SEA SHANTY Pop Cover

As we explored in this weeks video, sea shanties and pop music share a common history. So, many of the tropes we associate with pop music (like catchy hooks, story telling verses and repetition) are found in the sea shanty style. 

This means that covers of contemporary popular songs using sea shanty genre tropes are gaining popularity on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Ask your students to choose a pop song they like and make it sound like a sea shanty.

This will: 

• Encourage students to listen for the musical tropes that make sea shanties different from contemporary pop (group vocals, non-electronic instrumentation, often no harmony distinct from vocals, lyrics about sailing/isolation) 

• Encourage students to listen for what is the same between sea shanties and contemporary pop (story telling verses, catchy chorus', repetition, ).

• Allow students to use their compositional creativity to create a musical piece that has not been arranged in this style. 

• Through understanding that sailors singing sea shanties were responding to their own time, place and context, students can being to contextualise their own compositional choices as influenced by their environment and experiences

• Connect to students social media practices and their preferred music! 

REMEMBER

Pedagogy is important too! These sailors did not have access to notation, or theory training, rather they used their ear and their peers to learn, arrange and compose saa shanties. Encourage your students to listen to this music, and to their group before looking up the notes!