@catsalad
Pirates never played accordions
🏴‍☠️🚫🪗

(Because they hadn’t been invented yet)

Accordions were invented during the 1800s Industrial Revolution at the same time as the telegraph, steam engine and the typewriter

100 years after the Golden Age of Piracy 1600s–1700s

So every pirate movie with an accordionist is a science fiction movie with a time-travel sub plot 🚀⌛️

@AccordionBruce @catsalad

And those Pirates you mention also didn't sing shanties; because they hadn't been invented yet.

Shanties were the work songs of merchant seamen from approx. the late 1820s and reported to be dying out in the late 1870s.

So, a 19th century working-class culture hijacked into "Pirate" fantasy-land.

PS. also, no, not every song mentioning the sea or sailors is a shanty.

@ecadre @AccordionBruce @catsalad

Well, wait a second... Dana reported work songs and shanties. And Hawai'ian long talk.

@ecadre @AccordionBruce @catsalad

Nope, checked my dates; Dana was 19th century; for some reason I think of him as 18th.

@ecadre @AccordionBruce @catsalad

There it is: Complaynt of Scotland, printed 1549. Chapter 6. Monologue Recreative (one of the first texts written in Scots, but published in France) has references to maritime work songs - and in particular their use in raising the anchor. https://web.archive.org/web/20220517010218/https://northernrenaissance.org/cacophonous-catalogues-the-complaynt-of-scotland-and-the-monologue-recreative/

@Amgine @ecadre @catsalad
Makes sense people would sing work songs whatever they called them

I heard the shanty tradition got stronger because the crews on commercial ships were worked so hard they needed the songs to coordinate the low-numbers

Royal Navy ships didn’t have them (as much?) because they had enough crew to do the work?

Veering, of course here
🧊 🚢

@AccordionBruce @ecadre @catsalad

My reading suggests much of the shanty tradition came through the Royal Navy, primarily due to so many sailors. The primary instruments were drum, whistle, fife, horns, and fiddle. This tradition added 'strums' - various instruments with stretched-skin sound boxes - once slave trade was established in the Caribbean.

@AccordionBruce @ecadre @catsalad

Heh, wait until the purists pull their tools to flay me. "There are no instruments in shanties!" etc.

Just a sailor, who should head down to the boat to prepare for the incoming weather.

@Amgine @ecadre @catsalad
I heard a real shantyman sing once. He played a concertina, but then he set it down and just sang

So deep and loud you could hear the storm competing with his voice on that clear day (and him winning) 🌬️

No instruments necessary

@AccordionBruce @Amgine @catsalad

There was more than shanteys on merchant ships (and Naval ships that didn't use shanteys).

On Naval ships there was often a ships band (certainly on larger ships) and certainly a fiddler on most ships. Songs were sung even on Royal Navy ship when off-duty. These are known as fo'c'sle songs.

One of the main complaints of Captain Bligh's crew on the Bounty was that he made them dance to a the playing of a fiddle for several hours (!) each day.

@AccordionBruce @Amgine @catsalad

In Northleach in Gloucestershire there is the very little, but wonderful, Mechanical Music Musem. One of its exhibits is the small barrel organ that Captain Parry took on the 1819–1820 expedition to explore the Arctic and try to fine the NorthWest Passage.

It's not mentioned online, but you can see it on Google street maps. I was amused to realise how many of the tunes on the different barrels I knew and could play :-)

@AccordionBruce @Amgine @catsalad

And this is Captain Parrys "musical box" (the barrel organ) at the Mechanical Music Museum:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/GbqZFTkTxpVxT8mx7

@ecadre @Amgine @catsalad
Dan Worrall’s Anglo-German Concertina history
(Worth having!)
https://mastodon.social/@AccordionBruce/116367921253583166

The Concertina at Sea chapter has a photo of the player who went only as far as Argentina (luckily?) with Shackleton’s trip to the Antarctic