Traditional Tunes and Popular Airs Conference 2025
Sat 08 Nov
|Cecil Sharp House
A two-day conference bringing together researchers working on ‘traditional’ and ‘popular’ tunes as transmitted and transformed in all manner of musical styles and genres, performance contexts, levels of society, historical periods, and geographical locations.
Time & Location
08 Nov 2025, 21:00 – 09 Nov 2025, 17:00
Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Rd, London NW1 7AY, UK
About the event
Shanties Ashore: The Transformation of Maritime Work Songs in 20th-Century Folk Revival Movements
This paper examines the migration of maritime work songs from their original shipboard contexts into the 20th-century Anglo-American folk revival, focussing on processes of melodic adaptation and audience reception. Shanties, once functional chants coordinating labour at sea, were transformed into stylised performance pieces with altered rhythms and melodies suited for concert and recording settings. Drawing on field recordings, revival collections, and interviews with key performers, the study explores how the shift from participatory work song to staged entertainment affected the preservation and transformation of tune identity and musical memory. It argues that these changes reflect broader tensions between authenticity, commercialisation and folk tradition, highlighting the dual role of revival movements in both conserving and reshaping maritime musical heritage. The paper also considers how gender, class and regional identity shaped the reinterpretation of shanties within revival contexts.…