AP News: Sea Shanties Are Having a Moment Amid Isolation of Pandemic

"If we can sing, it'll help us get through it, just like sailors did on the tall ships," said Bennett Konesni, of Belfast, Maine, who started singing sea shanties aboard a schooner in Penobscot Bay and performs several times a week with the Mighty Work Song Community Chorus.
— Associated Press, January 2021

In January 2021, the Associated Press called during the strange week when sea shanties briefly took over TikTok. The Wellerman video had gone viral, and reporters were looking for people who actually sing these songs while doing the work they were written for. I was one of the phone calls.

The piece ran on the AP wire and was picked up by the Washington Post, the Press Herald, and dozens of regional papers. For about ten days, the most ancient form of pop music was suddenly the most-streamed.

[Your take: what the ShantyTok moment felt like from the inside, and what it did or did not do for the broader work-song project.]

Read it

• AP News (original wire story)
• Washington Post syndication (paywall)
• Press Herald syndication (Maine, free)
• Wayback Machine archive

Distributed by the Associated Press, January 29, 2021.