating a history which deserves to be told? the answer is obvious.

songs like these are meant to be heard. they’re meant to travel far and wide. they’re meant to preserve history, stir emotion, get people angry, get people remembering. songs like Wellerman do the same thing. that song was written by people suffering, by people being exploited, and one of the ways they provided solidarity and preserved their stories was by singing a song about being taken to a strange land and forced to work for an uncaring company. in this day and age, with people dying of heart attacks in Amazon warehouses or forced to work in a deadly pandemic because some supermarket or chain restaurant CEO doesn’t want to cut his pay check any, can we really say it’s not appropriate for us to remember these struggles, relate to them, and sing these songs in solidarity? 

the people essentially trying to cancel a sea shanty for apparently praising slavery are directly speaking over the lived experiences of the people who suffered that mistreatment. their lived experiences are still alive in that song. that’s why it should continue to be sung.