Haakon Vatle // Sea Shanties and Storm Weather Shanty Choir

On the Wind Sailing

Andy Schell

Sports, Wilderness, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2021

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

#317. Sea shanties have taken the internet by storm! As these familiar songs go viral, we decided to do some digging on their function and history, then recycle an interview with Storm Weather Shanty Choir's founder and lead man, Haakon Vatle. In 2018, August and Andy sat down in person with Haakon in Bergen, Norway. Haakon Vatle holds the world's ONLY master's degree in sea shanties. Fans of the show will know his band, Storm Weather Shanty Choir, as the group of Norwegian musicians who have mastered the art of the modern sea shanty. To start this episode off, we spoke with Biz Wallace, a captain and sail instructor who works aboard tallships, and Christian Letourneau, a former ship's cook and a writer. August also got to chat with Haakon now, in 2021, to catch up on how the sea shanty craze is affecting the band, their upcoming album (February 5th!) and how Norway's tallship, the Statsraad Lehmkul, is faring through COVID times. In this episode, you will also hear recordings of shanties sung by folks at Sea Education Association, a sail training and marine science program that Biz Wallace, Christian Letourneau, and Emma Garschagen have all worked with.

ON THE WIND is exclusively sponsored by Dakota Lithium, an American company building tough, long-lasting lithium-iron-phosphate batteries for a variety of applications. We just installed 200 aH of Dakota Lithium on SPICA in Sweden, and are preparing for a major lithium conversion on ICEBEAR, our Swan 59. Check them out at dakotalithium.com.

Join us on the 59º North QUARTERDECK, our online platform where members and the 'Admiralty' dive deep on the art of seamanship. New for 2021 is a monthly, members-only newsletter called THE SKIPPER'S BRIEFING, straight to your inbox with exclusive content, commentary, and a recap of the best of the past month on the Quarterdeck. There is nothing like it in sailing - join us at quarterdeck.59-north.com to become a better thinker, leader & sailor.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Fellow, Fellero, the six and thirty white sails she wore, like meadons on the valley.
0:11.0	Fellow is sailing, fellow is sailing.
0:18.0	The bosun is hailing
0:21.6	The lines are high in the ring
0:24.6	And the wind in the haws is wailing
0:29.6	Below we're sailing
0:33.6	We're bound for Nova Scotia.
0:41.2	Newfoundland and Manitoba will be at sea for a year or more before this voyage is over.
0:52.4	Welcome back to On the Wind. This week we're talking about sea shanties. If you've been on the internet at all in the first month of this year, you've probably seen that sea shanties are going viral on apps like TikTok, where folks have been adding on to each other's videos of them singing sea shanties
1:11.6	until these videos have dozens of people singing together in a sort of socially distant symphony.
1:17.6	It's pretty awesome.
1:18.6	I even saw Kermit the Frog make a cameo in one of these.
1:22.6	As a sailor, I've heard my share of sea shanties played and sung on passages and used aboard sail training vessels to help a gaggle of fourth graders raise a heavy, gaff-rigged mainsail.
1:35.0	So it's pretty entertaining to see them as a viral trend now.
1:40.1	This season of On the Wind is sponsored exclusively by Dakota lithium, a lithium battery company based out of North Dakota where the winters can get cold.
1:49.0	Up there on the Great Plains, the landscape can be unforgiving, high winds, deep snow, long nights.
1:54.1	Dakota lithium was born out of this rugged landscape, a battery designed to endure to help you do what you love longer, a battery made to last.
2:02.2	Dakota lithium has harnished the power of lithium chemistry and combined it with North Dakota grit to build you a better battery.
2:08.8	Their lithium chemistry is the Life Po 4, sometimes you've seen it referred to as.
2:13.7	It's basically lithium iron phosphate, which is different from the batteries in your phone
2:18.1	or computer and safer for use in marine applications in fact i just put 200 amp hours of
2:24.6	dakota lithium batteries on spica our little boat here in sweden and we are gearing up to do a
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Andy Schell, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Andy Schell and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.