Music of the Sea and Sea Chantys from The Maritime Heritage Project Ships Store

Pirates Of Caribbean: Swashbuckling Sea Songs Swashbuckling Sea Songs.

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Swashbuckling Sea Songs collects 14 seafaring singalongs that aim their cannons at the children who have spent time on the legendary theme park ride. The goofy renditions of classic sea shanties like "Blow the Man Down" and "Yo, Ho, Ho (And a Bottle of Rum)" have more in common with the Popeye cartoons than they do Naval work songs, and obvious film nods like "Welcome to the Caribbean" and "Davy Jones' Locker" sound hastily crafted for action figure commercials. The children will like it.

Blow The Man Down contains songs from FAREWELL NANCY, a 1964 compilation of sea chanties, and additional tracks. Based on a 1964 compilation LP called Farewell Nancy, this CD adds several more tracks. It features some of the British folk revival's top performers singing sea songs, shanties and ballads. Singers include Louis Killen, Cyril Tawney and Ian Campbell.

Irish Pirate Ballads
Dan Milner sings all 13 tracks on this collection of songs associated with the Irish seafaring life with instrumental and vocal support from a rotating cast of nine other musicians, Mick Moloney being the most notable of those. Milner was born in England but has spent most of his life in North America. He is of Irish descent, and he has done several albums of Irish music since the late '90s. According to Milner's liner notes, this is "an album of maritime songs from Ireland and its diaspora in which most of the central characters stand uneasy next to the law."

The arrangements are low-key as well, though admirably varied, incorporating mandolin, concertina, piano, guitar, whistle, banjo, accordion, flute, bouzouki, and fiddle. Milner's notes also offer detailed accounts of the sources of the songs, as well as the real-life characters whose experiences helped shape them.

1. Ten Thousand Miles Away ~ Dan Milner

2. Ballad of O Bruadair/Out on the Ocean, The ~ Dan Milner

3. Saucy Ward ~ Dan Milner

4. Captain Coulston ~ Dan Milner

5. Granuaile ~ Dan Milner

6. Get Up, Jack, John, Sit Down/Miss Thronton's ~ Dan Milner

7. Flying Cloud, The ~ Dan Milner

8. Larry Maher's Big 5-Gallon Jar ~ Dan Milner

9. Bold McCarthy (The City of Baltimore) ~ Dan Milner

10. All for Me Grog/Parnell's March ~ Dan Milner

11. Castle Gardens (Sixty Years Ago) ~ Dan Milner

12. Lowlands Low, The ~ Dan Milner

13. River Lea, The ~ Dan Milner

Classic Maritime Music from Smithsonian Folkways has a long and distinguished reputation as champions of the maritime tradition, and the reissue of the 32 tracks on their Classic Maritime Music compilation is a wonder. None of the records that these songs originally appeared on is in print, and the compilers have done a commendable job at choosing representative tracks from the large array of artists whose work has graced many a turntable over the course of the last 60 years. Opening the set are two cuts from New York's South Street Seaport Museum troubadours, the X-Seamen's Institute, a collective whose repertoire was as impressive in size as in execution, and whose several records for Folkways have been long sought after by collectors. Their version of "Shenandoah" is among the most beautiful ever recorded. Also notable is the inclusion of three tracks from the Foc'sle Singers, a seafaring supergroup of sorts that included Paul Clayton and Dave Van Ronk, who released one of the genre's finest recordings, Foc'sle Songs and Shanties, in 1959. Contributions from the Bahamas-based Dicey Doh Singers ("Sloop John B.") and instrumentals from Ellen Cohen ("Ten-Penny Bit") and Tom Sullivan ("Homeward Bound/The Old Slipper Shoe") help to dispel the notion that all sea shanties were merely work songs with a call and response. Excellent tracks by everyone from "salty dogs" like Ewan MacColl to Leadbelly, whose version of the Atlantic sailing shanty "Haul Away Joe" sees the bluesman adapting it to a Mississippi riverboat song, are wonderful windows into a world that's sadly diminishing. Classic Maritime Music is indispensable. ~ James Christopher Monger

Music Of The Silk Road

The idea of a Silk Road compilation is a standard of world music label compilations. This presentations starts in Turkey, with some urban Ankaran music followed by a more rural harvest song. Passing through Armenia, they showcase the sublime Djivan Gasparyan on duduk, as well as a taste of oud. In Azerbaijan, the music gets a bit rougher, with an overpowering dance on the accordion, and a female vocalist following the local aesthetic, which is something of an acquired taste. In Iran, a quick look is given to the dastgah system and the santour, before moving into Afghanistan for a folk song and a very loud and brash piece for the surnai (a sort of shawm with a very metallic timbre). Turkmenistan affords a quick look at a solo singing tradition and a bit of epic poetry, and Uzbekistan combines a nice solo ney performance with an overpowering performance of the National Orchestra of Folk Music, alternating between soft and woody tones and massive orchestral sounds. Kyrgyzstan is where the Central Asian aesthetic really starts to shine, with vocals meant for open spaces ringing and a bit of flute work combined with light string accompaniment on the comuz, as well as a solo performance on the deep chogoyno cho'or flute. Mongolia surprisingly shows neither the massively popular khoomi singing nor the morin khuur fiddle, opting instead for a basic folk song and a slower dance melody. Finally reaching the end of the Silk Road, the album ends with a pair of pieces from China, one a classical song and the other an instrumental using the high erhu and dizi against the deeper yangqin and zhong ruan for some traditional silk-and-bamboo music. This makes a nice sampler from which to start further musical explorations. ~ Adam Greenberg

The Maritime Heritage Project ~~ International Harbors Travel