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"Look for chantey with a C -- you'll find me"

Mission Statement: to make technology obsolete.

This is the music that keeps me alive. It has been said that a chantey was worth ten hands on a rope. I say that nowadays
a chantey is worth 1000 songs in an iPod.
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This channel has two main thrusts.

1) Materials to support the "School of Reggay," a serious...yet casual...but defininately epic (!) study of musical style in Jamaican recorded music. It seeks to credit the (usually taken for granted) instrumental musicians who shaped the course of the music through their individual contributions. There are mostly vlogs of me rambling about stuff that would be interesting only for Jamaican music geeks or people interested in understanding music on its own terms, using empirical observation to know Jamaican MUSIC and discarding pre-conceived notions about "Reggae"...yep, pretty dry.

2) Shanties From the Seven Seas
A quasi-systematic project of recording examples of the sea chanteys (shanties) in Stan Hugill's book of the same title. The text compendium contains "over 400 shanties," and Hugill was one of the last living chanteymen aboard sailing vessels, who was largely responsible for keeping alive the know-how of chantey-singing after the days off sail had ended.

The goals of this project are both personal and public.

Personal: By going through the book ~systematically~ I am broadening my repertoire beyond the more common chanteys...and by recording them regularly, I am forced to really learn them. Needless to say, the experience is much more enriching that simply reading the book!

Public: I won't pretend: I have issues with much of today's commercial music. As much "music" as there is around (perhaps too much?), I think most people in the developed world especially are unnecessarilly distanced from the experience of music. I hate that people fear singing, and think everyone should sing, regardless of whether their singing/voice is "bad." The presiding vibe seems to say, "How dare you sing, your voice is bad!"

Making music is something that all humans are hardwired to do...and the culture that makes people feel embarrassed to express themselves musically, as if to encourage only the "best" performances, only destroys itself by limiting expression-- just look at the garbage we have in public culture, which only exists because it fits the lowest common denominator criteria of not challenging this strange sense of what is "appropriate" musical expression.

I think sea chanteys, in their quasi-authentic style, do challenge. And they are a good vehicle for amateur music making since they require little training to sing along and are not required to please anyone except for the people making them.

While not denying the coloring of my own personality and reality of my ahistorical position, I hope to create examples that reasonably respect the basic genre characteristics, which include:
--a capella for true chanteys (work songs)
--realistic tempos
--a rhythmic vocal, where necessary, for keeping time
--full-bodied tone/volume
--natural diction
--a full set of lyrics, not watered down or Disney-fied

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The rest of this channel is miscellaneous in nature. Some ethnographic videos for India, put those only represent the least interesting I have :) And assorted silliness that seemed kinda funny...to somebody...at the time. More likely I was just killing time at the computer.