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Jason Langley, James Gaddas and Company perform in Fisherman's Friends: The Musical.PAMELA RAITH/Mirvish

In his book Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia, W. Roy MacKenzie described seas shanties as an “obsolete ritual.” That was in 1909. But now the saltwater song type is back. Thanks to a lonely Scotsman who triggered a social media meme among young audiences, the shanties’ ship has come in.

A year ago, Glasgow-area musician Nathan Evans posted a TikTok video of himself stoically singing the whaling ballad Soon May the Wellerman Come. It struck a chord with a bored generation locked down during the pandemic. Evans himself told The New York Times that TikTok relieved his sense of claustrophobia.

The video was shared, remixed and duetted enthusiastically online, and “ShantyTok” was born. The Trailer Park Boys, fictional Nova Scotians, even responded with the sound-alike parody, The Kittyman Sea Shanty: “There once was a cat with a hungry belly/The name of the cat was Whiskers Jelly.” The viral phenomenon of something so esoteric and long obsolete was, of course, soaked in more irony than it was in rum or grog. Or was it?

On merchant marine vessels in the 1700s and 1800s, shanties were used as a rhythmic tool to help sailors work in unison. The different kinds of onboard chores would have different songs attached to them. “But then they began spicing them up with profane lyrics or funny lyrics or lyrics about their captains,” says Jon Cleave, a member of coastal England folk music singers the Fisherman’s Friends. “The men on the ships were singing about common experiences, and to sing about them while performing tasks would have kept their spirits up.”

So shanties uplift and help pass the time. Who more than a locked down society during a seemingly endless pandemic would be in need of some old-timey yo ho ho?

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From the left, Anton Stephans, Dan Buckley, James Gaddas and Robert Duncan in Fisherman's Friends: The Musical.PAMELA RAITH/Mirvish

And now, with the pandemic waning and the golden age of sailing long passed, shanties raise spirits still: Cleave and the rest of his Cornish sea-song specialists are coming to a stage near you. The Fisherman’s Friends formed in 1995 and are signed to Universal Music. Their feel-good life story inspired a self-titled 2019 British dramedy, which in turn spawned Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical, which lands at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre this weekend for a scheduled seven-week run. The sequel film Fisherman’s Friends: One and All was released in Canada last week.

According to Cleave, fans of the group range from children to pensioners, with no age gaps in between. It’s possible that the closest most of them have come to the seafaring life is the all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster. Cleave believes the shanty’s appeal to landlubbers is based in an oral tradition.

“The songs are accessible,” he says from Port Isaac, population 721. “They’ve not been written, they have no complexities and anyone can join into them. There’s a great democracy to them.”

Getting deeper into socio-physiological shanty impulse, Cleave points to comradery and a sense of lineage. “There’s a lot of talk about community these days. It’s a bit of a disappearing thing, but in smaller places we do manage to keep hold of it. I think other people can relate to it and want to feel they’re part of it.”

Feel part of it – as in literally joining into the call-and-response singing, whether in a pub or at a Fisherman’s Friends concert. “Maybe they do that because the words and tunes were things their own ancestors would have sung,” Cleaves says. “There is a sense of reaching back in time.”

Indeed, the most streamed track by the Fisherman’s Friends on Spotify is Shantyman, a contemporary song written by Bob Watson that despairs modern ships and laments the lost role of the sailor who sings the main line of a sea shanty: “Sing you a song of a world gone wrong, when they got no use for a shantyman.”

A shanty revival failed to happen in 2006, when well-known artists and actors including Sting, Bono and John C. Reilly contributed tracks to the Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys compilation produced by Hal Wilner. A follow-up album featuring such pirate types as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Courtney Love, Keith Richards, Angelica Huston and Johnny Depp was released in 2013.

The shanty oil lamp was long carried in Canada by platinum-selling Newfoundland folk-rockers Great Big Sea, who released nine studio albums before disbanding. Former members Alan Doyle and Sean McCann each have thriving solo careers. Well-known homegrown recordings in the genre include Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her by Stan Rogers and Drunken Sailor by the Irish Rovers.

And while 2021 finally made shanties popular again, it’s not the first time they’ve gone viral. When working ships sailed the world, they stopped at ports where crews were changed and sea songs were exposed to new people. “The same way TikTok exposed shanties during the pandemic,” Cleaves says. “it would have taken four or five years for a song to get around the world, but they got there eventually.”

Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical runs from Nov. 27 to Jan. 15 at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre. Information at mirvish.com.

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